A Class, Not a Nation

See the intro and links to other posts in this series.

If you grew up with the story of the Exodus and all the stories of the Hebrew scriptures, how would you describe the people who were liberated from slavery in Egypt? What was the fundamental identity that they shared, as well as the people who lived in the promised land as “God's chosen people”?

Perhaps, like me, you've imagined this massive crowd fleeing Egypt as an ethnic group, sharing descent from common ancestors, the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

However, one often-skipped line in the book of Exodus dramatically reshapes this picture.

Setting the Scene

The book of Exodus sets a scene in which Egypt was the dominant empire of their region in the historical period, stockpiling wealth and completing huge projects through the exploitation of slave labor, including the descendants of the family of Jacob, major characters in the preceding book of Genesis. The slaves in Egypt are referred to as the “Hebrews” (more on that later).

Yahweh, the God of Jacob's family, acts through the actions of courageous enslaved midwives and mothers, a code-switching prophet with a dual identity and years in nomadic exile, and a series of dramatic and miraculous events showing the victory of Yahweh over the gods of the Empire and the ruling pharaoh. As a result of Yahweh's actions, Pharaoh admits defeat and releases the enslaved descendants of Jacob into freedom.

The “Mixed Multitude”

In Exodus 12:38, as the crowds are leaving Egypt, the text says “A diverse crowd also went up with them” (CEB), or as the King James Version puts it, a “mixed multitude". Those few words can be easily missed, but they have huge impact.

This means that the vast crowds rescued from imperial enslavement were not just an ethnic group, but rather a diverse group of many different origins. What they shared was an experience of being enslaved and oppressed by empire and liberated by Yahweh. Many were descended from the family of Jacob and the whole community rescued by Yahweh began to identify with them and the history they had of relationship to Yahweh and Yahweh's promises. However, it was not blood that united them but the sweat of slavery and the shared experience of passing through the waters of the Red Sea as God destroyed their imperial oppressors.

God’s Choice

What does this show us about God? Without this lens, God's choice of Israel can easily be read as preference for a particular nation or ethnic group, flowing today into justification of God’s preference for particular nations. However, what we actually see God doing here is very different.

God chooses an entire social class. In the struggle between empire and those it oppresses, the story of Exodus is one where God takes the side of those who are oppressed and liberates them from the chains of empire, not just a particular people but all of those who are oppressed who join into the project of liberation.

Consistently throughout Scripture, God's people are an ethnically mixed group constantly grafting on “outsiders” who are marginalized. Marginalized social experience is far more central than ancestry to the identity of God's people and also to God's choice to act on their behalf. From this mixed multitude exiting Egypt together and becoming one people, to the intermixing with the people of Canaan such as Rahab’s family from very the beginning of their time in the promised land, to the Torah's instructions of welcoming the strangers in their midst, to the archetypal story of the incorporation of the marginalized foreigner Ruth into what would eventually become the royal family, to constant prophetic instructions for including the foreigner, the Hebrew scriptures are full of this dynamic. God works uniquely in the story of Israel, but that people is consistently an ethnically mixed group incorporating marginalized outsiders, welcoming the foreigner as they were themselves once foreigners in Egypt.

Continuing to the New Testament, Jesus shocks his hometown of Nazareth in Luke 4 by proclaiming God's consistent work throughout history among those who were foreigners instead of “ethnic” Israel and proclaims that his own ministry would be a fulfillment of Isaiah's vision of a year of Jubilee freedom targeting a social class - full of good news to the poor, release of prisoners, and liberation of the oppressed. Israel expected a Messiah who would bring militaristic nationalist victory for their ethnic group, but Jesus came proclaiming God’s inclusion of those on the margins and ever-moving action in history on the behalf of the oppressed regardless of ethnic group. Jesus proclaims good news of God’s choice for a social class, not a nation.

Pentecost extends this as the church is born amidst a moment of expressing God's good news across languages and cultures and intercultural inclusion. The early church wrestled in the book of Acts with its first and most significant controversy - “Is this an ethnically Jewish movement or not?”, resolving it in the first council of the church as a movement clearly not restricted by ethnicity but transcending ethnic lines, fully open to all and united by the waters of baptism rather than shared blood, just as Israel was initially united by their rescue through the waters of the Red Sea rather than the blood of Jacob's ancestry.

A Word for Today

What does this lens on scripture have to say for us today? As two groups, white Christian nationalists in the United States and Zionists in Israel (or beyond), try to identify their nations as God's chosen and claim God's favor as justification for occupation and oppression, this lens offers a challenge. Not only are neither of these states directly in continuity with biblical Israel, but throughout Scripture, we see God consistently showing preference not on the basis of nationality but social class. In the modern struggle of those who long for liberation from empires and occupiers, God again is on the side of those crying out for freedom, rejecting any nation’s claim to supremacy or use of God’s name in vain to justify their oppressive actions. To truly live in the lineage and narrative of God's action and people is to side with the oppressed and to welcome the foreigner into full inclusion.

A Side Note on “Hebrews”

The term “Hebrews” is one of two terms used to refer to the enslaved people in Exodus. Unlike “Israelite”, “Hebrew” is consistently applied by Egyptians to the slaves, not used by ethnic Israelites to refer to themselves. That leaves open the possibility that the terms may not be fully interchangeable and “Hebrews” could refer to a broader social class including the Israelites which the Egyptian overlords would not necessarily distinguish. Some scholars trace the origin of the term "Hebrews”, used in scripture to refer to the people enslaved in and rescued from Egypt, to a set of related words found throughout languages of the Ancient Near East. The term "habiru” and similar terms are found in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Egyptian, and other languages of the second millenium BCE and it is very possible that the biblical term “Hebrew” could be another of these related words. This term, “habiru”, is considered by scholars not as an ethnic term but a term referring to a social class of people - variously described as rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, bowmen, servants, slaves, and laborers. While contemporary scholars would generally not claim an exact identification of all references of this term with the people group referred to in scripture as Hebrews, this linguistic connection supports the idea that the Hebrews rescued from Egypt were not solely an ethnic group descended from Jacob, but a broader social class of oppressed laborers which could be referred to by the term “habiru” in the Egyptian language, leading to the Hebrew scripture's use of this term as a self-identification for God's people and its near interchangeable use with the term “Israelites”.

The major exception in the book of Exodus where Hebrews is used by someone other than the Egyptians is when it is used five different times by God. God tells Moses to proclaim to Pharaoh that “Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews” commands him to “let my people go.” If this understanding of the terms is correct, the God who had previously been identified as the God of the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob takes sides in the midst of empire. God chooses to expand God's own definition of the people of God to include the entire social class of the enslaved “Hebrews” and rescue not just Jacob's descendants but all the enslaved people and to make them a part of God's own self-declared identity in the face of their oppressors.

Use of the term in other books of scripture is primarily by outside groups like the Philistines, or specifically as a reference to people being enslaved, and certain verses like 1 Samuel 14:21 use both terms in the same sentence in a way that suggests distinct meanings for each. See more info and footnotes.

This post is part of an ongoing series reading scripture through the lens of anarchism. See the intro and links to other posts in this series.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Historical Heroes

I'll regularly highlight historical heroes, often in the week of their birth or death. Tuesday marks the anniversary of the death of John Woolman.

John Woolman of New Jersey (19 October 1720-7 October 1772) was a merchant, abolitionist, and Quaker preacher. As a child, he was sensitive to the suffering of animals and committed to the love and care of living things. He became a merchant. He refused to facilitate the purchase of slaves, which was a debated point among Quakers at the time. He left trade while still in his 20's to pursue simplicity and faith. He supported himself as a tailor but lived with great simplicity. He avoided things he saw had negative impacts in their production or use, like dyes, precious metals, and stagecoaches. He traveled extensively preaching and speaking against slavery and convincing many to give up their slaves. As the “French and Indian” War came, he protested it and promoted refusal to pay taxes as a means of protest. He died during a journey to England where he helped the Quakers’ general meeting to make a clear abolitionist statement.