Texts in Conversation
Genesis 18 and Exodus 3 use similar language to describe God descending from heaven in response to human suffering, a pattern that appears in only a few texts and may reflect a common source that thought God had a body.
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Genesis 18:21
Hebrew Bible
19 I have chosen him so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. Then the Lord will give to Abraham what he promised him.” 20 So the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so blatant 21 that I must go down and see if they are as wicked as the outcry suggests. If not, I want to know.” 22 The two men turned and headed toward Sodom, but Abraham was still standing before the Lord.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Exodus 3:8
Hebrew Bible
7 The Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. 8 I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a land that is both good and spacious, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the region of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 9 And now indeed the cry of the Israelites has come to me, and I have also seen how severely the Egyptians oppress them.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In verse 6 the reason for YHWH’s intended confusion of the “one lip” in verse 7 is given. In verse 7 God plans his action as saboteur. With a short soliloquy in the first-person plural (recalling Genesis 2–3, Genesis 6:5–7, Genesis 18:20–21 and even Exodus 3:7–8) ... The connection between the latter two texts has also been observed ... The word דרי with YHWH as subject and first-person plural is only attested in Genesis 11:7; דרי in the first-person singular with YHWH as subject is also very rare: besides Genesis 18:21, in order to investigate Sodom and Gomorrah, it is only attested in Exodus 3:8, to save Israel, and in Numbers 11:17, to support Moses ... God exhorts himself to descend and to confuse the “lip” of the people, in order to destroy their ideal, unanimous, primordial inter-human communication. The divine speech in verse 7 forms a parallel with the people’s speech in verses 3–4 ..."
Berlejung, Angelika
"Living in the Land of Shinar: Reflections on Exile in Genesis 11:1–9" in Dubovský, Peter, et al. (eds.) The Fall of Jerusalem and the Rise of the Torah
(pp. 89-112) Mohr Siebeck, 2016
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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