EXODUS, THE, the name given to the escape of Israel from Egypt and their journey to Palestine (Gr. f ohos). The narrative as we have it is derived from at least three accounts which have been interwoven with one another. In outline the story is as follows. The Israelites are in bondage in Egypt, where their numbers and strength arouse the jealous f ears of the Egyptian court. They are put to forced labour, and attempts are made to reduce their numbers by the slaughter of all male children. One child, Moses, is saved, partly through the inter vention of an Egyptian princess, goes into exile to Midian, meets the God of the fathers of Israel, and is commissioned by Him to deliver His people. He returns and demands of Pharaoh that the Israelites shall be allowed to take a journey into the wilderness to share in a festival to Yahweh. The request of Moses is met by repeated refusal, and each refusal is followed by calamity sent by Yahweh. Finally, as the time for the sacrifice draws near, Yahweh himself (or his "angel") comes to Egypt, the festival is celebrated as best it can be in Egypt, and Yahweh slays the first-born of all Egyptians. Israel is hastily sent away, but is later pursued by Pharaoh, who overtakes the fugitives on the banks of the Red sea. Israel crosses safely (one of the traditions attributes this to unusual but natural causes, the other, and later, makes it miraculous), the Egyptian army follows but is drowned. Israel then makes its way to the sacred mountain, variously called Sinai and Horeb, and there enters into a solemn covenant of mutual adoption with Yahweh. An abortive attempt is made to enter Palestine from the south, and, nearly 4o years later, Israel moves east and north from the neighbourhood of the sacred mountain, and approaches Palestine from the east. Just before the crossing of Jordan and the entry into Palestine, Moses dies.
No certain reference to these events has yet been discovered in Egyptian records, unless, with Josephus and a few modern scholars, e.g., Hall, we regard the story as an account of the expulsion of the Hyksos, seen from the Asiatic side. There are, nevertheless, the strongest grounds for regarding the narrative as historical in outline, though details cannot always be trusted. The whole of Israel's national and religious life was traced back to the covenant at the sacred mountain, and the memory of a divine deliverance from Egypt remained throughout history one of the most powerful factors in the national life. Some kind of disaster overtook the Egyptian troops by the Red sea, and we may regard as substantially accurate the older of the two narra tives interwoven in Ex. xiv. r 5-3 r . According to this the corn bination of a very high wind and a very low tide laid bare a wide stretch of sand normally covered by water. It was still firm when the Israelites crossed, but the Egyptians were caught by the tide returning under the sand, the wheels of their vehicles were clogged, and they themselves were first trapped by the quick sands and then overwhelmed by the water. There is, further, no reason to doubt the accuracy of the main outline of the other events already mentioned, though it is unlikely that the covenant between Yahweh and Israel involved the whole of the Law assigned to the period in the Pentateuch.
The date of the Exodus is still a matter of uncertainty. If the details of the oppression given in Ex. i. i r are held to be accurate, then the Pharaoh of the oppression must be Rameses II., and the Pharaoh of the Exodus his son Merneptah. The main difficulty in accepting this date lies in the mention of Israel as a settled people of Palestine overthrown by Merneptah, occurring on an inscription of that. king. This means that the r 9th Dynasty is probably too late a period for the Exodus. Many scholars think that the invading Hebrews are to be identified with the Khabiru of the Tell el-Amarna tablets, or are to be included, wholly or in part, among these wilderness nomads, who attacked Palestine during the decline of the i 8th Dynasty. This, on the whole the most probable suggestion, would throw the Exodus back to a point in or near the reign of Thothmes III. and make the r sth century B.C. the earliest possible period. (T. H. R.)