BibleProject - Power Over the Dragon in Exodus – Chaos Dragon E5

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

God created humans to bear his image, but sometimes we choose our own destruction and start to look a lot more like chaos monsters instead. In this episode, Tim and Jon discuss a human who the prophets frequently called a sea dragon: the Pharaoh who ruled Egypt and enslaved Israel in the scroll of Exodus. If Pharaoh is the seed of the serpent, who is the seed of the woman in Exodus? Listen in to find out!View more resources on our website →Timestamps Part one (00:00-15:26)Part two (15:26-23:53)Part three (23:53-40:05)Part four (40:05-51:22)Referenced ResourcesEchoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption Through Scripture, Alastair J. Roberts and Andrew WilsonEchoes of Exodus: Tracing a Biblical Motif, Bryan D. EstelleInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSAdditional sound design by Tyler Bailey, Dan Gummel, and Matthew Halbert-HowenShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Tyler at Bible Project. I record and mix the podcast. We've been exploring a theme called the Chaos Dragon, and because it's such a big theme, we've decided to do two separate question and response episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the first Q&R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by September 13th and send it into us at infoatbibelproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, and try to keep your question to about 20 seconds. And please transcribe your question when you email it in.

That's a huge help to our team. We're so looking forward to hearing from you. Here's the episode. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, We're in a series about seedragons in the Bible, a symbol of chaos and destruction. In our last episode, we talked about how humans

can become chaos creatures, like the snake of Genesis 3, agents of chaos and disorder in the world. And today, we're going to look at a human who straight up is called a Sea Dragon by the prophets, that is, the Pharaoh of Egypt, who enslaved Israel and the scroll of Exodus. The stories about him are designed to compare him to the snake of Genesis 3. The idea that their lives are made bitter with harsh enslavement

thematically connects to working the ground in grief and in pain. And also their enslavement, their avad, is happening in the field, which is where the snake came from. It's like the snake dragged him out of the garden into his domain where they're doing the work and the enslavement to the ground. So a Pharaoh is the seed of the snake, who was the promised seed of the woman who will come to confront the snake. God is depicted as raising up Moses as a new deliverer for the people. The word salvation and deliverance is introduced in this story of the Exodus, the Israelites from Egypt and Moses' history of the key figure. And if there is an analogy between Pharaoh and the snake that makes Moses something like

a new Adam. The first thing God teaches Moses to do is to turn his staff into a snake. There's something about Moses that the narrator wants us to see him as an image of somebody who, with God's power, can somehow counter the forces of death and chaos. Today, Tim McE and I talk about the theme of the chaos dragon and the scroll of Exodus. I'm John Collins and you're listening to Bible Project Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey Tim. Hey John. Hello. Hello. Hey we're talking about dragons. We are talking about chaos and dragons into sea serpents in the Bible. And sea serpents. Yes. Yeah. And you're going to give a little summary of where we've been. Try to package it up.

Yep. Yeah. I had some new clarity when I was on a run this weekend. I was like processing the conversations we have had. And I think some things became clearer to me. So recall how we started our reflections, which is on the dark chaos waters in the second sentence of the Bible. Yeah. In the beginning, God created the skies in the land.

Cool. Great. When? How? Where? Why? And then the story begins. And the land, now the land you should know, the beginning state, pre-creation state was wild and waste, and darkness was over the surface of the abysmal, deep chaos waters. Darkness was over the abyss, and the abyss is the dark chaos waters. So you start with two images that of an empty uninhabited unordered realm, and that of a dark, chaotic ocean.

So that's the beginning of the seven-day narrative. When you turn to the beginning of the second story in the Bible, which begins in Genesis 2 verse 4, it's the Garden of Eden's story. And there you also begin with a lifeless unordered chaos realm, which is the desert. So not the waters, but the desert. But the desert. So one is too much water. One is not enough water. not the waters, but the desert. But the desert. So one is too much water. One is not enough water. So these are complementary images of non-creation.

What we think of as like contradictory. Oh, sure. Yeah, on the literal level. On the literal level. And ocean versus a wilderness. That's right. But on the symbolic level, they are identical. And I'll just link back to our Cosmology series.

We did some years back in the podcast, and these were the two most common ancient Near Eastern ways of describing the pre-creation state, the chaos. So what's important is that this is not, chaos is not God's rival in the Bible. The chaotic powers are the rival of the most important gods in the ancient Near East, in Egypt, whatever God happens to be in charge, the sun god or the sky god, has to battle the darkness and the night like every day.

It's like, whoa, I hope the sun rise happens again. In Babylon and Canaanite mythology and so on. However, the unique conviction of biblical authors is that God is, like God's being, is primary reality, which is life and order and goodness. And so the chaos is not God's rival, but it is the rival of creation. Meaning, creation is something that doesn't have to exist. Right. And this is the logical conclusion, because everything around us is constantly disintegrating and going back into disorder and nothingness. It's conditional.

It's conditional. Yeah, its existence is conditioned upon something more powerful than it. And that it in the claim of the biblical authors is God, who just is. So the chaos is the rival of creation. And so this is why at the end of the Bible, you have to do away with the ocean, and you have to do away with darkness, and why the garden city is a garden and not a wilderness. So chaos is the opposite of creation. Then what you get introduced in these opening stories, in the seven-day narrative, and in the Eden narrative, are inhabitants of the chaos realm, but that are creatures. So you have the stars in the dark in the nighttime, and then in the waters, the two things that represent chaos, darkness and waters. There are creatures there that God puts the stars,

and then the sea dragons on day five. And you're told that they're good. They're not bad. They're good. Then in the beginning of the Garden of Eden story, you're told about a snake that's of one of the beasts of the field that God made. It's a good. So whatever these creatures are, they begin in the biblical story as good. And that's important because for the biblical authors, if it exists, it's God's creation, which means that it's good. Now creation can of course set itself on the trajectory back into chaos and death and disorder, but that's not because the stars or the c-dragon or the snake are in their essence evil or bad. And so I think what we're seeing in the Garden of Eden story is a depiction of the fall of two types of creatures, or the failure of two types of creatures to become what they truly are. You have both the failure of this land creature that crawls right at the snake, and it uses

its god-given craftiness, or shrewdness towards its own deceptive ends. And there's some backstory as well. Why is that creature doing that? And that's... That's filled out later. There are hints given in the Eden narrative, but it's filled out later in the biblical story. Primarily, the focus is on the human folly and failure. So what happens then is that both humans and the snake become agents

of chaos and disorder. In other words, they can make choices that are opposed to the will of God, which is to bring about gardens and life and community. And so, the snake and the humans become agents whose choices drag creation back into chaos and disorder. So when we're talking about the Sea Dragon, the biblical authors have a unique view of the Sea Dragon that stands out in their ancient nirestring context. Because in all the other dragon slang mythologies of Israel's neighbors, the Sea Dragon is the rival of the storm god and is essentially evil and chaos. And that's not how the biblical authors depict the Sea Dragon or the stars or the snake which all become merged. So somehow that just became an important distinction in my mind. The rivalry distinction.

Who is what's rival? And then also that the nature of the C-dragon is that of a creature who like humans has embraced its own ruin and has become an agent of chaos through its choices. But it's not of its nature evil anymore than humans have an evil nature. So we're coming into this theme focused on the idea of a dragon, but then quickly that gets us connected to all sorts of other creatures that are also depicted as chaos creatures. Yes, yeah.

Snakes and scorpions and even lions. And even lions, yeah. But then it also gets us into a much broader category of just what does it mean to be a creature in rebellion against God. And then we've got not just the dragons, but we've got the Elohim, the stars, who are also, can be in rebellion. But then those two ideas get merged in a way. When we're introduced to the snake, it's this creature, I mean, we don't learn this in that story,

but we've talked about this. There are hints and little mysteries in that story. Yeah, but it's a creature who we learn is an Elohim who decides I don't I don't like my place. Yeah, Ezekiel certainly saw it that way. Ezekiel saw it that way. Lots of other second-tempo literature is even more explicit. Yeah. And so there's two ideas get merged between these kind of what we would call fantasy creatures and let's not get into that, but your dragons and what is see serpents and stuff. And then these angelic beings. But then it also merges into the idea and we talked about this with Cain, is that you can become humans.

Humans can be embodied. Agents become the dragon. Exactly. So the dragon or the snake becomes an agent of chaos in the lives of humans. We're talking about agents of chaos is like the broadest way to talk about this name. Yeah, that's right. But the way you become an agent of chaos is by turning away from God's goodness and wisdom and word. And to be an agent of chaos is making yourself a rival to God, but not in a sense that like you could actually really put up an actual fight

against God. But in the biblical imagination, in that you are fighting against creation, yeah, that's right. God is pro-creation, like he wants creation to win. And so in that way, you're arrival against God. Yeah, that's right. By being against what God wants to have exist in the world. And then deep embedded into that is this mystery of, why does God allow for anything to fight against creation? That's right. And I guess we're not really getting into that, the problem of evil, I suppose.

No, no, I think more we're just trying to understand the nature of these characters associated with what we call evil. But I think it's really important to recognize that these creatures, stars and sea dragons and the snake, the way they are first introduced is as good, part of God's good creation. However. However.

They are placed in the realm, which was separated from what was good. That's true. Yeah, the darkness and the sea waters. Yeah, the sea. That's right. Those weren't called good. Those were separated and it was the light that was called good.

It was a land that was called good. Yeah, you got it. So the creatures are put in a realm that's like, hmm, not explicitly called bad, but is separated so that something could be good. Yeah. Wait, why? What is that about?

No, I think it's a hint towards the role, showing an awareness of the role these creatures are going to play as the story unfolds. But it's important also that it's a balanced view. They are in the realms of chaos and disorder. And we know that they're going to represent chaos and disorder as the story unfolds. But the biblical author wants to make a very important philosophical theological statement

about the nature of God and the nature of creation. If it exists, it is in its essence good. And if it has become an agent of chaos, that's because of the choices that it's made to decline away from its essential God-given nature, which is to be good. If it exists, it's good. That's one of the clear conclusions of Genesis chapter 1. That doesn't mean we'll stay good, but it is designed for good. Which is why in Isaiah the prophet's vision of the new creation, like in Isaiah chapter 11, even the snakes are rede redeemed because babies play with them. Oh, yeah, they're harmless now

They're harmless and the lions are there. Yeah, you know and wolves right and he says there's no more darkness Exactly so Maybe that will the significance of that Will become more important for somebody other than myself as we keep talking but somehow I felt Important for me to say that to myself at this point in the conversation. And those creatures, specifically the angels, they can be good and they are often good.

Yes. And they align with God. Correct. And we don't get stories of like sea serpents that align to God. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I think there, it's just, it's an image,

well, you get three places. There's also two Psalms where the C-dragon is called upon to praise God, whereas described as God's rubberdaqui. See, that's right. To play in the ocean. So that's one way of minimizing or dethroning. Or showing the C-sirpent and it's good condition. That's right.

And that is one of the dragon-taming strategies of the Biblical authors, is to say, and it's essence, it's a part of God's good creation. But in another dragon-taming strategy that the Biblical authors often use is just to talk about God smashing its head. And that's leaning into the cultural mythology that was widespread. And as we're going to see in the story we're going to focus on today, it's a human set on analogy to the dragon and also to cane. So what we also focus on, this story of cane is important after the introduction of the snake is that humans can become agents of the dragon who has become an agent of chaos. Yeah, making humans agents of chaos. Yes. So, we're going to turn our attention now to the story of Pharaoh in the Exodus story and find out how the biblical narrator is giving us many, many cues that Pharaoh has become a new cane. That is a new agent of the snake and therefore a nation. Okay, us.

Okay, we have looked at Exodus chapter one not many times in different podcast series that we've done. So I just want to set the scene and draw attention to a couple details in this well-known story. So the Exodus scroll begins with a summary of the 70 descendants of Jacob who went down to Egypt at the end of Genesis. So there was a famine, food shortage. Joseph was down there giving out food, and they went down there to dwell. So that's how the story begins. Then we're told that all the generation that was alive at the end of Genesis dies in the first sentences of Exodus. But despite that tragic death, we're told in Exodus 1 for 7, the sons of Israel were fruitful and they swarmed and they multiplied and became very, very strong and the land was filled with them.

That's the language of Genesis 1. Yeah, the blessing. So what happens is that a new king arises over Egypt, and this is in the future, because this king didn't even know who Joseph was. And so this king looks at this surviving, multiplying immigrant population in his land that's gaining a lot of cultural influence. Whatever becomes strong represents some degree of favor, abundance, power, and a freaks amount. So he says, look, the people of Israel have become more multiplied and stronger than us come.

Let us act skillfully with them, or else, they will multiply and when war happens happens they'll add themselves to our enemies and make war with us and go up out of our land. Kind of a worst-case scenario. What's the verb catastrophizing? We talked about that. I suppose if you're just trying, this is not popular to try and think empathetically with ancient tyrants, but if you try, you can imagine the train of thought where it could lead somebody to this conclusion. But it's certainly not the only way he could view the situation.

Yeah, he could view him as allies. So what's interesting here in our first born podcast series, we explored this very story and how it set on analogy to the story of Kane and Abel, Kane looking upon the divine favor and blessing upon another and that that poses, you know, faces them with a choice. But that also, the Kane and Abel story made us look back at the story of the snake and Adam and Eve and Asked what was gone with the snake that the snake felt like he needed to trick the humans and de-throw them. Yeah And this is how the Hebrew Bible is meditation literature works So that little verb let us act skillfully with them. Yeah, what was that?

It's the verb hakam Which is the root of the Hebrew noun hokma, which is in prophets. Be wise. It's wisdom. Yeah. So it's not the word aul rum that's used in Genesis 3 of the snake. That we translate crafty. Crafty or shrewd. Yeah. So it's not a verbatim hyperlink, but it's a thematic connection. Yeah, it's a wisdom word. It's a wisdom word. Yep. Yep. And as we're going to see, this is a classic, he revival style. As you go on from the story, the narrator's going to give you more and more clues

that this is a snakey move. Correct. And a snakey word in this guy's because wisdom is a good thing. Right. Just like craftiness or shrewdness for the snake is a not a negative word. Right. Apparently you can be good or bad with your shrewdness. You can be good or bad with your shirtiness. You can be good or bad with your wisdom.

So he makes a bad choice. He chooses to enslave and oppress them. He makes them start mass producing brick and mortar and enslave them in the field and with brutality to build storage cities for Pharaoh. The field where came Slade Abel, where the snakes lived. Exactly. Okay, so this is just a little quick study in how Hebrew vocabulary and hyperlinking works. In the Garden of Eden, you are introduced, the snake was more crafty than any animal of the field.

The snake pulls this move and what we're told is that because the humans listen to the snake, that the ground is cursed on account of you, human, Genesis 3.17. In grief, you will eat from it all the days of your life. Thorns and tissels, the ground will sprout for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. In Yahweh, Elohim sent the human out to work the ground from what he was taken. So all this, you're going to go outside the garden back to that desolate wilderness work that's called the field and your life will turn to death and be full of grief.

Yeah. And then you die. You just enslave, or enslave to the ground. Yeah. And then you die. Is your enslaved or enslaved to the ground? Yeah. And then the image that you probably get as an ancient person is imagining then being a laborer in someone's field. Yes, that's right. Just what a brutal life.

Yeah. Day after day, just telling and working hard. Yeah, no rest. Yeah. Your body's just being broken down until you die. Yep. So these exact words are being activated in Exodus 1 when Pharaoh enslaved the sons of Israel.

It is the same word as the word in the Eden story to work the ground. Okay. A vaad. The idea that their lives are made bitter with harsh enslavement, thematically connects to working the ground in grief and in pain. And also their enslavement, their a vaad, is happening in the field, which is where the snake came from. It's like the snake dragged him out of the garden into his domain, where they're doing the work and the enslavement to the ground.

So all of that network of words is being activated in Exodus 1. And also the building of cities with brick and mortar has only happened one other time in the biblical story. And that's the building of the city of Babylon. So this story takes the first kind of failure and folly story of Genesis 1 through 11, the Garden story, and then takes the last failure and folly story of Genesis 11, which are bookends around that first movement of Genesis, and it weaves the language together in this story. Yeah, and it's the city that is built out in the wilderness. Yeah, that's right. And yeah, that the humans make.

So this come, let us be wise, let them build cities with brick and mortar. This is the language of the city of Nimrod, the king of Babylon. So Pharaoh is being set on analogy to the snake, also to Cain, who brings about death in the field, and also to Nimrod. Who are both agents of the snake? Yeah, that's right. And, well, I guess Nimrod's not explicitly said that. I was thinking Nebuchadnezzar.

Oh, I see. Yeah. But Nimrod's kind of like a proto-Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah, it is. Oh, detotally. Yeah. So, that's the setup here. Okay. So, with a few quick brush strokes, the narrator of Exodus wants us to see that Pharaoh is

a bigger, batter, snake-cane Nimrod. Okay. And he's unleashing death on a scale that we haven't known in the biblical story so far At least by at the hands of humans. Okay. We haven't seen any enslavement in the story of the Bible so far So far so you're saying well, I mean there are slaves mentioned in the book of Exodus, but in terms of Genesis even yeah of like You know, hey guys, and slaving People group making them prisoners for forced labor onto death. Yeah, this is a new picture. That's a new low in the human story. Okay, so from there, fast forward, God raises up a deliver through the waters, who floats long in an ark, a little boy.

That boy grows up in the house of Pharaoh, but eventually murders in Egyptian and he has to flee into exile, just like Cain. And God spares his life. And God appears to Moses, four years later, in the famous Burning Bush story. And he says, go back to your people into Pharaoh until Pharaoh to let my people go. So Moses has five objections to this, and he and God have a long argument about whether or not he's going to do it. And the third central objection, it's the center of the five, begins this way. Moses says, Exodus chapter four, what if the people don't consider me trustworthy or

listen to my voice and say, Yahweh hasn't appeared to you. And then Yahweh said to him, well, what's that in your hand, Moses? And he said, it's just staff. I'm a shepherd. It's a tool of trade. And God said, yeah, once you throw that on the ground.

And so he threw it to the ground. And it became a nachash. The snake. A snake, yeah. became a nachas. A snake. A snake, yeah. And Moses ran away from the snake. Yeah. Which is what your body automatically does when it sees a snake. Yes.

Freeze or just eat out. That's right. We've talked about this earlier in the series of different snake encounters that we've had. Although you didn't run, you learned how to tame that fear. Back. So, yeah, we said to Moses, send out your hand, grab it by its tail. Yeah, no, don't do that. It's head, it's still loose. It'll just whip around and grab you. But he sent out his hand and he grabbed it. And it turned back into a staff in his palm.

Wow. Did this guy has power over the snake? Hmm. Wow. And a lot of faith. Ha ha ha. Yeah, which is funny because he said, what if the people don't trust me?

Hmm. And actually, and here he does trust God. Yes. It's interesting. I'm just imagining like reaching out and grabbing a snake by the tail. Yeah, especially if you know it's dangerous. It's just really bad idea.

It's a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah, God asked Moses to put his life in danger. Yeah, and then it turns back into a stuff. And so now he realizes like, oh, the snake, this thing I was, my whole body was telling me to fear. Yeah. I have power over.

That's right. Yeah. Because of obviously like God did something. Yeah. Because of God's power. Now, in this story, what's interesting is that God is depicted as raising up Moses as a new deliverer for the people. The word salvation and deliverance is introduced in the biblical story.

In this story, the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and Moses is the key figure. And if there is an analogy between Pharaoh and the snake, then what does that make Moses? That makes Moses something like a new Adam, at least potentially. Is he just grabbed that thing? Moses, something like a new Adam, at least potentially. Yeah. I see the woman. Yeah, you see the woman. Who can curse the snake. Yep. So there's something about Moses, the narrator wants us to see him as an image of somebody

who, with God's power, can have power over the snake, can somehow counter the forces of death and chaos in the story. So here's what's super interesting is that when Moses finally goes to Pharaoh in chapter 7, he's with his brother now, and this is the scene where they meet Pharaoh for the first time. And so Exodus 7 verse 8, Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, do a sign, do a wonder for us. Then say to Aaron, take that staff and throw it down before Pharaoh

and you the reader like, oh yeah. I know what's coming. I know what's coming. The nachash. Yeah, the snake's gonna come out. Yeah, the nachash. Freak Pharaoh with a snake. Totally.

And what the story goes on to say is take your staff and throw it before Pharaoh so that it can become a tannin. The tannin. Tannin. The Sea Dragon. Which is the name of the sea monsters from day five of Genesis 1. So we've taken the vocabulary of both the water monster and the desert creature. The staff can become both. And we've merged those two. So we're back to this question of what are we supposed to have in our mind?

I know. The visual picture. I know. I picture. I'm throwing the staff and then morphing into this massive creature that like, you know, is flopping around in all wet. And you're like, oh, I'm a here. It's where I was paladin's arm.

And you're like, well, get that monster out of here. So maybe this way, remember our first episode, we saw that the word nah-chash for snake and the word taniin for sea monster, there's this overlap between them. They're both reptilian. And the nah-chash is mostly associated with the desert, the tanin, mostly with waters.

But there are some occasions where you can talk about a nakhash in the sea that will eat you. Yeah. And this would be a case where you can talk about a tanin on dry land. I see. Okay. So it's still likely a snake in the narrative,

but being called a tanine is connecting it like this is the monster. This is the chaos. Chaos monster. Creature comes to life. Yes. So in other words, it's less that you're supposed to picture a seed dragon like poofing into being from the staff.

And it's more that it's a snake, but with all of the cosmic significance of a tannine. So it's called a tannine. In other words, it's the ideas that swap between the nakhash and the tannine. Yeah. And then the story gives another twist. Then so Aaron does this in front of Pharaoh in his servants, and it became a tannine. Then Pharaoh called his wise ones and his sorcerers and

remember the word nakhash. Oh yeah. That's what the word someone who summons the powers of the dead and channels them to magic arts. When it's turned into like a title. Yes. So here the Pharaoh called his wise ones and sorcerers. Which is like the nakhash people. The knock-osh, they have the snake called the snakelings. The snakelings. And they did the same thing. The magicians of Egypt by their secret art. Each one threw his staff and it became Tonin. But the staff of Aaron swallowed up their staff. Swallowed. Why? Well, let's a key word in the dragon slang stories of Israel's neighbors. The dragon swallowing up his enemies is a common motif. Yeah. Nebuchadnezzar swallows up Israel like a tunnel. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Jonah's get swallowed up by the sea beast. Yeah. So here, what's interesting is also, you have Moses versus Pharaoh, but each

one of them has a representative. Moses has Aaron, that he's given orders to, and Pharaoh has his sorcerers, his snakelings. His snakelings, and each one can produce a chaos monster. But Moses and Aaron's is a chaos monster in the service of God's good plan. So somehow it can swallow up the bad chaos monster. It's such an interesting reflection because it's like a good tonnein versus a bad tonnein. And you're like, are there any good tonnein? Like how do we? Somehow we skip this story in Sunday school.

Like I don't remember talking about the sea monsters eating each other in Pharaoh's palace. It's such a wild image. It totally is. Yeah. So how do we know that we're supposed to be viewing Pharaoh as a snake? It's cool. There's some interesting words in Exodus 1. You have this story. There's something going on here. The first encounter with Pharaoh. You think is an encounter with a nachash. And then when they end up in his court, it's an encounter with Taniin. In other words, it was just a conversation earlier, and Moses was by himself. But now that we're in the face of the sea monster, in human form, a Pharaoh, then it's as if the staff, like knows how to scale up, to become a beast matching Pharaoh's own

beastliness. I'm just kind of meditating here on why the shift from snake, nakhash in the burning bush story in Exodus 4 now to why in the scene is it a tannin. But it seems like you're making a leap here that Pharaoh is supposed to be thought of as a tannin. Yeah. leap here that Pharaoh is supposed to be thought of as a tonne. We've talked about him being sneaky, but are you going too far in thinking the Pharaoh is like the sea monster himself?

Okay, so that's a good question. The story should at least raise that as an idea in our mind, because for some reason, the narrator is chosen to switch words to talk about what the staff becomes. So it can't be insignificant. So this is often the case when you come across little puzzles in biblical poetry or narrative and you just got to hold it. It's there on purpose. Meaning if I just hold open that little puzzle or question that I have and keep looking for clues as I read on there may be some little light bulb moment that's been planted that will give me kind of back reflection.

And isn't it interesting that as you read on through the story of the ten acts of de-creation that God brings about the ten plagues, it ends with the night of Passover and the death of the firstborn Which does compel Pharaoh to let the people go But then once he lets them go out into the wilderness he follows them out there Kind of like the snake follows them out there and There's the big showdown in Exodus 14 of Pharaoh

Charging down towards Israelites who are just helpless, camped by the shore. Yeah. Really interesting scene. Yeah, the Israelites are stuck now at the edge of the sea, and the Pharaoh's army's coming. Yep. So, Yahweh says to Moses and the Israelites,

stand here and just do nothing until I tell you to walk into the waters. So, he directs Moses to take that staff, the same exact staff, and to smack the waters with it. Strike, hold it out over the waters, strike them. Smack the waters with the sea monster. Yeah, so yeah. So once again, we're like, something's going on here. The one with power over the snake and the sea monster

that is Moses is called to use the power of that staff to divide the waters. Let them open. Same to see. Yeah. And then the water split so that dry land emerges and the people walk through it. Which is a clear genesis one image of splitting the waters.

Spitting the waters dry land appearing. Yep. But he's using the power, it's like God saying, there is the power of chaos that lives in the chaotic waters that's now trapping you. Yeah, yeah. Death is coming. But like you have the ability through me to use

what should be, what can be an agent of chaos to become an agent of water. Yeah, so in, you's hands symbolized by Moses's hands holding the staff, even the agent of chaos and death can become a pathway to life. That's the image here. Because the chaos waters are the epitome of anti-creation, non-creation, but Yahweh can even bend those towards His purpose for the preservation of life. This kind of gets back to what you're saying, which is like the chaos creature, the C-dragon,

is not God's rival. Yeah, right, right. It can represent what a creature can become, a powerful creature can become when it is anti-creation. Yeah, yeah. But in and of itself, it's not bad. It's actually part of God's good creation. And so here is a meditation on using it for good. God using it for good. Using the staff that is the seamunster against the chaos waters themselves. Yeah. Which are not good. Chaos waters are not good,

because they represent not existing anymore. Yeah. Just get walk into them. But the semonster, God, can use against the chaos waters? I guess, right? Because the staff is a semonster. Yeah, that's so interesting. It is so interesting.

God can use an agent of death to defeat the powers of death. Would you say it that way or would you say, God, because the sea monster doesn't have to be an agent of death. That's right, yeah, that's right. Like true, it didn't have to. It can be the reberducki. Yeah. It could be the like tame thing playing in God's good creation.

It could actually praise Yahweh. Like you said, the Psalmist says. And so while we have this category of the Sea Dragon is chaos, there is a biblical category of the Sea Dragon being good or being used for good. Yeah, potentially good. And in the same way that we think about as angels, this goes back to how we started. Yes, that's right. Yeah. The Elohim, the host of heaven, the stars in the sky, you know, are often thought of as bad. I mean, these are the like the gods of the nations, right? But all and the other like... Yeah, Marduk and... Yeah, Degon and all this. But they could also be like gods divine council.

Totally. That God uses... Yeah, they could sing for joy when God does His creative work. Yeah, so this goes back to your beginning reflections. Yeah. Which is, these are not rivals of God. They can be actually allies of God. But when God creates, when he sets into motion life outside of himself, in some sense, in the way that he gives autonomy

to creatures, he allows for creatures to become not rivals of him, but rivals of creation itself. Rivals of their own existence. Rivals of their own existence. Yeah, I guess if a creature's existence is conditional and dependent, it can destroy itself. And I guess if it's an intelligent creature with a will in a mind that's somehow an image in a mirror of God's own mind that it can

Of its own choices choose to destroy itself and others like itself Yeah, and that's very much the way the biblical story is trying to paint And so here's Barrow looking at a whole group of people going their threat Yes, I need to kill him and slave him and That is letting anti-creation embody him and become like the sneaky person. And here's a meditation saying, that seems powerful, but it's not more powerful than God.

In fact, grab the staff. Yeah. Throw it down the staff. It becomes the serpent. Grab the staff. You can control it. It can be used in service of God. Like the thing that we're afraid of, the thing that could like turn us into monsters,

like doesn't have to. You can tame the beast. Yeah. That's good. So Moses holding the staff, he's an image of God, literally in metaphor, holding the snakes. Could you imagine Adam just grabbing the snake, just holding them, just be like, yeah, get out of here. And then using the power of the Sea Dragon to overcome the destructive power. That's the crazy twist, using the power that you would imagine like Adam grabbing the snake, get That's the crazy twist. Yeah. Using the power, you would imagine like Adam grabbing the snake, get out of here, snake. Well, and I guess it's not the power of the Sea Dragon. It's God, the one you split in the sea.

I see. But he's using the instrument of the Sea Dragon. What does that mean? What's, yeah. Do I need a whole long walk with Kabatih for that one? Certainly. Certainly. Let's see where these images go. Okay. What's yeah, it's like do I need a whole long walk with Kabatyev or that one? Certainly Certainly. Let's see where these images go.

Okay. Okay, so and maybe that'll provide clarification. So in the next chapter after the deliverance of the Israelites and the waters crash in on Pharaoh and his armies, the Israelites sing a song about it. Yeah. Actually, Moses and the Israelites sing and then Miriam and a bunch of female prophets and singers sing. And when it gets to the part where they're retelling the story of what happened at the waters, the story's retulled this way. This is Nexus 15, verse 4.

The chariots of Pharaoh and his army, he, that his Yahweh, cast into the sea. His choice officers, they sank in the sea of reeds. The deep abyss. Hmm, the deep abyss. It's the same word as Genesis 1, verse 2. The deep abyss covered them. They went down into the depths, sinking like a stone. So you think of word going too far with all the connections of these images of like the sea being the chaos waters. It's right here. It's right here. Yeah. Verse 6, Your right hand Yahweh is majestic in power.

Your right hand Yahweh shatters the enemy. In your great excellence, you tear down those who rise up against you. You send out your hot anger and it devours them like chaff. So y'all is hand. In the narrative, God said to Moses, stretch out your hand. We've meditated on this over the years now. That's somehow the hand of Moses is an image of God's hand. Yeah, the image of God.

Yep. Yeah. So here's what's so fascinating. When this story was retold, and remember this story was retold every year. That passed over. Yeah. So this memory is one of the most important memories in the history of the people of Israel.

Being rescued out of enslavement to the snake through the chaos waters into freedom. Yep. That's right. And somehow the C-Dragon became, at that last critical moment, the instrument of opening up the way to salvation and rescue. Such a mystery. What does it mean?

So do check this out. So this story was retold and it's referenced many, many, many times throughout the Hebrew Bible. I'll just reference if you want to take a deeper dive. Dark chaos waters. Yeah, into this, I'll recommend two books that have the same exact title and they were released in the same year, which is apparently why they didn't get into copyright battles. Two books called Echoes of Exodus. One is by Alistair Roberts and Andrew Wilson, and the other is by Brian Estell,

both books called Echoes of Exodus. And what they do is they show how through the rest of the Old New Testaments, the Exodus story is retold. I just want to highlight one of those retelling in Isaiah 51. This is the prophet speaking mostly to Israelites sitting in exile in Babylon hoping to emerge out of it. And then here the prophet talks to God hoping for deliverance from exile. And here's how the poem goes. Wake up. Wake up. Oh, arm of Yahweh. Clothe yourself with strength. Oh, arm of Yahweh, Clothe yourself with strength. Clothe the arm, okay. So, apparently Yahweh's arm is asleep.

And the word means like, get yourself up from laying down and sleeping. Yeah. Wake up. Interesting. And this is an image in the Psalms, often in lament Psalms. Like, why, why, how long, O Lord? Yeah. How long will you be silent?

How long? In Psalms 78, God's described as being asleep, while we suffer, wake up. But notice it's not just Yahweh, it's the arm of Yahweh. Right. Yeah. What is this called, the metanami, oh, parforhole, yeah, I forget which one, what place. Those are the two options.

Sinecticated metanamiami put on strength like a garment. Wake up as in the days gone by in the generations of old. Oh, like in some past event. What past event can I think of where Yahweh acted with strength with his arm? it with strength with his arm. Wasn't it you who cut Rahav into pieces and who pierced through the Tannin? Rahav is a name for the Sea Dragon in the Hebrew Bible. It's the word to rage. The raging one. The rager. The rager. Wasn't it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the deep abyss? Wasn't it you who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed ones might cross over? Okay, so he's clearly talking about the story of going the Exodus through the waters. Yep. The Lord has rescued, will return. Now it's going future. They will enter Zion,

that is Jerusalem was singing. They're gonna do Exodus. So the return from exile will be like the Exodus. And as we retell the story, we don't even mention Pharaoh. We just mention the raging Sea Dragon. So yeah, it was Pharaoh who was shattered in the Dark Abyss. And here, the prophet Isaiah looks at that and he doesn't see Pharaoh.

He sees the Sea Dragon. Yeah. He sees the larger cosmic force that is behind and acting through Pharaoh, which is the dragon. But now, remember, even the dragon is with a twist. What's the twist? The twist is when the dragon was introduced, the Tannin, which is called by the same name here. It was good in Genesis 1.

So the dragon has gone through its own failure and folly. And that story is still emerging as you read through the prophets. But both the dragon and humans enslaved to the dragon become sad vehicles of anti-creation. And that's how Pharaoh is depicted here. So if we had any doubts that Pharaoh is being depicted as an agent of the snake and the snake of the agent of chaos in the exodus story proper, Isaiah kind of just helps us clarify that that is in fact what was going on in the story. But there's many mysteries. We haven't solved yet and I think we'll just have to pin

that mystery of how the snake as an agent of chaos can be used to accomplish God's life-saving purposes. That's a mystery at work in the symbol of Moses rescuing the people with the snake staff. Yeah, all right, let's sit on that. Yeah. So there you go. Okay. Where we're going to go next is we're going to watch this same idea play itself out in a different way in the book of judges. Because the snake dragon appears in the book of judges, but in more of a cane or ferro-like form, in form of the human agents. And we'll see how that works. Helps us look at the whole story from another angle.

But for now, it's good to meditate on what it means for humans to become agents of the dragon. All right, hi everybody, this is Dan Cammell and I'm back with another employee introduction. And I'm pretty sure that you're the newest employee. You're the one that's like week two for you? I think week three. Week three? I'm a newbie for sure.

Yeah. Well, why don't you go ahead and hear your stuff. Yeah, so my name's John Rooney. I'm new to the studio team at Bible Project and I work in animation. And in particular, I work on scrollable content for social media. Yeah, tell us what we'll do without exactly what that means. So I kind of work on short form content

that's usually a minute or less. Sometimes it's podcasts related. I'm just going to stop you here, man, because I am such a fan of your work. So many people are such good fans of your work. Basically, what we're doing is we're doing a series called Overheard. Yeah. Right.

And so, Overheard is what? It's basically taking fun samples from the podcast and then in a format kind of animating what John and Tim are talking about above their heads. Yeah, and so it's these are going out on YouTube shorts and also on TikTok and I think Instagram maybe. Yeah. And there are 60 second clips. I was talking to Alan a few months ago and he was like, Yo man, he said, there's the sky's working on it with Jonathan and he's like,

at every stage it keeps getting better. And he showed it to me. It was such a fun, like, re-imagination and kind of development, I think, both animation-wise and our content, a really cool way to introduce people to podcasts. Yeah. What do you think is the most interesting part about working on that process?

I think why I really enjoy is just kind of the imagination side of it, and just kind of really upping the humor on that. There are more cartoonies than a lot of other content. So yeah, they're really fun to animate and to kind of create little gags for... Tell me a little about your life outside of work. Yeah, so I live in Columbus, Ohio, but grew up in the Northwest in Spokane, Washington. And when I'm not working, I try to stay off screens and go hiking or fishing. Is there anything that you would want to say to folks listening?

Go check out over her, say hello to my wife out in Columbus, Ohio, as I'm gone for a week and she's holding down the fort. Cool, well here, I'd love it if you could read the credits. Today's show came from our podcast team, Inc. Producer Cooper Peltz, an associate producer, Lindsey Ponder. Our lead editor is Dan Gummel. Additional editors are Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Tyler Bailey also Frank Garza. Tyler Bailey also

makes this episode. And Hannah Wu did our annotations for the Bible Project app. Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit. Everything we make is free because of your generous support. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Thanks.