Excerpt from Exodus: A Commentary
God led Israel through the desert between Egypt and Palestine. They in fact form a link between the Exodus and the Entry into the Promised Land. These narratives comprise a loose juxtaposition of episodes from nomadic life in the wilderness, a life whose character istic features were still at a later date familiar to the tribes of Israel, bounded as they were by the desert. But this theme does not serve merely to give a graphic description of a particular period in the pre history Of Israel; behind it stands the tenet Of Israelite faith that it was in fact 'in the wilderness' that Yahweh had shown his concern for Israel (cf. Hos. Jer. The theme of the wanderings appears once again in the Book Of Numbers. If we look at the Penta teuch as a whole, it forms a frame round the Sinai theme and in its turn is framed by the two matching themes of the Exodus from Egypt and the Entry into the Promised Land. Thus, although there is at first sight a bewildering abundance of such different individual narratives, the Pentateuchal traditions have been arranged under a clear pattern which holds this unusual work together and makes it clear that the individual books - and among them Exodus - are just members of a greater whole.