Texts in Conversation
Exodus 32 recalls that God brought Israel out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand. Ezekiel echoes that language to describe a second exodus, gathering the exiles from the nations with the same outstretched arm.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 32:11
Hebrew Bible
10 So now, leave me alone so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them, and I will make from you a great nation.” 11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your anger burn against your people, whom you have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘For evil he led them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger, and relent of this evil against your people.
Ezekiel 20:34
Hebrew Bible
33 As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, with a powerful hand and an outstretched arm and with an outpouring of rage, I will be king over you. 34 I will bring you out from the nations and will gather you from the lands where you are scattered, with a powerful hand and an outstretched arm and with an outpouring of rage! 35 I will bring you into the wilderness of the nations, and there I will enter into judgment with you face-to-face.
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Notes and References
... Ezekiel is visualizing the return from Babylonian exile as a kind of new exodus, and in Ezekiel the wilderness of the people is analogous to the “wilderness of the land of Egypt” of the first exodus (verse 36), as a place where God can judge his people and weed out the rebels before bringing the righteous remnant to his holy mountain. This judgment involves bringing his people “under the rod” (תחת השבט), to discipline them (verse 37). It seems clear that the mention of both the “rod” of discipline and the allusion to the “way of Egypt” in Isaiah 10 triggered an association with the Ezekiel passage for the Qumran interpreter, and he read Isaiah through the eyes of Ezekiel’s promise of a return from Babylonian exile. ...
Roberts, J. J. M.
"The Importance of Isaiah at Qumran" in Charlesworth, James H. (ed.) "The Importance of Isaiah at Qumran" in Charlesworth, James H. (ed.) The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls
(p. 281) Baylor University Press, 2006
* 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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