A couple days ago, we began reading the book of Exodus in our reading through the Bible in a year program. Some of the books may be unfamiliar to you, so in an effort to help you understand what you are reading, as much as possible (I am fully confident I will be unable to provide overviews of each of the 66 books, but I’ll do my best to provide as many as possible), I will seek to give you some introductory notes, explanations, and overviews of the books.
To do that, I will provide a very brief summary in the blog, and a link to a downloadable Word document. All of these documents will be categorized under both the name of the book (e.g., “Exodus”) and “Bible study/resources” so you can do a search to find overviews of other books that you might have missed seeing in the blog. Here is the overview of Exodus.
The book can be generally divided in two large sections. The first 19 chapters mainly contain narrative, while the remainder of the book largely contains laws. More specifically, it can be divided as follows:
- redemption from Pharaoh (Chaps. 1-18)
- the establishment of God’s covenant (19-24)
- law (Ten Commandments and subsequent laws)
- worship (25-40).
Unger points out that in Genesis, God had been connected with the Israelites only through His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, in Exodus, He brings the whole nation to Himself through redemption and the Mosaic Covenant. In fact, “the entire book is typical of the person and work of Christ.” [Merrill Unger, Unger’s Bible Handbook] Furthermore, Unger concludes his discussion of the book, by stating, “This truly is the book of redemption.”
Words of Grace 