Exodus6chapter 6

Exodus 6:1

Chapter 5 ended with Moses asking why God had done evil to this people, and this verse is the answer he gets. Pharaoh will drive Israel out of his own land, which is what 12:33 and 12:39 report happening on the morning after the last plague. Adam Clarke observes that the strong hand here is chazaq, the same root the book uses when it speaks of Pharaoh's heart being hardened.

Exodus 6:2-3

Verse 3 raises a real problem, because Genesis uses the name from 2:4 onward and Abraham speaks it at Genesis 15:2. Matthew Henry, John Wesley and John Gill read known as known in the character the name declares, so the fathers heard the name and did not yet see it act. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown take the clause as a question instead, by my name Jehovah was I not known to them. The source-critical reading treats the verse as evidence of separate documents standing behind the Pentateuch.

Exodus 6:4-5

The covenant named here is the one at Genesis 17:8, where Canaan is promised to Abraham and his seed for an everlasting possession while he is living in it as a stranger. Verse 5 says God has heard the groaning and remembered his covenant, which is the third beat of a chain that runs from Noah at Genesis 8:1 to Rachel at Genesis 30:22 to Exodus 2:24. In every one of those places the remembering marks God acting on a promise rather than recalling something he had forgotten.

Exodus 6:6

Seven I will statements run from here to verse 8, and they set out the whole errand before any part of it has happened. The verb redeem occurs here for the first time in Scripture, since Genesis 48:16 has the participle redeemed and the verb itself begins at this verse. A stretched out arm becomes the standing phrase for the exodus afterward, at Deuteronomy 4:34, Deuteronomy 26:8 and Psalm 136:12. The bondage he promises to rid them of is abodah, from the root abad, which Exodus 1:13 and 1:14 use five times over for the slave labour.

Exodus 6:7

This is the covenant formula, and it recurs at Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 31:33, 2 Corinthians 6:16 and Revelation 21:3, where it is the last thing said about the new city. Alfred Edersheim records the Jewish tradition that ties the four cups of the passover meal to the four verbs of promise in verses 6 and 7, bring out, rid, redeem and take. The Jerusalem Talmud states it at Pesahim 10:1, compiled around the fifth century, and it is reception history rather than something the Exodus text says.

Exodus 6:8

Adam Clarke notes that the Hebrew behind I did swear reads I have lifted up my hand, the gesture that stands for an oath, as at Isaiah 62:8. The paragraph opened at verse 6 with I am the Lord and closes here with the same three words, so the promises are bracketed by the name verse 3 had raised. Almost none of the adults hearing this are brought in, which Numbers 14:29 and 14:30 record.

Exodus 6:9

At 4:31 the people believed, bowed their heads and worshipped, and here they will not listen at all. What changed between the two scenes is chapter 5, where Pharaoh doubled their work and their own officers were beaten. Albert Barnes reads the anguish of spirit as shortness of breath, men too far into their misery to take in a fresh word. Charles Spurgeon preached this verse to people in that condition and put the weight on the little word so, that Moses said what he had been given to say and added nothing.

Exodus 6:10-11

The demand put to Pharaoh changes at this point. At 3:18 and again at 5:3 the request was a three days road into the wilderness to sacrifice, and now it is that he let the children of Israel go out of his land. Albert Barnes marks the shift, since a three days road could have been kept inside Egypt's own borders and a departure from the land cannot.

Exodus 6:12

Moses argues from the smaller case to the larger, that if his own people will not hear him the king of Egypt certainly will not. The objection is the one he raised at 4:10 when he called himself slow of speech and of a slow tongue, and Adam Clarke takes uncircumcised lips as an impediment in speech rather than a figure of speech. The same figure is used of the heart at Leviticus 26:41, of the ear at Jeremiah 6:10, and of both together by Stephen at Acts 7:51.

Exodus 6:13

The answer to the objection is a charge rather than a reply, and it is laid on the two brothers together and aimed at Israel and Pharaoh alike. Albert Barnes marks this verse as the opening of a new section, and the genealogy that follows holds up the narrative until verse 27. John Wesley reads the charge as authority that settles the objections without further argument.

Exodus 6:14-15

The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel: The roll begins in birth order with Reuben and Simeon, then stops at Levi and goes no further, because its business is to place Moses and Aaron rather than to list the tribes. Reuben is named the firstborn of Israel and the record moves straight past him, which is what Genesis had already done at 49:3 and 49:4. Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman is kept in the list exactly as Genesis 46:10 had him, with nothing added and nothing removed.

Exodus 6:16-19

Gershon, Kohath and Merari become the three carrying divisions of the tabernacle at Numbers 3 and Numbers 4, so this list is also the roster of who will move the tent. Ages are recorded for Levi at a hundred and thirty seven years and for Kohath at a hundred and thirty three, and for nobody else in the chapter except Amram. John Gill notes that the same figure for Levi appears in the ancient chronographer Demetrius, quoted through Alexander Polyhistor in Eusebius.

Exodus 6:20

Levi at verse 16, Kohath at verse 18, Amram here and Moses in this same verse make exactly four generations, which is what Genesis 15:16 said would pass before Abraham's seed came back to Canaan. The text calls Jochebed the sister of Amram's father, a marriage that Leviticus 18:12 later forbids. John Wesley and Adam Clarke read the Hebrew dodah broadly as kinswoman, while others take the word at face value and observe that the law had not yet been given. Numbers 26:59 says plainly that Jochebed was born to Levi in Egypt.

Exodus 6:21-22

Korah is entered in the family record of Moses and Aaron with no comment attached, and Numbers 16 tells what he did with the standing this line gave him. Adam Clarke reads the inclusion as a mark of the impartiality of the man writing. Mishael and Elzaphan, named in the next verse, are the two who carry the bodies of Nadab and Abihu out of the camp at Leviticus 10:4.

Exodus 6:23

Aaron marries into Judah. Elisheba is the daughter of Amminadab and the sister of Nahshon, who stands as prince of Judah at Numbers 2:3 and sits in the line to David and to Christ at Ruth 4:20 and Matthew 1:4. Two of the four sons listed here, Nadab and Abihu, die before the Lord at Leviticus 10:2, and the priesthood runs on through Eleazar and Ithamar.

Exodus 6:24-25

Korah's sons are named here, and Numbers 26:11 says the children of Korah did not die when the earth opened on their father. Eleven psalms carry their name in the title, at Psalms 42, 44 to 49, 84, 85, 87 and 88, so the house that rebelled against the priesthood ends up leading the singing. Phinehas, named at the close of verse 25, is the grandson of Aaron who acts at Numbers 25:7 to 13 and receives the covenant of an everlasting priesthood.

Exodus 6:26-27

The two verses name the pair in both orders, Aaron first here and Moses first at the end of verse 27, and the genealogy closes by pointing at two men rather than at a tribe. According to their armies uses tsaba, a word for troops drawn up in order, and it returns for the people who march out at 12:41 and 12:51. Adam Clarke connects the word to the divine title Lord of hosts.

Exodus 6:28-30

The narrative picks up where verse 13 left it, and Moses raises the same objection in the same words he had used at verse 12. Adam Clarke held that the chapter should have ended at verse 27, since verse 30 runs straight into the answer given at 7:1. The book has now recorded his objections at 3:11, 4:1, 4:10, 4:13, verse 12 and here, and the plagues begin with the argument still open.