Exoduschapter 13
22 verses · Moses, by tradition · 15th or 13th century BC · The Law
And the LORD went before them in a pillar of cloud to guide their way by day, and in a pillar of fire to give them light by night, so that they could travel by day or night.
Introduction
Moses, by tradition, The Law, Exodus Overview.
The book names Moses as the one who wrote down the words of the LORD, and here he gives law in the first days of the march. His first hearers were families who kept these customs in their homes and had walked the long way through the wilderness. The chapter turns one night into a claim on every eldest son and a feast for every year. Then it sets the people on the road. Listen for the phrase about the strength of the LORD's hand, and for the answer a father gives his son. Listen for why the route runs long.
Context
- Who
- Israel on the march, following a pillar they could see, and every household afterward that redeemed a firstborn son
- What
- Exodus 13 is the law of the firstborn and of the yearly feast, given as Israel sets out, followed by the first stage of the march under the pillar of cloud and fire.
- Where
- It takes place on the road from Succoth to Etham on the edge of the wilderness, two stations whose exact sites are uncertain, with the Red Sea ahead.
- When
- It falls in the first days after the exodus, in spring, which the two main datings place in the fifteenth or the thirteenth century BC, with Exodus 12:40 and 41 and 1 Kings 6:1 bearing on the date, and both datings are held.
- Why
- It teaches Israel to carry the memory of the exodus into every household and every year, and it shows the LORD choosing the route.
Historical context
The speech is the LORD's to Moses, and Moses passes it to the people on the day they came out.
Show the rest of the historical context, 5 more paragraphs
The chapter follows immediately on the night of the Passover, in the month the chapter before made first. The early dating puts it about 1446 BC from the four hundred and eighty years of 1 Kings 6:1 read literally, while Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier date the exodus to the thirteenth century from the store cities of Exodus 1:11, and the chapter names no Pharaoh and no year.
The place is the edge of the Delta and the desert beyond it, at Succoth and then Etham, with the short road north along the coast deliberately refused.
The occasion is the law of the firstborn, given while the reason for it was one day old.
A first hearer knew what redemption money was, since a life that was owed could be bought back by a substitute, so a firstborn donkey was redeemed with a lamb and a firstborn son was redeemed outright. He knew the coastal road, called here the way of the land of the Philistines, as the military highway of Egypt, studded with forts and running into fighting, which is why an untried people was led the long way round. He knew that Joseph's bones travelling with the column honoured an oath sworn about four centuries earlier. He also knew what a marching standard was, since armies of that world led columns by signals and standards, and the pillar of cloud and fire is described as one that never left its place before the people.
The command to bind these words as a sign on the hand and between the eyes is the root of the tefillin of later Jewish practice, and its first sense is a memory carried into what the hands do and what the eyes look at.
Significance
The nation was being taught to carry its memory in its calendar, its meals, its sons and its hands.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The long road said something about God's care that the short one could not. He knew what these people were able to face, and he took them round it.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
Two practices a Christian reader meets in the Gospels are commanded in this chapter. The first is the daily remembering of the exodus. Rashi reads the opening of verse 3 as a standing duty, teaching "that one must make mention of the Exodus from Egypt every day" (Rashi on Exodus 13:3:1). The second is tefillin, the small leather boxes bound on the arm and the head at weekday morning prayer, which the Gospels call phylacteries. Rashi takes the word in verse 16 to denote them, and explains the name from their four compartments, citing the tractate Sanhedrin. He carries a second reading from Menachem ben Seruk, that whoever sees them bound will remember the miracle and speak of it (Rashi on Exodus 13:16:1). This site's own Hebraic note on Deuteronomy 6 describes how tefillin and the mezuzah are kept today. At verse 8 Rashi reads the father's answer to his son as pointing at the food on the table. The answer is given for the sake of "this Passover offering, this unleavened bread and this bitter herb" (Rashi on Exodus 13:8:1).
How it is read
Rashi reads the law of the firstborn as a purchase already made. The firstborn belongs to God, he says, because "I have acquired him for Myself through My having smitten the first born of the Egyptians" (Rashi on Exodus 13:2:2). At verse 4 he hears kindness in the naming of the month. Moses points out that God brought them out in a season fit for travelling, neither hot nor cold nor rainy (Rashi on Exodus 13:4:1). At verse 13 he gives two reasons why the donkey alone among unclean animals is redeemed, the second being that donkeys carried Egypt's silver and gold out for Israel (Rashi on Exodus 13:13:1). At verse 22 he reads the two pillars as a watch handed over, so that "before the one set the other rose" (Rashi on Exodus 13:22:1). At verse 19 he explains why Joseph made his brothers swear about their children rather than about themselves (Rashi on Exodus 13:19:1). The text is the Rosenbaum and Silbermann Rashi of 1929 to 1934, in the public domain.
What the rabbis say
The rabbis take up the hallowing of the firstborn at Bekhorot 3a:9 and 4b:22, and its redemption at Bekhorot 4b:13 and 5a:2. On the sign upon the hand they taught at Arakhin 19b:6. On the child's question of verse 14 they taught at Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 10:4:2 and Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 13:13. On the pillar of cloud they taught at Avodah Zarah 11a:3, and on the bones of Joseph in Bereshit Rabbah 100:11.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Exodus 13:2:2, 13:3:1, 13:4:1, 13:8:1, 13:13:1, 13:16:1, 13:19:1 and 13:22:1, Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934 (public domain); This site's Hebraic note on Deuteronomy 6, src/lib/hebraic/pharisees.ts, the entry titled The confession Israel still prays twice a day, for tefillin and the mezuzah as they are kept now; The Babylonian Talmud, Bekhorot 3a:9, 4b:22, 4b:13 and 5a:2, Arakhin 19b:6, and Avodah Zarah 11a:3, cited by ref; The Midrash, Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 13:13, Bereshit Rabbah 100:11, and Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 10:4:2, cited by ref.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Consecrate to Me the Firstborn
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 13:1
“The Lord spake unto Moses - The commands in this chapter appear to have been given at Succoth, on the same day in which they left Egypt.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Adam Clarke defines the Hebrew verb behind consecrate as setting man or beast apart from common use for the service of the LORD, and he matches it with the Greek hagiazo. John Wesley has parents present the firstborn and receive him back.
Exodus 13:2
“Males were sacred because they opened their mothers' wombs. They were offered before the altar of the Lord. Scripture says, "Every male that opens the womb.…" This phrase has a spiritual meaning. For you might say that "every male is brought forth from the womb" but does not open the womb of his mother in the way that the Lord Jesus did. In the case of every other woman, it is not the birth of an infant but intercourse with a man that opens the womb.”
Origen of Alexandria · written before 253 · HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF LUKE 14:7-8patristic
2 more voices on this verse
Exodus 13:2
“Sanctify unto me all the first-born - To sanctify, קדש kadash, signifies to consecrate, separate, and set apart a thing or person from all secular purposes to some religious use; and exactly answers to the import of the Greek ἁγιαζω, from a, privative, and γη, the earth, because every thing offered or consecrated to God was separated from all earthly uses. Hence a holy person or saint is termed ἁγιος, i.e., a person separated from the earth; one who lives a holy life, entirely devoted to the service of God.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Exodus 13:2
“Commentary on Chapter XIII 2. Sanctify to me all the first-born - The parents were not to look upon themselves as interested in their first-born, till they had first solemnly presented them to God, and received them back from him again. It is mine - By a special right, being by my singular favour preserved from the common destruction.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Cross references
Exodus 13:2
- Quoted inLuke 2:23“(as it is written in the Law of the Lord: “Every firstborn male shall be consecrated to the Lord”),”
'Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord' ('as it is written in the law')
Remember This Day You Came Out
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 13:3
There shall no leavened bread, &c.--The words are elliptical, and the meaning of the clause may be paraphrased thus:--"For by strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place, in such haste that there could or should be no leavened bread eaten."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Today, in the month of Abib, you are leaving: Moses names the month of Abib on the day the people came out of Egypt. Albert Barnes gives the name the sense of young ears of grain, the month the crop began to ripen in spring, and he notes its likeness to the Egyptian month Epiphi. Whether Israel had the name before that day is uncertain.
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 13:5
“The Canaanites - Five nations only are named in this passage, whereas six are named in Exo 3:8, and ten in the original promise to Abraham, Gen 15:19-21. The first word “Canaanite” is generic, and includes all the Hamite races of Palestine.”
1 more voice on this verse
Exodus 13:5
“It was, however, only a prospective observance; we read of only one celebration of the passover during the protracted sojourn in the wilderness [Nu 9:5]; but on their settlement in the promised land, the season was hallowed as a sacred anniversary [Jos 5:10], in conformity with the directions here given.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the LORD: The feast here carries the word Moses used before Pharaoh at 5:1 and 10:9, when he asked leave to hold a feast to the LORD in the wilderness. John Wesley notes that the request was made again and again. The feast Pharaoh refused becomes a yearly one.
Exodus 13:6
“Unleavened bread - See Clarke on Exo 12:15 (note), and Exo 12:16 (note).”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
nor shall leaven be found anywhere within your borders: Matthew Henry reads the strictness as meant to make the feast stand out, so that children would ask why so much was made of it. The next verse gives the answer to the son. Deuteronomy 16:4 repeats the rule of seven days for the whole land.
Exodus 13:7
“The care and strictness enjoined in this matter were designed, (1.) To make the feast the more solemn, and consequently the more taken notice of by their children, who would ask, "Why is so much ado made?" (2.) To teach us how solicitous we should be to put away from us all sin, 1 Cor. v. 7 .”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
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.
a sign for you on your hand and a reminder on your forehead: Albert Barnes hears the sign spoken by the parents to their son, and he ties it to an old custom in Egypt of wearing written texts on the hand and the forehead. Matthew 23:5 names the phylacteries worn in the time of Jesus.
Exodus 13:9
“Hebrew writers have generally regarded this as a formal injunction to write the precepts on slips of parchment, and to fasten them on the wrists and forehead; but other commentators are generally agreed that it is to be understood metaphorically. The words appear to be put into the mouths of the parents. They were to keep all the facts of the Passover constantly in mind, and, referring to a custom prevalent ages before Moses in Egypt, to have them present as though they were inscribed on papyrus or parchment fastened on the wrists, or on the face between the eyes.”
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 13:10
“Thou shall therefore keep the ordinance in his season,.... Not the ordinance of the phylacteries, as the Targum of Jonathan, but the ordinance of unleavened bread: from year to year; every year successively, so long as in force, even unto the coming of the Messiah.”
Every Firstborn Redeemed
as He swore to you and your fathers: The law of the firstborn waits for the land, and the oath is sworn to the living generation with its fathers. Matthew Henry sets this law against the nations of that land, who offered their children to Molech. Leviticus 18:21 forbids that rite by name.
Exodus 13:11
“And it shall be when the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites,.... Put for all the rest of the nations: as he sware unto thee, and to thy fathers, and shall give it thee; to them as they were in their loins, and from thence might certainly conclude it would be given them.”
1 more voice on this verse
Exodus 13:11
“The firstborn of their children were to be redeemed, and by no means sacrificed, as the Gentiles sacrificed their children to Moloch. The price of the redemption of the firstborn was fixed by the law ( Num. xviii. We were all obnoxious to the wrath and curse of God; by the blood of Christ we are redeemed, that we may be joined to the church of the firstborn.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
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.
And every firstborn of your sons you must redeem: Albert Barnes notes that the donkey may have been the only unclean animal Israel kept at the exodus, and Numbers 18:15 extends the rule to every unclean beast. A son's price was five shekels of silver. Numbers 18:16 sets the payment at a month old.
Exodus 13:13
“An ass - The ass could not be offered in sacrifice, being an unclean animal: possibly the only unclean animal domesticated among the Israelites at the time of the Exodus. This principle was extended to every unclean beast; see Num 18:15. Thou shalt redeem - The lamb, or sheep, was given to the priest for the service of the sanctuary. Firstborn of man - The price of redemption was fixed at five shekels of the sanctuary: Num 3:47, where see the note.”
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 13:14
“Mercies to our fathers are mercies to us; we reap the benefit of them, and therefore must keep up a grateful remembrance of them. We stand upon the bottom of former deliverances, and were in the loins of our ancestors when they were delivered. Much more reason have we to say that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we were redeemed.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go: The Hebrew behind stubbornly refused is the verb of making hard, the one God used of Pharaoh's heart at 7:3. In the father's answer Pharaoh is its subject. Keil and Delitzsch count it among the three Hebrew verbs of the hardening.
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 13:16
“It shall be for a token, etc. - See Clarke’s note on Exo 13:9.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The Pillar of Cloud and Fire
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 13:17
“I admit, indeed, that God might have otherwise obviated all these evils; but since He is often wont to deal with His people on human principles, He chose to adopt the method which was most suited to their infirmity. Moses now commends this His admirable design, in order that we may know that nothing was omitted by Him which was for the safety and advantage of His people.”
John Calvin · Commentaries (1554)reformed
by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea: The Hebrew name for the Red Sea is yam suph, which Jamieson, Fausset and Brown render the weedy sea for the plants that grow in it. John Wesley ties the wilderness road to the sign of 3:12, that the people would worship God on the mountain. God led them toward it.
Exodus 13:18
“God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea, &c.--This wondrous expanse of water is a gulf of the Indian ocean. It was called in Hebrew "the weedy sea," from the forest of marine plants with which it abounds. But the name of the Red Sea is not so easily traced.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Exodus 13:18
“God had given it to Moses for a sign, chap. iii, 12, ye shall serve God in this mountain. They had again and again told Pharaoh that they must go three days journey into the wilderness to do sacrifice, and therefore it was requisite they should march that way, else they had justly been exclaimed against as dissemblers.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
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 13:19
“The remains of the other patriarchs (not noticed from their obscurity) were also carried out of Egypt (Ac 7:15, 16); and there would be no difficulty as to the means of conveyance--a few camels bearing these precious relics would give a true picture of Oriental customs, such as is still to be seen in the immense pilgrimages to Mecca.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
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 13:20
“Encamped in Etham - As for the reasons assigned on Exo 13:17, God would not lead the Israelites by the way of the Philistines’ country, he directed them towards the wilderness of Shur, Exo 15:22, upon the edge or extremity of which, next to Egypt, at the bottom of the Arabian Gulf, lay Etham, which is the second place of encampment mentioned. See the extracts from Dr. Shaw at the end of Exodus. See Clarke’s note on Exo 40:38.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
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.
Exodus 13:21
“Pillar of cloud - The Lord Himself did for the Israelites by preternatural means that which armies were obliged to do for themselves by natural agents. The Persians and Greeks used fire and smoke as signals in their marches, and in a well-known papyrus, the commander of an Egyptian expedition is called “A flame in the darkness at the head of his soldiers.” By this sign then of the pillar of cloud, the Lord showed Himself as their leader and general Exo 15:3, Exo 15:6.”
1 more voice on this verse
Exodus 13:21
“The Shechinah or appearance of the divine Majesty, which was a precious manifestation of the eternal Word, who in the fulness of time was to be made flesh, and dwell among us. Christ was with the church in the wilderness, 1 Cor. x, 9.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
left its place before the people: John Wesley reads the cloud as the badge of God's protection and so the bond of Israel's allegiance, given as the people entered the wilderness. Matthew Henry sets the unbroken watch beside Psalm 121, where the Protector of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Guidance and protection came together.
Exodus 13:22
“He took not away the pillar of the cloud - Neither Jews nor Gentiles are agreed how long the cloud continued with the Israelites. It is very probable that it first visited them at Succoth, if it did not accompany them from Rameses; and that it continued with them till they came to the river Jordan, to pass over opposite to Jericho, for after that it appears that the ark alone was their guide, as it always marched at their head.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: Law given on the road, followed by the first stage of the march out, as Clarke classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| The mighty hand, said four times in one chapter | The phrase about the strength of the LORD's hand returns at verses 3, 9, 14 and 16. Each time it is the reason given for a command, so that the memory of the going out is attached to the unleavened bread, to the sign on the hand, to the answer given a son, and to the redemption of the firstborn. | Exodus 13:3, Exodus 13:9, Exodus 13:14, Exodus 13:16 |
| The sign on the hand and the mark on the forehead, at the head and the foot of the law | Verse 9 closes the law of unleavened bread with a sign on the hand and a reminder on the forehead, and verse 16 closes the law of the firstborn with the same pair. The two halves of the chapter's law are bracketed by one image. | Exodus 13:9, Exodus 13:16 |
| The son's question, written out with its answer | Verses 14 and 15 give the question a son will ask in the future and the sentence his father is to say back, which is the second time the chapter pair of question and answer appears, the first being Exodus 12:26 and 27. Matthew Henry reads it as the rule that a man should be able to show cause for what he does in religion.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on Exodus 13:14. | Exodus 13:8, Exodus 13:14, Exodus 13:15 |
| The nations of the land, counted as five | Verse 5 lists the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites and Jebusites. Albert Barnes points out that five are named here where six are named at Exodus 3:8 and ten in the promise to Abraham, so the list is a short form rather than a fixed roll.Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, on Exodus 13:5. | Exodus 13:5 |
The chapter stands one day past the Passover and it is the first place where the going out is treated as a thing to be remembered rather than a thing being lived through. Three commands here are memory devices: the annual feast, the sign on the hand, and the answer a father gives his son. The chapter is teaching a people how to carry an event.
9 more paragraphs on the patterns
The second half sets the pattern the rest of the wilderness follows. God chooses the route, the route is longer than it needs to be, and the reason given is the condition of the people rather than the distance. Matthew Henry reads it as God proportioning his people's trials to their strength. Calvin allows that God could have removed the danger another way and holds that he often deals with his people by taking the danger out of their path instead.
The chapter also closes a very old account. Joseph made the sons of Israel swear to carry his bones out, and this chapter records the oath being kept.
The New Testament's use
No verse of Exodus 13 is quoted in the New Testament. The oath about Joseph's bones is taken up at Hebrews 11:22, which credits Joseph with speaking of the exodus and giving instructions about his bones, and at Acts 7:15 and 16 in Stephen's speech. The pillar of cloud stands behind 1 Corinthians 10:1 and 2, where Paul says the fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea.
The debated point
Whether the sign on the hand and between the eyes at verses 9 and 16 was meant literally is contested and it was contested early. John Gill records that the Targum of Jonathan read the ordinance of the phylacteries into the verse, and he distinguishes the ordinance of the passover from the ordinance of the phylacteries when he reads verse 10. The later Jewish practice of tefillin, small boxes of text bound on the arm and the head, rests on these verses and on Deuteronomy 6:8. The reading held by most Christian commentators takes the phrase as a figure for a memory carried into what the hands do and what the eyes look at, with the literal practice as a later development. Both readings agree on the verses that generate the practice and differ on what the verses ask.
The water Israel is led toward at verse 18 is the second contested point, and it belongs with the crossing of the next chapter. The Hebrew yam suph, the sea of reeds, is placed by some along the chain of lakes east of the Delta, and the ancient versions carry the Red Sea. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown describe the gulf itself in their note on this verse. The site names the positions and stamps no verdict.
Where to go deeper
The claim on the eldest son is set out at the firstborn and the feast at unleavened bread. The oath about the bones is set out at Joseph. The going out is set out at the exodus, and the country left behind at Egypt.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The context
Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
The form and classifications
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on Exodus 13:1; John Calvin, Commentaries, 1554, on Exodus 13:17 and John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765, on Exodus 13:2.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments; Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 3458, Redeeming the Unclean; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.