I grew up believing I lived in the world’s melting pot, a place where people of various races and backgrounds came together and made decisions which benefited the majority. I counted among my friends people from Nigeria, India, Iraq, Hong Kong, Mexico, South America and Europe.
But this year what defines and unifies this nation has become an urgent question. From the safety of the rural Heartland we have watched angry mobs burn our cities and invade our national capitol. What is happening? Why such unrest?
The Biblical book of Exodus may shed some light on what is happening for it recounts the political founding of one of the world’s oldest and most consequential peoples. It also invites us to think about the moral meaning of communal life, the requirements of political self-rule and the standards for judging a social order.
A new book of which I have heard about but not read is entitled “Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus.” The book published by the Yale Press looks to the Biblical Book of Exodus for guidance in the current time.
The story of Exodus is the foundation for universal principles of justice. The idea that the best body politic rests on the Biblical notion of covenant entered the American colonies with the Mayflower Compact, and the American tradition of civic republicanism owes much to the Puritans’ devotion to the Hebrew Bible.
The case for investigating the political teachings of Exodus was made succinctly by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the late 18th century: “The Jews provide us with an astonishing spectacle: the laws of [Greek and Roman lawgivers] are dead; the very much older laws of Moses are still alive. Any man, whosoever he is, must acknowledge this as a unique marvel, the causes of which, divine or human, certainly deserve the study and admiration of the sages.”
The second book of the Bible tells the story—begun in Genesis on the family level—of how God addresses the evils and miseries of uninstructed human existence by instituting His teaching among the Children of Israel. Offered as an alternative to the ways of the Mesopotamians, the Canaanites and especially the Egyptians, it is a way devoted to human decency and dignity, to righteousness and holiness.
As Exodus starts, the Israelites are flourishing in Egypt. Seeking to curb their proliferation, a new Pharaoh reduces them to slavery and orders the drowning of all male infants. When the Israelites cry out from their oppression, God charges Moses and his brother Aaron with securing from Pharaoh the release of His people through a series of “signs, wonders and chastisements” we know as the 10 plagues. After the tenth and most devastating plague, Pharaoh finally relents and urges the Israelites to depart, only to set out the following morning in pursuit of the escaped ex-slaves and, for his efforts, to drown with his troops in the Sea of Reeds.
Having passed unharmed through the sea’s parted waters, and having been nourished subsequently with manna from heaven, the Israelites, wandering in the desert, arrive at Mount Sinai, where God, through Moses, offers the ex-slaves an everlasting covenant: “If you will hearken to My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasure from among all the nations and you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Amid thunder and lightning, God issues the Ten Commandments—principles that are to guide the people when they come to the Promised Land.
Central to the principles are injunctions to sanctify the Sabbath day and to honor your father and mother, along with the need to avoid idol worship, murder, adultery, theft, swearing falsely and coveting what belongs to a neighbor.
Throughout this story, God and Moses provide initiative and direction. But the people, gradually shedding their slavishness, increasingly become co-partners in the venture. Although their story has just begun, and many trials—and failures—lie ahead, they embraced the grand founding vision of a kingdom of priests and a holy nation who would carry to all the example of God’s way for a better life.
Indispensable to Israel’s founding is the unique philanthropy of her mysterious God. Unlike indifferent natural powers, He enters into a covenant with human beings, aiming to make them holy as He is holy.
Unlike the edicts of despotic human rulers, His Law applies equally to all and intends everyone’s benefit. Most impressively, He is merciful and gracious, willing to forgive in the presence of repentance.
Repudiating the tragic view of the world, He encourages high striving despite the recurring likelihood of failure.
Thoughtful people have long detected numerous parallels between the United States and Israel.
As Americans we also owe our origins to escape from despotism and a desire for religious freedom. We, too, are a particular and distinctive people with a universal creed, one of biblical provenance: In announcing the birth of our our nation, we declared that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” We too have a constituting national law, a Constitution approved by the consent of the people. And when in the mid-19th century our Union was challenged and its founding creed repudiated, we renewed it through the sacrifice of a bloody civil war, so that, as Abraham Lincoln said, “this nation under God shall have a new birth of Freedom.”
America has been a nation characterized by reverence as much as by love of liberty. Like the Israelites at Sinai, the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, seeking to serve God, covenantally entered into a civil body politic even before they hit land or had an economy. Our Constitution is not neutral as between religion and irreligion. Although, unlike other nations, we have no established religion, our most fundamental right, enshrined in the First Amendment, protects religion’s free exercise.
In describing Americans, Alexis de Tocqueville celebrated our mutually reinforcing spirit of liberty and spirit of religion. Lincoln called us an “almost chosen people.” Herman Melville made the comparison explicit: “Escaped from the house of bondage, Israel of old did not follow after the ways of the Egyptians. To her was given an express dispensation; to her were given new things under the sun. And we Americans are the peculiar chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”
Like Israel of old, we, too, have stumbled and fallen, and committed apostasy against our creed. But half a century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. , like an ancient Hebrew prophet, summoned us to return to our ideals of liberty and justice for all, appealing explicitly to our founding creed and the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.
But times have changed.
Can a devotion to technological progress, economic prosperity and private pursuits of happiness sustain us when our story is contested (or despised), our morals weakened and our national dedication abandoned?
At this time we need the abiding wisdom found in the Ten Commandments and the ordinances: the importance of honoring father and mother for decent family life and cultural transmission; the human dignity and equality promoted by Sabbath remembrance; the reorienting of the heart toward shareable goods in the injunction against coveting; the high valuing of human—and animal—life and limb; the special regard for a pregnant woman and the child she carries; the humane treatment of the stranger; the compassionate protection of widows, orphans and the poor; the devotion to truth and justice in disputes at law; the teaching of communal gratitude through the sacred festivals; the inspiring call to imitate God in his holiness.
Against degrading human proclivities, the Law not only prohibits wrongful conduct that threatens civil peace and order; it also promotes human excellence and directs the soul toward the divine source of all blessings.
As Chesterton said, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” With both atheism and political fanaticism on the rise in Western societies, we may soon discover what happens should humanity return to the dehumanizing pre-Biblical alternatives whose modern equivalents lurk offstage: the techno-despotic ways of the Egyptians, the earth-worshipping and licentious ways of the Canaanites or the cosmopolitan and soulless dream of the Babel builders that man will be a god to man.
I can take little credit for the preceding for it was adapted from a review of a new book, “Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus,” just published by Yale University Press. I do believe we can learn much about the present and future by studying history.
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