followHIM - Exodus 14-17 -- Part 1 : Dr. Matthew Bowen

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Does the Lord ever give instructions that seem counterintuitive? Dr. Matthew Bowen demonstrates that many throughout scripture have used the story of the Exodus in times of trial. He also teaches how the Lord keeps his promises and how Jehovah sometimes gives counterintuitive commands but never leaves his people alone.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/episodesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producers/SponsorsDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: MarketingLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Rough Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Transcripts/Language Team/French TranscriptsAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow Him. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith and I am your host and I am here with my, now wait for this, I'm here with my dry co-host. The reason he is dry today is not because he is dry as a speaker, it's because he is like unto Moses crossing the Red Sea and dry ground. Like you are a pathway. You are dry ground.

Thank you so much. This is my dry ground co-host, John, by the way. Hi, John. Hi. Never had that adjective before, so thank you. I was searching the book of Exodus thinking, I got to find something good here. But dry ground is a good thing in these chapters.

My students have made the same comment, but I don't think they meant what you did. Well, next time they do, you say, thank you very much. It's actually a very good thing to be dry in the book of Exodus. In this story. Hey, we needed an Exodus expert, John, and we found one. Who is joining us today? We're delighted to have Dr. Matthew L. Bowen with us today. He's an associate professor of religious education at Brigham

Young University-Hawaii. Isn't it fun to say that? He held a PhD, I love this, in biblical studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he also earned an M.A. in biblical studies. He previously earned a B.A. in English with a minor in classical studies with a Greek emphasis from Brigham Young University in Provo, and subsequently pursued post-baccalaureate studies in Semitic languages, Egyptian and Latin there. In addition to having taught at BYU Hawaii, he's previously taught at Catholic University of America and at BYU Provo. He's the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles on scripture and temple-related topics, as well as the recent book, Name as Keyword, Collected Essays

on Onomastic Wordplay and the Temple in Mormon Scripture. And with Aaron P. Shade, he's the co-author of the newly released volume, The Book of Moses, From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days. I've seen that one, Hank. Got to get that. Dr. Broen grew up in Orem, Utah, served a two-year mission to the California Roseville Mission. He and his wife, the former Suzanne Blatberg, are the parents of three children, Zachariah, Nathan, and Adele. And we are so glad to have you from across the Pacific Ocean today. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not covet is going through my mind today. It's cold here in Utah and you are in

Laie, which is just beautiful. How is our Latter-day Saint community out in Laie? There's not a day that goes by where I don't feel deep gratitude for the opportunity to be here and to do what I do. I love it. Yeah. Teaching religion in paradise, right? Sometimes your circumstances are so fortunate, you can only give thanks because you know who made it possible you know what it feels like to walk through the red sea on dry ground going i didn't do this i was just going to say it came after we'd been doing graduate work in washington dc i hadn't

finished my phd yet when i came over here but we we just experienced the loss of a son in 2011. And we needed a place where we could heal and get back on our feet. And the opportunity to come here came as a literal godsend in that everyday sense. Wow. Well, Matt, John, we are in Exodus 14 through 17 this week. And the manual sounds a little bit like a movie trailer. Someone pretty dramatic wrote this one. The Israelites were trapped. The Red Sea was on one side and the army of Pharaoh was advancing on the other. Their escape from Egypt, it seemed, would be short-lived.

But God had a message for the Israelites. Then escape from Egypt, it seemed, would be short-lived. But God had a message for the Israelites. Then they quote Exodus 14, fear ye not, the Lord shall fight for you. So with that introduction, how do we approach the book of Exodus and get the most out of it? Let's maybe talk about the title of the book. First of all, the Hebrew title of the book is just Shemot. It's what they call an insipid. It's a title that's derived from the very first words in the book. So, the title in Hebrew is Shemot, which means just simply names. But in Greek, they attach the much more descriptive name exodus from ex hodos which means a way out it's the road out literally archer there will be some interesting connections that we can talk about there to some

other places in the scriptures but the idea of the exodus being the way is picked up by Isaiah in Isaiah 51 verses 9 through 11, where Isaiah uses poetic and really kind of mythic language to retell the event of the Exodus. And he talks about the Lord making a way for the ransomed and the redeemed to pass over. Then Jacob, the brother of Nephi, the son of Lehi, picks that up in 2 Nephi 9, and he uses the imagery of the Exodus to describe the atonement of Jesus Christ and how he prepares a way for our escape from the monster's death, hell, and the devil.

It's one of the most powerful emotive descriptions of the atonement of Jesus Christ. And he's building it from Isaiah and Isaiah's reworking of the Exodus story. Yeah, that's fantastic. I've seen that in the Book of Mormon where you can kind of put yourself as the children of Israel. they're going, the celestial kingdom's on the other side of this massive sea that I cannot get to, right? There's no way for me to get to heaven, and I need a way. Jacob seems to use that idea of the atonement of Christ is the dry road, the way across. And Nephi takes it even further when he describes the doctrine of Christ as the way, even using another line from Isaiah 30. He says, this is the way. It isn't a line from the Mandalorian. It's actually originally

an Isianic phrase. He says, this is the way. You'll hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it. And Nephi uses the way to describe the way we're familiar with this from Genesis, the way of the tree of life, the way back to the garden, which brings in the temple. And Jacob also uses that in 2 Nephi 9, when he's talking about the keeper of the gate is the holy one of Israel, and he employeth no servant there. And the way is straight and it lies in a narrow course. You can't pull any of this ultimately away from the Exodus because it was the defining event in terms of Israel's salvation history. It is when all the Old Testament prophets refer back to the foundation of Israel as a people, it's the Lord who led Israel out of Egypt.

I've noticed that Nephi does that a lot, Matt. Whenever he needs some spiritual energy, he's like, if he did that for them, then he'll do this for us. I had a bishop in Washington, D.C. who made a really interesting point that has never really left me. He pointed out that Nep you know, Nephi goes back to that story a lot when he needs to, like you say, draw energy and strength, but also to encourage his brothers. But the problem with his brothers, Laman and Lamulan brothers-in-law, sons of Ishmael, and this bishop pointed out that for them, it was just a story. For Nephi, it was reality, and it was evidence of what God could do for them, the power that he could make happen.

And you notice that Nephi uses the phrase, prepare the way, maybe more than any other writer in scripture. In fact, it's a stylistic, defining characteristic of his writing to use this phrase, to prepare a way. We're all familiar with it from 1 Nephi 3.7. I will go and do. Yeah. Because he'll prepare a way. And then he uses it a fair amount of regularity throughout the rest of his writings to the very end when he says, this is the way in 2 Nephi 31 at the end. I heard somebody say this. I can't remember what I was listening to, but that the Exodus is the one event that's probably mentioned more often than anything else in the Old Testament.

They're always looking back to this deliverance story. And I think Moses, a deliverer, foreshadowing Jesus, the deliverer, and how in the Book of Mormon, they look back to this story, and then they have their own getting out of the land of Nephi, and they're told to remember how God delivered us from there. We're talking about exodus, mass exoduses. In terms of modern analogs, there are a few things that compare to the type of organized exodus that we see in the chapters that we're looking at today than what Brigham Young organized and pulled off. Yeah, 1846, 1847.

So sometimes he's called an American Moses. Have you heard that, Hank? Yeah, it's a book. There's a book called American Moses, Leonard Arrington on Brigham Young. Yeah. I think, Matt, you just changed that primary song for me, because if you liken the way to the atonement of Christ, here's our primary children singing, I know the Lord provides a way. They're singing about the atonement yep they're this way through um it's a deliverance yeah yeah i and i'd never i just had never connected that to the savior's atonement before it just in the song you know i hear it from my

own kids and i uh i've always just thought of nephi but then take it from Nephi to Isaiah and Isaiah is saying, yeah, this is a symbol of the Lord providing a way for our return back to him. And it might be appropriate here to talk about the name Moses as both an Egyptian and Hebrew name. Because most scholars agree that it's originally an Egyptian name. The name Moses derives from the Egyptian verb mesi, which means to bear or to beget, to give birth to. The name Moses would then mean begotten, like a deity name implied. Such and such is begotten. The deity name or the deity is begotten. You know, you're familiar with Rameses, with Thutmoses, and Ahmose, and some others. There's no deity name mentioned with Moses' name. But in Moses 1, I mean, what's the emphasis there when we have that interview between the Lord and Moses,

where he keeps emphasizing, Moses, thou art my son. Moses, my son, thou art in the image of mine only begotten. One of the things I'll mention to students is I'll remind them, where did Moses grow up? He didn't have the typical upbringing of a Hebrew. Part of what's going on in Moses 1 is that Moses is, you might call it his educational reorientation. And that's evident after that first vision with the Lord, he falls to the earth and he says, now for this cause, I know that man is nothing, which thing I never before had supposed. You know, even during Moses's time, the pyramids of the old kingdom were already

very, very old. They were ancient already. Yeah. And they were a testament to what human ingenuity and architecture and know-how could bring to bear. But he's left after that first vision, realizing it's nothing in the name of his only begotten and he's delivered. He experiences a type of deliverance that he is going to then be in charge of orchestrating or being the instrument in pulling off for all of Israel. He sees the bitterness of hell and Satan's throwing the temper tantrum there. And he calls upon God in the name of his son and is able to be delivered from that. And then in Moses 1.25, he's given the promise that he'll be made stronger than many waters. And that leads us to the way the Hebrew or the way the Israelites interpreted his name. They understood the name in terms of the Hebrew verb mashah in Exodus 2.10. You remember Pharaoh's daughter, you know, names of Moses because I pulled him from the water, mashitihu. The name

Moses as a Hebrew name is pointed, as scholars have pointed out, as a pseudoactive participle, which would suggest the meaning one who draws or pulls out. Psalms 18, where you have, you know, he pulled me out of many waters, would seem to connect us to the idea, the way they're understanding the name Moses, the one who's going to pull Israel out of many waters. When she names him, there had to be angels going, oh, you don't know. She's like, one who pulls out of the water. And you're like, yeah, yeah, that's an understatement. So an ancient Israelite audience reading this, they sort of see the cue in the text when they read it. And they say, okay, he's drawn from the water, but we know what he's going to do. We know what his role is going to be. He's going to be the one who pulls or draws

Israel through the Red Sea. And the many waters, they're connected with Yom or the sea, a part of the ritual architecture of the temple with the Bronze Sea. The Bible doesn't specifically talk about baptismal immersions in the bronze sea, but the dimensions of it, as David Calabro has pointed out, would certainly accommodate it. And the temple lovers in the outer court were clearly used for washings. And so it suggests that the brazen sea in the temple was used in a similar fashion or and function then this can help us think of baptism in a new way the one who baptizes representing the lord as moses in his prophetic role represented the lord what does the baptizer do pulls you out of the water it brings in all of the the typology and the the symbolism that, which it's just fantastic.

Being pulled from the waters, that's something that happens at birth. You're pulled from amniotic fluid when at birth you're born. This is imagery that comes in Moses 6 in the book of Moses, you know, with the water, blood, and spirit. And it's Elder Bednar who talks so much about how the ordinances teach us about the covenants. And so when we think about what baptism is, it's teaching us about what the covenant is that we're making. That should send our minds to the waters of Mormon in Mosiah 18 and all of the divine rebirth and what kind of life we are entering into. It's laid out right there in those verses,

eight through 10. What kind of life are we going to live from this time forward in terms of mourning with those that mourn, comforting those that stand in need of comfort, standing as witnesses of God at all times and entering his fold, taking his name on us,

being called his people and serving him. Matt, I'm not only going to see the atonement in these chapters, I'm going to now see the covenant of baptism, rebirth coming through the water. In fact, when we get to the end of 14, you know, it's the start of the doctrine of Christ. This is verse 31. Israel saw the great hand which the Lord wielded upon the Egyptians and the people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and his servant Moses. That's the start of the doctrine of Christ, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, we're on the covenant path. By the way, if you can find all the places that the word hand is used in chapter 14, it's one of those key terms that helps you

see what the story is. You're familiar with the Egyptian iconography that shows Pharaoh's raised hand, always raised to strike, you know, his strong arm. Verse 8, for example, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, or Joseph Smith translation, and Pharaoh hardened his heart. And he pursued after the children of Israel and the children of Israel went out with a high hand. It's the Lord's hand. Because everybody in the ancient Near East saw these types of illustrations of Egyptian iconographies used everywhere. Moab and all through the Levant where the Egyptians had a huge influence. And so this idea that the Lord is the one with the strong arm and the high hand is meant to help Israelites understand where the power really is.

Not in Pharaoh. It's in God. Not in Pharaoh. Yeah. It's in his high hand. With his strong hand, he'll lead us out type of thing. And Nephi says, cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of the flesh. That is exactly it.

And that comes also from the Egyptian iconography or as a, you know, sort of a reaction against it. And Isaiah talks about this in other places about the Egyptians being flesh. Jeremiah, I think, was the prophet Nephi was quoting specifically. But that's where Jeremiah is getting the language to too, is the idea of the arm of the flesh, Pharaoh's strong arm. It's Pharaoh's horses are flesh. The Lord is much more than that. Easy application there for us is there's all sorts of high hands, arm of flesh around us.

The Lord is trying to tell us he is the power. It's his high hand or his strong hand, strong arm. And we're familiar with the right hand as being the covenant hand. This is actually a Hebrew word most people know that they don't know. It's in the name Benjamin, Benyamin, which means son of the right hand and the right hand frequently shows up as a symbol of the lord's power not only his power to do what he says he's going to do but to fill fulfill the promises that he covenants that he's going to do so when we read about first vision standing at the right hand of god is that a symbol too or the stoning of stephen jesus at the right hand of God. Is that a symbol too, or the stoning of Stephen? Jesus at the right hand of God. It's the favored place.

He's my right hand man type of a thing. Exactly. In the ancient world, the right hand had connotations of favor. The left hand, in fact, the Latin word for left hand is sinister. That is the word in Latin for, I don't want any of our left hand listeners to feel bad about it. The ancients just had, you know, this is the way they thought. You remember in King Benjamin's sermon at the end, he tells the people that he's very happy with the covenant that they've made. And he says, because of the covenant you've made, that's actually related back to Moses,

because Moses is told the same thing. Because of the covenant that you've made, you're the sons and daughters of Christ for this day, he has spiritually begotten you. They become the banim and the banot of Christ through the covenant. They become his sons and daughters. And then just a couple of verses later, I think verse nine of chapter five, he says, you'll be found on the right hand of God. And so he's, you know, they're hearing those echoes of, you know, being sons and daughters at the right hand. They're the maybe the most important moment in in the speech, you know, connecting them as sons and daughters of Christ. Yeah. And Jesus himself uses it right in the parable, the sheep and the goats is he's going to separate and the sheep he will put on his right.

So, yeah, sorry to all of our left-hand listeners out there. They're just going to feel bad today, but don't worry. The Lord loves you almost as much as us right-handers. Yeah, but this is great. This is something they would have understood, right? The idea of being on the right hand of God is in the favored place. This is awesome. First, I'm going to go to the Joseph Smith translation for chapter 14, verse 4, and Pharaoh will harden his heart and he shall follow after them. And I will be honored upon Pharaoh at all and upon his host that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord. Of course, we see the

Egyptians sort of regretting even after all of the plagues, after the deaths of the firstborn in the country, even then they do an about face and then they come hard after the children of Israel. In fact, I made a list, pick it up in verse 11. And here's one of the first examples of murmuring in the wilderness. And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, thou hast taken us away to die in the wilderness. Wherefore hast thou dealt with us to carry us forth out of Egypt? I have to remind students all the time, they do experience a lot of discouragement and anxiety and depression, you remind them that the Lord didn't bring them this far just to leave them in the desert, just to drop them and not have his purposes fulfilled in them. It's really easy to sometimes feel like the Lord's led you to a point and that then he's just dropped you off.

We have to remember that that isn't the case. I didn't bring you this far just to have you die out here. That's it. He always has more than one thing in mind anyway, for any given transaction, anything he does with us, there's multiple things he wants to happen. And we have to remember that, that we see within the narrow confines of mortal thought and vision. We think very linearly. And when we're in drates, when we're in distress, it's very difficult for us to see beyond that, that when we are in the between a rock and a hard place like this. I love that in verse 12. Didn't we tell you back there, just leave us alone. Let us stay there. It's better for us to live in Egypt than die in verse 12. Didn't we tell you back there, just leave us alone. Let us stay there.

It's better for us to live in Egypt than die in the wilderness. This is so human. I'm quick to judge them. Like, oh, come on, you guys. Like, have a little faith. But I can see that this is a human thing to do. We're out here and kind of miserable. And you remember Laman and Lemuel.

Nephi, you know, he's very aware when their words start to align with those of the Israelites in the wilderness. In fact, his depiction of the family's journey, he's very conscious of the parallels and the similarities between his family's journey through the wilderness, through the Arabian Peninsula to Bountiful, when Laman and Lemuel say it had been better for our wives to have died than to suffer these great afflictions. He's remembering these same words from the Israelites here. Yeah. If I remember right, that's 1st Nephi 17. 17, yeah. Our father is foolish. He's led us out of the land of Jerusalem. We've wandered in the wilderness. It would have been better. Almost the exact same phrase.

It would have been better that they had died before they came out of Jerusalem than to have suffered these afflictions. So, yeah, I never noticed that, Matt. Nephi is paralleling them. We shouldn't be like looking at the Israelites and saying, oh, those dumb Israelites. Don't they ever get the lesson? We should be saying to ourselves, how am I like this? Yeah, yeah. Again and again, you start to relate to the Israelites a little bit better when you realize we're a lot more like them now.

And we don't take the, you know, sort of the looking down from the rameumptom approach to viewing them. But we say, oh, you know, this is relatable. I've been like this. And it didn't make sense to them. Let's go camp next to the water. Oh, that's a great military strategy so that we have no escape. Gee, what a great idea, Moses. And the Pharaoh knew it too. I mean, it sounds like they knew it. In verse three, they are entangled in the land. The wilderness has shut them in. They just went up against a wall called the water. Well, God knows what he's going to do with the water, but they didn't see the way out, right? That's it. Oh, that's so applicable, John. The idea of I'm in a bad situation and I kind of look to heaven and

say, why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me? It'd been better that I'd never been moved. And it can seem so counterintuitive. The moves sometimes the Lord guides us to make, we feel like it's an inspired decision at the time. And then when we go forward and act on it, suddenly we find ourselves and it seems like things are not working out, that things aren't going the way that they really should go. That's when we need to remember that the Lord, he has the strategy. So, it might be counterintuitive or almost idiotic from a human perspective, but that he really does see it from God's eye view of it. That's the best view you can have.

The God's eye view. Oh, that's a great phrase. That's any eternal perspective we might say, or, well, they don't even see what the Lord has in mind when they're camped against the water. Where is that, John, in the Doctrine and Covenants where the Lord says, you cannot behold with your natural eyes. Section 58, for the present time, the things which God had prepared for them hereafter. In the present, you don't see it. The design of your God, it says, for that which will come hereafter, which I've got a design here. I know what I'm doing.

It's a great word, use of the word design. It's planned. It's prepared. There's architecture to it. There's a way. Some really bright people learn to play chess really well. The Garry Kasparovs of the world, they get really good at chess. And really good chess players can think a number of moves ahead.

Many moves ahead, yeah. But the Lord is the master chess player. And he's thinking, there's nothing our agency can do that his accounting can't account for and adjust to. That's great. And you might look at one of his moves and go, that was a bad move. He's already 14 steps ahead. He's like, no, this wasn't a bad move. I'm reading chapter 14, verse 13, the confidence of Moses. They feel like, well, we tried and it's not working. And the angel come and says, stop hitting your brother. And Moses said unto the people, fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today. For the Egyptians whom

you have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace. Before you do 1 Nephi 4, this reminded me, you remember Liberty Jail? Yeah, 123, the standstill, I was just thinking that. Doctrine and Covenants 123.17, where Joseph Smith is telling the saints, Therefore, dearly beloved, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power. And then we may stand still with the utmost assurance to see the salvation of God and for his arm to be revealed. That's using the language right out of this verse and out of Isaiah 52, verse 10, all nations shall see the salvation of God. Chapter 14, verse 30, thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians.

And so, that story had power for Nephi. You were mentioning that there was no way forward with the plates. When Nephi can talk about it, I will go and do the things that the Lord commands for I know he giveth no commandment unto the children of men, save he shall prepare away. That's the design. He says to his brothers, first Nephi 4.2, therefore, let us go up. Let us be strong like unto Moses. He is really channeling this story to give him courage to move forward. I like that you said to him, it's not just a story. It's reality. And the Lord will do it for him too. God can command Moses. He can command me to build a ship. Does he use the same thing in the ship building thing? Doesn't he go back to Moses there too?

In chapter 17. Seems that if Nephi has two heroes, it's Isaiah and Moses. Yeah. And in 17, I mean, the obstacle there literally was the sea as well. The means of getting through the sea or getting over it was different, but it was the same thing. I think Jacob was aware of that. Second Nephi 10, when he talked about he's made the sea our path, he's thinking Exodus again. And this might have been a longer trip through the sea, but it was the same God who was delivering them. Matt, I think you're bringing up a great point here. And that is our listeners,

I would say a lot of us love the Book of Mormon. We'd probably prefer to read the Book of Mormon over and over and over. But I've noticed this year, the more we understand the Old Testament, the Book of Mormon over and over and over. But I've noticed this year, the more we understand the Old Testament, the Book of Mormon becomes more powerful. I agree. And there isn't a better reader of the Old Testament of Isaiah and of the Pentateuch, including Exodus, than Nephi was. Nephi was a very good reader of scripture. As an ancient Israelite, he sees things that can really help guide our reading from a seventh and sixth century perspective. Wow. That's great stuff. Yeah. Because I want to be a better Book of Mormon reader as well as Old Testament. So, they kind of, they help each other. They do. It was, you know, this is a part of the growing

together of the two records that Nephi himself mentioned. That's a metaphor he uses, that the writings of the Jews and the writings that him and his descendants would carry out, that all of that would grow together. And it's awesome because he's got the perspective of being able to look as an ancient Israelite at ancient Israel's past. But he's also got prophetic vision where he's looking at the future of his descendants, the descendants of his brothers, and even to our own day. And then he can tell us what we need to hear. The lens through which he sees everything, he's remembering Moses, his backstory to what he's going through. And there was something else when John brought up, therefore, let us go up, let us be strong like unto Moses. I want you to look at the next phrase that he says. He says,

for he truly spake unto the waters of the Red Sea, and they divided it thither and thither. And our fathers came through out of captivity on dry ground. And the armies of Pharaoh did follow and were drowned in the waters of the Red Sea. He speaks at the waters. You remember how he'd received the promise that he would be made stronger than many waters? His father has the dream of the tree of life and then Nephi sees the things which his father saw. He saw that the rod of iron was the word of God. Now, he speaks out the waters. How did Moses divide the waters in chapter 14? He's told something very specific in a couple of verses. When he divides, I think it's verse 16. 16. Lift up thou thy rod, stretch out thine hand over the sea and divide it.

You know, he's told to divide it with the rod. Elsewhere in Exodus, it's called the Mateha Elohim, the rod of God. What's interesting is that in Egyptian, a language that Nephi tells us at the very beginning of his record that he knew, and he's proud of it because it's a second language, and not everybody had that kind of an education. He grew up speaking Hebrew in the area of Jerusalem as all ancient Judahites and those of Israelite ancestry who were there learned. But his father taught him. And in Egyptian, the word for rod and word and the verb to speak are the same thing. The Egyptian word medu, which means a rod or a staff. It's also the verb for to speak. And in fact, when it's written in Egyptian, not only Middle Egyptian, but later in the Egyptian of Lehi's time, they're still writing

it with a rod hieroglyph as a part of the writing. You really see this in chapter 17, going back there, 1 Nephi chapter 17, verse 26. And now you know that Moses was commanded of the Lord to do that great work. And you know that by his word, the waters of the Red Sea were divided hither and thither. Wow. Yeah. Well, this will get even better for our discussion of chapter 17 with the getting the water out of the rock. If you look down at verse 29 and you know that by his word, according to the power of God, which was in him, he smote the rock and there came forth water. How did he get the water out of the rock? With the rod. With the rod. So to Nephi, word and rod, because he knows Egyptian. Yeah. In fact, some scholars think that the word that's

used in Hebrew for Moses's rod, mateh, some scholars think that that's actually an Egyptian loanword, that it's the word rod out of Egyptian. If that's true, that would strengthen the connection there. But Nephi clearly thinks of rod and the word in identical terms. And then later Mormon, this is Exodus language too, Helaman 3. In fact, this is, I think, one of the most important uses of both the imagery of Lehi's dream and the Exodus. So Helaman 3, 29 and 30. Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God. You can't lay hold upon a word per se, but you can if it's a... Pete It's a rod.

Pete It's a rod, yeah. Which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a straight and narrow course. There's our way imagery. A straight and narrow course across the everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked like the egyptians and oh my word what a connection it's really interesting isn't it and so where are they headed they're headed to the promised land and land their souls yay their immortal souls at the right hand of god We've been talking about that too. In the kingdom of heaven to sit down with Abraham and Isaac and with Jacob, with all our holy fathers to go no more out.

I mean, this is incredible that that little connection right there has almost everything we've talked about. Helaman three, 29 and 30. And so you see Mormon, he's very familiar with the small plates and Nephi, the imagery that Nephi uses, but he's bringing it all together.

The Exodus, Lehi's dream, the idea of the way, the rod of iron, it's all there. And Moses is sometimes called the man of God. And so as we step into that role as men and women of Christ, when we take the rod. Jack Welch and I have been, he's over here as a missionary right here, and we've had conversations about this. Sometimes we think of the rod of iron in Lehi's dream as a kind of railing with little posts going down into the ground, like the railings that we see outside of buildings. But it's never really described as that. It's just described as extending along and it can be grasped. I've sort of wondered whether the idea is that Christ is holding the

rod and he's extending it to us and then we choose to grasp it, to lay hold on it. My goodness, that Helaman 3, that was worth the price of admission right there. That, yeah, I mean, to see Mormon channeling all that, dividing and leading the man of Christ across the gulf, I'd never seen that before. John, had you seen that before? Were you holding out on me? Nope. And I love it. It's like, oh yeah, like Joseph Smith made this up. Like you said, Matt, this is Mormon having all of that in his backstory there and puts it all together. Because you're right, you don't lay hold upon the word unless you're talking about the word like the rod of iron. You look at all the richness, the complexity, the subtleties that are in the text of the Book of Mormon, and the different styles, like Nephi's style versus those of later writers,

the way he writes versus Mormon and Moroni. You just will never convince me that that was all Joseph Smith. They just are totally different. You can read it just between Nephi and Jacob, even. Yep. You can see it. between Nephi and Jacob even. Yep. You can see it, but Nephi and Mormon, especially. One person would not be able to pull that off. Yeah. So Matt, let's say Moses here is the author of this story and he's telling it,

this is the moment in their history, right? So if I'm a contemporary of Moses and I'm reading this, this is my scripture, right? This is the moment of scripture, maybe a third Nephi 11 type moment. This is what the story's been building to is this day. We have to appreciate the biblical text that we're working with is, you know, we can think of the form that we have it in as something that's been edited in the way that Mormon edited his work. There's actually a conscious system or scheme that the author has in putting the narrative together, laying it out the way that he has. Then we get this, what's called the Song of the Sea, the song that Moses sings,

and then there's a song that Miriam sings that the author chooses to pause on and really reflect by bringing all of these things together, not only the event of the Exodus in 14, but then the poetry that commemorates it in chapter 15. It's a moment. Would the kids say now it's a vibe? It's a vibe. It's a vibe. He really wants us to pause and reflect on what's, what just happened. Wow. So 15 is not necessarily, let's go on with the story. 15 is the narrator saying, okay, everyone stop and, and just take that in what just happened, which is maybe another reason why Nephi loves it so much, if he had something like this in his history. I know that the five books could have changed from the time Nephi had them to where we get them. But still, it's got to be something like this.

Well, before we get to 15, we should probably talk about verse 17, Joseph Smith translation here again. And I say unto thee, the hearts of the Egyptians shall be hardened. And then we get something I think is particularly interesting here. And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, so this angel, and there's a whole ton of discussion on the identity of who this is. Sometimes it is not clear that the angel of the Lord isn't the Lord himself. But anyway, the angel that's been out in front now swings around to the other side, and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face and stood behind them. Then it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud and a darkness to them. But it gave light by night to these. So the one came not near the other all

the night. We sing in the hymn, Redeemer of Israel, a shadow by day and a pillar by night. This is a language that Isaiah picks up on in Isaiah 4, when he talks about that the Lord would provide similar protection to Zion, to his people, to their homes and dwelling places. They're in the end of Isaiah chapter 4. There's a lot of temple imagery there too. I think the point here is that the Lord is now going to act as divine warrior to fight the battle for Israel, and he is going to make sure that they have all the protection that they need to pull it off. Verse 21, and Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night. So, we got the image of the hand there

again, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon dry ground and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left. But it would take an act of faith, even with everything going on, then to step forward. To walk through that. Yep. In the movie, the walls are, they're pretty high, the walls of water. So, the Israelites go in and, the walls are, they're pretty high, the walls of water. So, the Israelites go in and eventually the Egyptians are going to follow through. It came to verse 23, and the Egyptians pursued and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all of Pharaoh's horses, his chariots and his horsemen. And it came to pass that in the morning, the Lord

looked under the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire of the cloud and troubled the host of the Egyptians and took off their chariot wheels that they draved them heavily. So the Egyptians said, let us flee from the face of the Lord for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians. At this point, it's now too late. They've gone in, they're mired in it, and then the Lord's going to give the instruction with his hand again. Sometimes hand even gets translated as power in other Old Testament passages. It's a clear indication of where the power is. It was to ancient Israel, and it is to us now. I know in my students' minds are going to come, oh man, I don't like the Lord killing the Egyptians, right? It doesn't sit, I don't like the Lord killing the Egyptians,

right? It doesn't sit well with me to have the Lord just being like, okay, that's it for them. Do you deal with that at all in your classes? I deal with that with the flood in Genesis. One of the scriptures that I come back to frequently with this and with other issues is 2 Nephi 26, 24. Again, it's a big picture type of perspective. So, 2 Nephi 26, 24, he doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world, for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life, that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation. If it wasn't for the ultimate benefit of humankind and the human family, the Lord wouldn't do it because he does it out of love.

And in fact, he laid his own life down. Yes, there are others who lose their lives as in consequence of divine justice overtaking them. Sometimes when we persist in doing certain things, certain actions that have not only life-altering, but life-taking consequences, it doesn't mean the Lord doesn't love us, but we can always be confident that when the Lord does anything, when it's him doing it, he's doing it for the benefit of the world, for the benefit of the human family and a lot more because he loves other creatures. I've often thought that the Lord with us, physical death is such a permanent ending. But for the Lord, it's probably just a movement from one classroom to the other, right? It is.

Sometimes the same thing of the flood. You remember in the Genesis, in the book of Moses, there were a lot of people ushered to the spirit world in a short amount of time. I don't want to make light of that, but the Lord really does see things on a continuum. We see things, we see death as kind of a great finale in a one-act play sometimes when really there's a three-act play going on. And the first and the third acts are of much greater length than any of us imagine. The third one has no end. This one is but a small moment to Joseph Smith, right? This act two is but a small moment. So the first one had no beginning and the third one will have no end.

And yet the second act is so determinative. It's so crucial. And the trajectory of where the second act is so determinative. Right. It's so crucial. Yeah. And the trajectory of where the third act goes. And it's so temporary. I like how the Book of Mormon refers to it in more than one place as the day of this life. I also thought that the Lord is keeping his covenant here with Abraham, right? The Egyptians are not going to stop.

They're going to keep coming after the Israelites and God has made a promise to Abraham and he's going to keep it. And that means the end of the Egyptians if God's going to keep his promise. But I want God to keep his promises. I'm relying on that. And that's an important framework in which we need to see a lot of things that the, the Lord is going to fulfill his, his covenants. He'll fulfill the covenant that he made to Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob, but he'll also fulfill his covenants to us. That's something that I think Jacob refers to elsewhere that, you know, he's going to do certain things that he's promised while we're in the flesh. And some of those things will require resurrection for them to ultimately be done to us and for us. But that's one of the great things about the,

that's what I think that's one of the reasons why it was a part of when Jacob's describing the atonement of Jesus Christ as the way in terms of the Exodus, that our redemption from death and hell and the resurrection of our bodies will ensure that God keeps every promise to us in time and eternity. So, if there's anything we feel like, you know, the Lord has promised that we've been deprived of in mortality, it's going to be done to us. And that's a part of the Abrahamic covenant too. You know, a lot of the promises made to Abraham, Abraham didn't see in mortality. A lot of them pertain to a time frame long after his mortal life. For example, I had a friend years ago whose brother died as a missionary in a tragic car accident. And his patriarchal blessing had all of these amazing promises that would seem to be unfulfilled.

But they aren't. If we keep the perspective that the Lord can perform these promises, not only here, but hereafter in the resurrection, the resurrection will restore to us every good thing. I tell students that I'm looking forward to that, because not only because of not a hair of their heads, she'll be lost according to Amulek and Alma. But, you know, I have a son that I'm looking forward to raising with my wife that, you know, who died very young. But that's one of the promises that we live for. It helps us. It helps us keep us in the way, keeps us on the covenant path because we want to be worthy to receive those promises. The youth theme for this year is the Proverbs 3, the trust in the Lord with all thine heart,

lean not to thine own understanding. And you can see how often with the murmurings, they're leaning to their own understanding. And the Lord's saying, well, you just hold your peace, verse 14. I'll fight for you. Just be quiet. This year, I've had chances to talk to some youth groups about that trust in the Lord theme. And I've used that 2 Nephi 26. He doesn't do anything except it's for our benefit. Do you trust that? Do you trust that he loves you? And that if you don't even see the reasons why, he's not doing anything except it's for our benefit. And a lot of times we talk about justice and mercy, and if we had to pick a favorite, we might pick mercy. But a God that is just will recompense us for things that happen through no fault of our own. All of the unfairness. All the unfairness. A God of justice will fix that somehow. And I love that.

I've become more a fan of the God of justice when I hear about things that are tragic and unfair through no one's fault. I appreciate that. I think it's really important to help students, young people see that justice and mercy aren't at the end of two long arms, but they're really part of two sides of the same coin. They're really

almost the same thing if you consider God's character, who he is. God is just and merciful. Everything that he does is both. And you can trust him because he's not doing anything except it's for our benefit. This whole story is a good illustration of that because they keep murmuring. Even after, John, even after this huge miracle, they're upset. What have you done for us lately? Like we've all said, those silly Israelites are those silly Laban and Lemuel because we've got to look at us and say, have I done this? I looked up, this is the way, section 104, the Lord says, it is my purpose to provide

for my saints, right? I want to give you these things for all things are mine, he says, but this is 104 16. It must needs be done in mine own way. And behold, this is the way my kids love the Mandalorian. So they're going to love this particular episode. And then I noticed Exodus 14 verse 15, where the Lord says, move forward, right? Go forward. So the idea is move forward. Don't look back to Egypt. Don't this idea of it was better for us back there. And the Lord says, no, no, no move forward. I will fight for you. I like what you said, John, can you just be quiet a second? I'm going to provide for you move forward. And to me, there's, there's a lot of meaning there. Don't you think in the idea of move forward, I know that it's been hard, but I will provide for you. And that seems to me what Matt, what you said you and your wife are doing is we're going

to move forward in faith, trusting. When we came to Hawaii, we came on a visiting professorship and there was no guarantee that we would be here beyond a year. And then one year turned into two years and then two years turned into a third. And then at the end of the third year, a way was provided for us to be here permanently and then to raise our family here. We had in 2013, our oldest son, Zach, was born in D.C. in 2008. And then Nathan in 2011, which I told you about. And then Adele, our daughter, was born in 2013. And the way it was provided for us to be here and to raise our family here, I'm almost speechless with gratitude for just how good the Lord's been to our family through it all. I know it's not the end of our challenges and trials.

And we, you know, we've had a lot of those even since then. But you just have those experiences in life where, you know, the blessings could have come to you in no other way than through the Lord's providing them in the way that Hank was just talking about. So move forward, right? Move forward. Tell the children of Israel to move forward. What do you want to tell us about the Song of the Sea? Let's talk about that because I have read some commentaries call it Song of the Sea. I've heard Matt and the synopsis right here call it the Song of Moses. So, I guess

there's a couple of different ways to look at it. Yeah, there's Song of Moses or Song of the Sea. And then sometimes Deuteronomy, you got 32 and 33 that sometimes get that name too, Song of Moses. And when Isaiah writes his songs, doesn't he write something very similar? Yeah. In fact, Isaiah 12 is deeply dependent on the Song of the Sea here. There is a strong intertextual relationship between those two. And Nephi puts that in the Book of Mormon, right? Yep. And we could talk about the, there's a lot of divine warrior language at the beginning.

The Lord is a man of war, verse three. The Lord is his name, overthrowing Pharaoh's chariots and so forth. But look in verse 6, where you've got the right hand again. Yeah. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power. Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy. There's some temple language here, too. In fact, I want to make sure we don't don't miss it um i think

jennifer lane teaches it this way and maybe gay strathern too but the idea of the song of moses and the song of miriam as being songs of redeeming love you remember when alma talks about that have you ever felt to sing the song of redeeming love? Oh, wow. If so, can you feel so now? These are songs of redeeming love. Oh, my word. Matt, you're killing me. I felt like I knew the Book of Mormon, and now phrases in the Book of Mormon means more when you understand the Old Testament.

You know, I feel like sometimes alone in this, because I feel like we kind of do it backwards. Sometimes we really push the Book of Mormon and the New Testament when and that's good. We should, but we should also help Latter-day Saints and help our students understand the how both of those books of Scripture presuppose a really thorough knowledge of the old testament i mean there are certain things that nephi just assumes you have a basic grasp right and in some places he'll slow down and he'll really kind of unpack it for us but a lot of times he just has to move forward and assume you know and that's why i love that because i'm having these experiences all the time too these epiphanies where i i just like i never saw that before i never saw that before and that's why we never get to a point as students of the scriptures we never get to the point where we will have exhausted our capacity to learn more or to understand them with a greater depth or to be drawn closer to

Christ because of what we're reading. If we get to the point where we say, you know, I'm good. I know this. That's the attitude that the Lord doesn't like. He talks about that. The minute we say we have enough, he's going to take away and we're going to lose what we have. So, My goodness. Feel the sing the song of redeeming love. That's Alma 526. John, did you see that before too?

Or you've been holding out on me on that one? Just yesterday was talking about the Alma 526. I like that Alma's talking to people who are already, today we would say members of the church. But he says there was a time when the gospel made you want to sing. Do you still feel that way? Are you going forward or are you digressing? And it's such a great question, but I hadn't connected it to this. The idea that it's a redeeming love, a deliverance song, a redeeming song.

That's kind of cool too, especially thinking of the trouble they're in, in Moses' situation here. The Lord's going to redeem them and deliver them. Matt, as they come out of the water, is this kind of a hearkening back to the creation story and Noah, the floods receding, and here we are again coming out of the water. It's all of it. Coming forth in newness of life, it's resurrection, it's rebirth, it's the new creation, it's the new life. Yeah, it's all of it. Talking about the baptismal typology, you remember Paul is the one who, he also says, you know, I think it's 1 Corinthians 10 where he talks about that they were all baptized in the sea and in the cloud to Moses. He actually mentions Moses and baptism, which I think is interesting because we don't get the word baptism in the same thing. You take baptism back far enough in Greek, the idea of bapto had to do

with the immersing of ships in water, the idea of being immersed in water and ritual immersion. You know, it may not mention baptism in the Old Testament by, you know, by that name, but there are clear antecedents for it there and elsewhere. Yeah, when you read about baptism in the Bible dictionary, it's like Adam was baptized. It's always been a thing, but it's a little harder to find in the Old Testament. And if baptism is a Greek word,

you probably won't find it in the Old Testament, at least not in that word. What was the word you said? Ortoval, yeah, it's a dip. You read about washing and so forth, and the mikvah bath today, I suppose. Let me make a modern day application and see what you guys think. If I read Exodus 15 as me and the Egyptians are the adversary or my sins, and now I'm singing praises to God who has destroyed my sins. Look at verse nine, the enemy I will pursue. I will overtake that the lust may be satisfied upon them. I will draw my sword. And we feel that way sometimes that our sins or even our trials are going to overtake us.

And here the Lord has provided a way out. I like that modern day application. I can see myself in Exodus 15 verse six, taking the sacrament with my right hand saying, Lord is become glorious in power. He's dashed to pieces the sins, the things keeping me from heaven, my sins and my trials. He's dashed them to pieces. I don't know.

Do you feel like we could make a modern day application like that? Absolutely. I mean, the right hand, as we mentioned, is the covenant hand. I wanted to mention too, that word lust in verse nine, the Hebrew word there is nafshi, which means my soul, my desire. Lust, when the King James translators translated it, it didn't have quite the same baggage that it has now. Footnote 9b gives us the Hebrew soul, i.e. desire. So that's really nice to have those little study helps there that kind of clarify what lust means there. So yeah, here comes the adversary who wants to overtake us, destroy our lives. And he was sunk.

If you look at verse 10, my sins sank in the mighty waters. It's kind of like this idea of baptism that God provided a way for me to sink my sins and difficulties away in the water. They sink as lead. They just sink. They drop like a rock.

Yeah. So this kind of a song, it reminds me of, yeah, Nephi's Psalm and 2 Nephi 4 of Mary's Magnificat in Luke. What is that one? Just this kind of song of praise. Look at all the things the he could do for you. It says in our official manual, which is a nice way to apply this chapter. Another one, Hannah, her song in 1 Samuel 2 is another really good one. At least a couple of verses I wanted to focus on here were verses 16 through 17. Fear and dread shall fall upon them, the greatness of thine arm. There's that imagery

again. They shall be as still as a stone till thy people pass over. Oh Lord, till thy people pass over which thou hast purchased. The word there purchased can mean recovered is the same one that Isaiah uses when he says that the Lord will set his hand a second time to recover his people. It can mean to buy, it can, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, this is all temple language, O Lord, which thy hands have established. You remember when back in Exodus 3, Moses was telling Pharaoh that the Lord wanted him to bring Israel out so that they could serve him upon his mountain. It was a Latter-day Saint scholar, John Lundquist, who said that the Jerusalem temple is the architectural embodiment and ritual enlargement of Israel's experience at Mount Sinai. So with everything, with the brazen sea symbolizing the Red Sea, the altar there in

the court even before that, and then the holy place, and then the holy of holies, our temples today still fit that basic pattern with a celestial area and terrestrial, which mostly pertain to Melchizedek priesthood ordinances, and then the outer area, which is telestial. So you have that sort of what Joseph Smith described as the three principal rounds of Jacob's ladder still present in the architecture and the ritual design of our temples. Verse 17 is a clear reference to the temple.

Sanctuary. Capital S Sanctuary. Please join us for part two of this podcast.