Exodus13chapter 13

Exodus 13:1-2

The word sanctify occurs here for the first time in Scripture and it lands on the firstborn who lived through the night of chapter 12. God claims them by right of rescue rather than by right of birth, and Numbers 3:13 states that ground plainly when the Levites are later taken in their place. Luke 2:23 quotes the phrase openeth the womb when Jesus is brought to the temple, which makes this law the one his parents were keeping that day.

Exodus 13:3-4

The command that opens the speech is Remember, and what is to be remembered is a day rather than a doctrine. The phrase house of bondage occurs here for the first time in Scripture, returns at verse 14, and then stands at Exodus 20:2 as the preamble to the Ten Commandments. By strength of hand is new here as well and Moses says it three times in this chapter, at verses 3, 14 and 16, while verse 4 names the month Abib for the first time in Scripture.

Exodus 13:5-7

The keeping of the feast is tied to a country the people have not seen, and five nations are named here where Exodus 3:8 named six and Genesis 15:19-21 named ten. What they are to keep is called this service, and the Hebrew root behind that word is the one Exodus 1:14 used five times over for the labour they left the week before. Seven days of unleavened bread close in a feast on the seventh, and the rule reaches past the table to the house, since no leaven is to be seen in all thy quarters.

Exodus 13:8-9

The father answers his child with what was done to him, since the words given him are because of that which the Lord did unto me. The sign upon the hand and the memorial between the eyes have been read two ways for a very long time. Jewish practice takes the instruction literally and binds written portions of the law on the arm and the head, while Calvin and many after him read the words as a figure for keeping the deliverance in constant view. The verse itself states the purpose, that the law of the Lord may be in thy mouth.

Exodus 13:10-11

The ordinance is fixed to a season and repeated from year to year, so the memory is carried by the calendar rather than by the people who were there. Gill takes the ordinance here as the unleavened bread rather than the practice of the previous verse. Verse 11 repeats the condition of verse 5 and rests it on an oath sworn to the fathers, which sends the reader back to Genesis 15:18 and Genesis 17:8.

Exodus 13:12-13

Set apart and openeth the matrix both occur here for the first time in Scripture. An unclean animal cannot be offered, so the law puts a lamb in its place, and the firstling ass left unredeemed has its neck broken. The same verb redeem then falls on the children in the same verse, so what the donkey teaches is applied to a son, and a life is bought back by another life. Spurgeon preached this verse as Redeeming the Unclean and took the difficulty of the unclean beast as the point of the law.

Exodus 13:14-15

This is the second child's question in two chapters, after Exodus 12:26, and the answer is again a piece of history. The father says the Lord brought us out, placing himself among the people who walked out of Egypt whether or not he was born yet. Verse 15 gives the ground of the whole ordinance, that Egypt's firstborn died and Israel's did not, so every firstborn son in Israel afterward stands as a reminder of a night he never saw.

Exodus 13:16

The word frontlets occurs here for the first time in Scripture and only twice more, at Deuteronomy 6:8 and Deuteronomy 11:18, both of them repeating this same instruction. Where verse 9 said sign and memorial, this verse says token and frontlets, and it closes with the line verses 3 and 14 already carried, that by strength of hand the Lord brought them out. Three statements of one sentence in fourteen verses is the chapter telling the reader what it wants kept.

Exodus 13:17-18

The short road is refused because of what God knows about the people, and the text gives the reason in full, lest they see war and return to Egypt. They say very nearly that at Exodus 14:11-12 with the sea in front of them, and at Numbers 14:4 it becomes a plan to appoint a captain and go back. The word harnessed at verse 18 occurs nowhere else in Scripture, and it has been rendered armed, in ranks of five, and in orderly divisions, with the commentators leaving the question open.

Exodus 13:19

Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: Genesis 50:25 recorded the oath and Genesis 50:26 left Joseph in a coffin in Egypt, and the book of Genesis ends on that sentence. Four hundred years later the oath is discharged in this verse, and Joshua 24:32 buries the bones at Shechem in ground Jacob had bought. Hebrews 11:22 names the request itself as the act of faith, that Joseph gave commandment concerning his bones because he counted the departure certain.

Exodus 13:20

Etham is named here for the first time in Scripture and it is the second stop on a route Numbers 33 later lists in full. Gill puts the move on the day after the going out, the sixteenth of Nisan, and reckons Etham some eight miles from Succoth. The name Succoth means booths, and Jacob had given that name to a different place at Genesis 33:17 after building shelters for his cattle.

Exodus 13:21-22

Both pillar of a cloud and pillar of fire occur here for the first time in Scripture, and the same cloud and fire close the book at Exodus 40:36-38, where Israel moves only when the cloud lifts off the tabernacle. 1 Corinthians 10:1-2 says the fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, so the New Testament draws this line itself. Verse 22 adds that the pillar stayed by day and by night, and Gill follows it as far as the borders of Canaan, after which the ark went before the people at Joshua 3:6.