Podcast: 5 Iconic Stories from the Book of Exodus (Jay Sklar)

August 25, 2025 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

A Fresh Look at Exodus

In this episode Dr. Jay Sklar addresses key stories and confusing moments from Exodus and offers helpful insight into their meaning and practical conclusions to take away from the book. Dr. Sklar discusses how Exodus teaches us more about God—how he redeems his people, brings them into a covenant relationship, and gives instructions to the Israelites so he can dwell with them.

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ESV Expository Commentary

ESV Expository Commentary

Four biblical scholars offer passage-by-passage commentary through the narratives of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, explaining difficult doctrines, shedding light on overlooked sections, and making applications to life and ministry today. Part of the ESV Expository Commentary.

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:35 - Listening to the Melody of the Old Testament

Matt Tully
Jay Sklar serves as professor of Old Testament and vice president of academics at Covenant Theological Seminary, and he’s also the author of a commentary on the book of Exodus in Crossway’s ESV Expository Commentary series. Jay, thanks so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Jay Sklar
It is such a pleasure to be here, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Tully
My guess is that the book of Exodus is one of those biblical books that maybe many Christians tend to stall out on after they start they’re through the Bible in a year reading plan. Genesis has all these foundational stories, very well-known stories that we’ve all read many times before. And even the first maybe half of Exodus has got a lot of those similar stories. But you start getting past that and things maybe start to slow down a little bit or feel like they’re almost a preview of Leviticus, and I think we can struggle. Do you resonate with that?

Jay Sklar
Oh, I think that’s a very common experience, especially once you get past the Ten Commandments, what do you have? You have another two chapters of case law followed by six or seven chapters on tabernacle instructions. You get a bit more interest when you get the golden calf incident, though it’s not a happy story, and then the last five chapters of Exodus, or last six actually, repeat basically chapters 31 through 35 on the tabernacle. And people just get lost in the desert of details and find it to be drier than the dust of Sinai.

Matt Tully
I love those good metaphors. Jay, those who know you and know your academic work will know that you’ve done a lot of work in the book of Leviticus. I wonder if you could just speak to that. What was it that first drew you to Leviticus and the Pentateuch more generally, and then how did that maybe inform or serve you as you worked on this commentary on Exodus?

Jay Sklar
When I was looking for a PhD topic, I had an advisor who told me that he thought there was some work to be done with the burnt offering in Leviticus. I thought to myself, I do not understand the sacrificial system of Leviticus. It sounded like a fun puzzle to try and figure out. And so that’s what drew me initially to study Leviticus. I studied with a man named Gordon Wenham, a Pentateuchal scholar who has recently passed but did significant work in Leviticus and elsewhere in the Pentateuch, and then went on to write some commentaries on Leviticus. And I think that really did help set me up well for coming to Exodus, because Leviticus has lots about ritual, lots about law, and so thinking through those things in the context of Leviticus then helped when I got to the book of Exodus.

Matt Tully
People stall out sometimes on Exodus, and we tend to also stall out in Leviticus if we make it all the way there. Just briefly, speak to the big picture. When it comes to the book of Exodus, and maybe the Pentateuch as a whole, why are these books so critically important for us? Not just the big stories that we’re all familiar with, but why do these books as a whole really serve as a foundation for the rest of the Bible?

Jay Sklar
These five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy, are known either as the Pentateuch or, in Jewish circles, more often as the Torah. And so I’m going to use that word. It means law or instruction. What I often tell my students is that if the Bible were a song, the Torah is what introduces us to the song’s main melody, a melody that is repeated and finally resolved as the story moves along. If you listen carefully to that song, that melody, you’ll notice various themes. Themes like God’s holiness, what it means that he’s a God of holy love and purity and power. And then other themes focus around how do you respond to that holy God? And the challenge is that a lot of these themes are first sounded in books like Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers. And because those books are hard for us to read, here’s the danger: we could miss out on some of the most important places in the Bible that are introducing us to some of the most important themes of the Bible’s melody and song.

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful. When it comes to the book of Exodus, I wonder if you can help us place it within the narratival context of the rest of the Pentateuch and the story of redemption. What’s happened before in the story, and then where does the book of Exodus end? Remind us how it fits.

Jay Sklar
One of the fascinating things about the Torah is that it’s one big, long story. And so to understand Exodus well and where it fits in the story, we actually have to go back to Genesis 12. Genesis 12 is one of these key chapters in the Torah where the Lord’s appearing to Moses and making him a promise of land and a promise of descendants. And so as you go through the rest of Genesis, you see that it keeps coming back to these themes of descendants and land, descendants and land. By the time you get to the end of Genesis, the descendant side of things is looking pretty good. Abraham’s family has now grown through Isaac and then Jacob. There are seventy people. But from the land perspective, there’s a big problem. When Genesis ends, the family is outside of the promised land down in Egypt. And so this is where the book of Exodus begins. And as Exodus begins, in its first two chapters what you see is on the one hand, the descendant aspect of things is still really good. In fact, there are so many Israelites in the land that you open a kitchen cupboard and Israelites are falling out. They’re just everywhere. But there’s still outside the land, and now the Pharaoh is determined to wipe them out. And so the first two chapters of Exodus show this crying need that the Israelites have for deliverance. And when you get to the end of chapter 2, you read these beautiful words in verses 24 and 25, that God heard their groaning. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. And one thing you’ll note there is that the word God is repeated four different times. You don’t have to do that. You could have said God heard their groaning, and he remembered, etc. But it says God remembered, and God saw, and God knew in order to emphasize help is coming. Your redeemer is coming. And so that kicks us off into the rest of the book. And what you see in the rest of the book is this beautiful story of God redeeming his people, bringing them up out of Egypt, taking them to Mount Sinai, where he enters into covenant relationship with them and then has them build this tabernacle so that at the end of the book, we read this incredible story of God descending in this cloud of glory and filling the tabernacle so that he can dwell among his people. And what that emphasizes is that from God’s perspective, redemption is always for the sake of relationship. The reason he’s rescuing his people is because he wants to dwell among them and be among them. This is how God works.

08:12 - The Burning Bush

Matt Tully
Let’s take some time now to walk through a few different stories from the book of Exodus. Stories that I’m sure are familiar to our listeners, but even if they are familiar, I know that they are stories that often provoke lots of questions and maybe have elements to them that can be a little bit confusing to us. So, that first story that I thought we could look at is the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3. This is a foundational image. I’m sure we all can imagine the felt boards in Sunday school class that had this, or some other kind of Bible storybook that we read as kids.

Jay Sklar
You’re telling your age there, Matt.

Matt Tully
I’m just of the generation that maybe just had a little bit of the felt board. I don’t know if anyone younger than me would’ve done that. Again, set the stage for us a little bit with this story of Moses and the burning bush. What’s happening so far, and why a burning bush? That’s one of those things where it can be so familiar to us as Christians if we grew up in the church, but let’s take a step back and ask the question, Why a bush on fire but not being consumed?

Jay Sklar
The context here is just a few minutes ago I read that verse from the end of chapter 2 of Exodus where it said that God saw and he knew and he remembered. And the very next thing we read is Moses and the burning bush. And so the end of chapter 2 is telling you salvation is coming, a deliver is coming. You turn the page, and here he is. It’s Moses. So, in terms of context, that’s what leads us in. But why a burning bush? The text doesn’t explicitly say, so we’re left to guess. One of the things that people have observed is that when God appears elsewhere, it’s not uncommon that he appears with fire. And this happens at Mount Sinai itself. This cloud of glory descends and it’s lit up with fire and lightning, and there’s smoke going up like the smoke of a furnace. And so on the one hand, fire is a very common way for God to appear. A second thing that some people have pointed out is that it’s really interesting here that the bush is not consumed, which some have interpreted to show that God’s holiness is completely independent. He doesn’t need anything else. He is self-sufficient. And so this fire isn’t dependent on anything else. It’s a fire that is self-sustained. Now, that’s speculation.

Matt Tully
It’s not burning the fuel of the wood of that tree.

Jay Sklar
That’s correct.

Matt Tully
Interesting.

Jay Sklar
And that is speculation, but it certainly is in keeping with what we know of the Lord. He is the completely independent one. And in fact, I don’t know how much we wanna get into it, but even in this episode, when he gives his name, there’s an emphasis on that.

Matt Tully
That was actually my next question, Jay, so you’re leading us right there. This is perhaps the most famous self-revelation of God in the Bible, in terms of a name that he gives himself. And so the context, again, is Moses is asking God how to answer the people of Israel when they ask him the name of the God who sent them to him. And that’s when God gives him this response. And the ESV translates verse 14 as "I AM WHO I AM." And in the ESV all of those words are in caps. So I wonder if you could just help us understand this. Other translations sometimes translate this in different ways, and we maybe have all heard sermons where a pastor took a certain approach to this in understanding what’s going on here. How do you understand what God is actually telling Moses in this passage?

Jay Sklar
It’s important to notice a couple of things. The translation is usually either "I AM WHO I AM" or "I will be who I will be." Either one is possible. I lean towards the "I AM WHO I AM" translation of this. And then he shortens it: "I AM has sent me." And then in the next verse he says, "Say to the Israelites," and now he uses the divine name, which is often pronounced as Yahweh. And so there are a few things to say here. The first thing to say is there is debate about how do you pronounce the divine name. Historically, most scholars have said Yahweh. That’s still probably a majority opinion, though there are other opinions as well. But the key is it is a name. He is not Marduk, he’s not Moloch, he’s not Ishtar. He is Yahweh. If he were to sign something, if he were to sign the Bible, he would sign it Yahweh. It’s a name. God has a name. At some point, and here’s a second thing to note, at some point the Jews stopped pronouncing the name. And so whenever they came to this divine name, instead of Yahweh they would say Adonai, which means Lord. And so what you see in the early translation of the Bible into Greek, they translate using the Greek word for Lord, kyrios, and English translations today have generally done the same. And here’s how you can tell, though, if it’s the divine name. When you look in your Bibles, if the word Lord is in small capital letters, it means the divine name is there. So, Yahweh has a name. We think it’s pronounced Yahweh. We typically don’t translate it as Yahweh in our Bibles; we put LORD in small caps. But what does the name mean? And here there is huge debate. I think at this point in writing the commentary, you’re going through and you can do verses in different amounts of time. And I got to this verse, and it was like eighty hours later. That just really wrecked any progress.

Matt Tully
It slowed your pace.

Jay Sklar
It did slow my pace quite a bit. So, there’s huge debate, and I go over some different options in the commentary. But here’s where I came down in terms of my understanding of what’s going on. It is agreed that "I AM WHO I AM," the verb "to be" in Hebrew, is related to the divine name. And what I think Yahweh is saying here when he’a explaining his name as "I AM WHO I AM," what he’s doing is that he is emphasizing his existence. You could translate this, "I am. I really am." And so you ask, Why emphasize your existence? What’s that about? Well, as you go through the rest of the book of Exodus, you see that what he’s really emphasizing is that he is unique in terms of his divinity. There is no God like him, and he’s unique in terms of his existence. There is no God but him. There is no God like him. I am in a way that others are not. And there’s no God but him. I am, and others are not. And one of the reasons I think we can see that is because when you go from Exodus 3 into the following chapters, this is where we get the stories of all of these plagues that the Lord brings on the land of Egypt. And in the midst of the plagues, where he’s demonstrating I am a God unlike any other Egyptian god and where he is demonstrating I am God and there are no other Egyptian gods, he says time and again, I am Yahweh. Right in the midst of it. And so that’s what he’s illustrating for us. In Exodus 9:14 he says, "This time I will send the full force of my plagues against you so you may know there is no one like me in all the earth." So again, unique in terms of his divinity. No one like him. And when Deuteronomy looks back on this, it says, "To you it was shown that you might know Yahweh is God. There is no other besides him." So, unique in terms of his existence. All that to say there is no God like him and no God but him. And of course we can’t talk about this without remembering that in the New Testament Jesus at one point links himself directly with what’s going on here by saying, "I am." To see Jesus is to see Yahweh.

16:12 - A Bridegroom of Blood

Matt Tully
The next story I wanted to look at actually follows on the heels of the story of the burning bush. This is in the category of maybe not something that we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about or probably remember from Sunday school. It’s in Exodus 4:24–26. It’s this story of Moses and him being this bridegroom of blood. I wonder if you can just briefly summarize the story. What happens and what’s going on here?

Jay Sklar
It’s three verses. Why don’t I just read this? "At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. [Talking about Moses.] Then Zipporah [Moses’ wife] took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision." So, what’s unclear about that, Matt? We read this and we’re like, What in the world is going on? And perhaps as an umbrella category for this passage, there are a few passages in the Bible that are enigmatic, unclear, opaque, and that we will never understand this side of glory because to understand them, we’d have to have historical knowledge that has been lost to us. And I think this passage fits into that category. That doesn’t mean we can’t say anything about it. I’ll say something about it in just a minute, but sometimes it’s just helpful to know there are some things that we won’t understand until glory, and it’s better to to rest there than come up with a forced explanation.

Matt Tully
Before you get into trying to draw a little bit from this story, what do you make of that fact, both as a Bible scholar and as someone who has a pastoral heart for other Christians, what do we make of the fact that there are things in Scripture that perhaps we just can’t fully understand it? It could call into question, I thought Scripture was intended to be revelation for us, teaching us things, so why would God include things in here that we literally cannot penetrate this side of glory?

Jay Sklar
To that concern I’d begin by saying everything that we need to understand for salvation is very clear in the Scriptures. And so the things that are unclear don’t keep us from knowing the main things that are true about who God is, what he calls us to do, what he’s done in Jesus, and how he’s given us his Spirit. There’s just so much there that we can spend the rest of our lives studying it and we still won’t get to the bottom of it. The second thing I would say, though, is that the fact that there are some things that we won’t understand until we get to glory, to me, speak to how directly God speaks to people in time and space. What I mean by that is the reason that some things will remain unclear to us is because God is speaking very specifically to very specific people in very specific times and places. And because of that, he can sometimes assume things that they know that we no longer know today. And again, thankfully, none of those impinge on things we need to know for salvation. But it’s a helpful reminder for us to approach the text, one, with humility, but I think also with thankfulness that this is a God who showed up on specific dates—August 5th, 1422 BC—to speak to somebody in this specific little village in the ancient Near East.

Matt Tully
Okay, so help us understand a little bit what’s going on with this story. What can we glean from the text?

Jay Sklar
Right. What can we get from this? So most agree that the Lord is seeking to kill Moses here and that Zipporah’s actions save him. So, that seems fairly agreed, but what’s the connection between the two? Why does he want to kill Moses, and why does Zipporah’s actions save him? That’s where more of the questions begin. There are sort of two levels here. On the one hand, I think what we could say about this passage is that circumcision is obviously central to what’s going on. When we look at circumcision up to this point in the story of the Torah, we see Genesis 17, when Abraham and his descendants had to be circumcised. And if you refused circumcision, you were going to be cut off from the people. In this story, for some reason, Moses’ son is not circumcised, which is a serious thing. It seems to mean that he is withholding his son from the Lord, because that’s what it was to circumcise your child. It was to say, This child is going to be a Yahweh-follower. And Moses hasn’t done this, and so the fact that the Lord wants to put Moses to death emphasizes the importance of the covenant sign. And that’s why Zipporah’s action of circumcising her son actually ends up saving Moses. But once we go beyond that to ask questions like, Why does she touch the foreskin to Moses’ feet? Why does she describe him as a bridegroom of blood? This is where there are as many answers as there are commentators. I think we have to recognize that we probably, unless we discover some archeological evidence that gives us new insight into how circumcision worked and why you would touch something to the foreskin, aside from that, I think we’re really in the dark, in terms of why these specific actions are going on.

22:08 - Ten Signs of God’s Sovereign, Kingly Power

Matt Tully
Let’s move forward to the plagues. These are some of the most exciting scenes in the book of Exodus. Sometimes one question we can have with the plagues is why send those particular plagues in the way that he did? Some of them can seem pretty odd and random, like a bunch of frogs. But I think those who have maybe studied the Bible a little bit more or read a study Bible might have a general sense that there might be something else going on in terms of the significance of the plagues that God chose to send. So give us a quick overview of what that might be.

Jay Sklar
Sure. The first thing to say is that the Bible most often calls these signs instead of plagues, which is very helpful to know because biblically speaking, what does a sign do? It points beyond itself to something that’s true about God. So, by referring to these as signs more than plagues, the Bible’s already indicating this is a learning opportunity. We’re supposed to see something that’s true about God as we observe these signs. And so the question is, What are we supposed to learn? And the Lord himself actually answers the question in Exodus 9:14. He’s talking to Pharaoh and he says, "so that you may know there is none like me in all the earth." In these signs, the Lord is demonstrating his sovereign, kingly power, and he’s showing us that power in two different realms: in the heavenly realm and in the earthly. Some of these plagues seem to be direct attacks against Egyptian deities. The most obvious, of course, is the ninth plague. In the ninth Plague, the Lord causes darkness over the land of Egypt. The Bible says, "a darkness to be felt." In Egypt, the sun was worshiped as a manifestation of various deities—Atum, Ra, Amun, Amun-Ra. And so when the Lord obliterates the sun’s light, he’s showing that he has obliterated the deity behind it.

Matt Tully
The Egyptians would’ve felt that. They would’ve felt, Oh my word! What God have we just started to mess with?

Jay Sklar
They would have asked, Who has the power to cover over Amun-Ra? And the answer is Yahweh. We see another instance of how the plagues show the Lord’s sovereignty in the heavenly realms when we get to the last plague. And in the last plague, he says that this plague is going to be a judgment "on all the gods of Egypt." That’s in chapter 12. It’s as though to say, When I bring the plague against the firstborn on the land, it doesn’t matter what god you’re going to call out to. It will be useless because I am the sovereign over all of the gods in the heavens. There is no God like me. And in fact, it becomes clear there is no God but him.

Matt Tully
So, in some ways the plagues are the actual practical demonstration of the truth that he’s already highlighted in his name earlier in Exodus 3.

Jay Sklar
Exactly. Exactly. And that works out not just in this heavenly realm but it then also works out on the earthly realm. Because in the earthly realm, Pharaoh was seen not as a god in Egypt, but in this point in history, as an earthly representative or image of an Egyptian god. And one of the duties he was responsible for was maintaining order in the land. The Egyptian word was Maat. And key to maintaining order in the land was making sure that the Nile flooded regularly so that the crops could grow. What happens with the signs? Well, the Nile is turned into blood. Crops in the land can’t grow. Crops in the land later get devastated by a hailstorm, which unmasks Pharaoh for the mere mortal that he really is. So, properly understood, the signs of the Exodus show that the Lord is completely set apart, completely holy in terms of his magnificent power. And for the wicked that’s actually a mercy. It’s meant to give them an opportunity to repent. We often just think of judgment as the Lord being angry. Well, actually, no. This is mercy to give them a chance to repent and acknowledge the Lord for who he is. Some of the Egyptians listened. They actually brought their servants in before one of the plagues, and their servants were saved from a hailstorm. It’s a mercy in that way, but it’s also, of course, the Lord’s demonstration of mercy for his people, because he uses these to deliver them.

26:58 - Two Tools for Approaching the Ten Commandments

Matt Tully
We’ll skip ahead to the next passage I wanted to talk about, which is Exodus 20 and the Ten Commandments. I’m sure all of our listeners are at least somewhat familiar with the Ten Commandments, so we won’t go through each of them in order. But what would you say Christians often get wrong about the Ten Commandments, in your experience?

Jay Sklar
That’s a great question. Maybe I can approach it by giving two tools for Christians to use when reading the Ten Commandments. Because I think for many of us, we’ve never really been trained in how to read law, so it’s easy to make mistakes. But I’ve found these two tools to be super helpful when you’re coming across any law, not just the Ten Commandments, but the laws that follow it, the laws elsewhere in Leviticus, etc. And the two tools are values and floor and ceiling. Values and floor and ceiling. First, values. The first thing to remember when reading law is that laws are an expression of the values of the law-giver. So, I’ll ask my students at Covenant Seminary why do we have laws against murder? And they say, Well, we value life. Why do we have laws against stealing? Well, we value the right to private property. Why do we have laws against speeding? Well, our municipalities need the money. No, again, it’s a life issue, isn’t it? It’s protection of life. And so laws demonstrate the values of the law-giver. So, that’s the first thing to remember whenever you’re reading a law because you want to be thinking, Okay, what’s the value going on behind this? And that leads to the second thing, floor and ceiling. I mentioned Gordon Wenham earlier. He wrote a really helpful essay about the ethics of law in the Old Testament. And he pointed out that a lot of laws indicate a minimum of behavior that you must not fall below. He called that the floor. This is a minimum. Do not murder. That’s just a bare minimum of behavior that you can’t fall before. But he pointed out that minimum does not define what it means to be a righteous person. Just because you’re not murdering people doesn’t mean you’re righteous. This is what Jesus takes the Pharisees to task for. They’re thinking, Hey, we’re keeping all these laws, but they’re missing what true righteousness is. And Wenham said, and this is where the value comes in, that because there’s a value in every law, that value points to an ethical ceiling, to a standard of living that the righteous strive to attain towards. So, with do not murder, what’s the value? Well, the value of life. What does that mean? Well, the righteous person isn’t the person who simply avoids murdering; it’s the person who tries to help the life of others to flourish. That’s what the righteous do. And so if you can remember that floor and ceiling as you’re reading these laws—value and floor and ceiling—all of a sudden it really opens up whole new vistas for understanding what these laws do and how they function. Jesus was getting at this in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, "You heard it said . . . but I say to you." He’s not saying, Hey, I’m discounting the Old Testament here. What he’s saying is, You need to understand the ceiling here. You think you’ve done well by not murdering someone. If you just hate somebody, you’re missing what this law is all about. The Westminster Larger catechism, when it gets to the Ten Commandments, does a beautiful job here of asking what does each commandment forbid, but also what does it enjoin us to do? What does it encourage us to do? What’s the ceiling? It does a fantastic job.

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful way of thinking about how we should even just approach these laws. Maybe one question about the Ten Commandments themselves. We all know that they were written by God on these stone tablets and given to Moses on the top of the mountain. The first set, as we’ll remember, Moses breaks on the ground in response to the golden calf. We could ask lots of questions about that I’m sure as well, but what do we know about that second set? What ended up happening to those tablets later on in the biblical story?

Jay Sklar
The first set gets broken. Moses is embodying what the Israelites have just done to their covenant relationship with the Lord. They smashed it into a million pieces. So, he does the same with the covenant documents. And then of course he goes to the Lord, appeals, and we can get into that a bit more later perhaps, but the Lord gives a second set of tablets with the commandments on them. And these are eventually deposited in the ark inside the tabernacle. Hence the name, the Arc of the Covenant, because the covenant documents were placed there. In the ancient Near East, it wasn’t uncommon, when you entered into a covenant relationship with somebody, to take those covenant documents and put them at the feet of your respective deities in the temple. And so this is exactly what’s happening in the book of Exodus. Those covenant documents are taken and put at the Lord’s feet, if you will, because he sits enthroned over the ark. The ark is his footstool. There he sits enthroned. which means every time an Israelite looks at the tabernacle, if they’re thinking deeply about it, reflectively, if they’re remembering, they should be realizing, Oh yeah. We are in covenant relationship with the Lord. That’s where the document is, and he’s sitting as divine witness over it.

Matt Tully
That’s so interesting. With all due respect to Indiana Jones, what do scholars actually think happened to the ark and the tablets? Do we know anything about what might have happened?

Jay Sklar
I don’t think we have a good sense of what happened. The text just doesn’t give us really good indicators of where the ark ended up.

Matt Tully
Should we think that it was in Solomon’s temple? Would it have made it all the way to the temple?

Jay Sklar
Oh, I think so, yeah. In fact, yes, because in David’s time, you remember the story of Uriah, as the ark is being moved. And so that would’ve been brought into the temple. But the question becomes, What happened during the exile when the temple was destroyed? And that’s where we’re left in the dark.

Matt Tully
We just don’t know.

33:16 - What We Can Know About God by Observing the Tabernacle

Matt Tully
The second half of the book of Exodus, as we’ve already said, gets into some nuanced details related to the creation of the tabernacle. And this is the area where sometimes it can get a little bit hard slogging. And I wonder if you could help us understand why are so many details presented about the tabernacle? What’s the purpose of all of the specificity that we read in the text?

Jay Sklar
On the one hand, the specificity is there simply because this was an actual building, and they needed to know how many feet long it should be. Or in their words, how many cubits long? How many cubits high?

Matt Tully
How long was a cubit, by the way?

Jay Sklar
A foot and half. So, the structure was forty-five feet long, fifteen feet wide, and fifteen feet high. The holy of holies was 15x15x15, so a perfect cube. And then the holy place, which was in front of it, was a longer room: 30x15x15. And what’s fascinating, quick ancient Near Eastern aside, we have a picture of Ramsey II’s his war tent, and the picture shows that his war tent was in the middle of the war camp and that it had a forecourt that was twice as long as an interior court, which was a perfect cube. Which is fascinating because it’s as though the Lord’s saying, Okay, how do I help Israelites to understand this is a king dwelling in their midst? Well, we’ll make the tabernacle like king’s tents that they’re familiar with.

Matt Tully
Because they were just in Egypt, and they’ve seen this, presumably. Wow. That’s so interesting. Beyond that these are actual plans for building an actual structure, what else might be behind this?

Jay Sklar
One thing we need to keep in mind is that the overarching purpose of the tent is so that the Lord could dwell among them. In Exodus 29:45, he says, "They will know that I’m the Lord who’s rescued them so I could dwell among them." That’s his purpose. And so when you look at the tent, you begin to learn different things about who the Lord is. All of these details are like 1,000 paintbrush strokes that give this beautiful picture of who God is. And so, for example, just looking at the tent, you would’ve been reminded of redemption. Why? the tent is made up of all these beautiful materials. Where did those materials come from? When the Israelites left Egypt, the Lord told them, "Ask your neighbors for gold and silver and precious materials." And so those would’ve been some of the very things that got worked into this tent. So, every time you’re looking at the tent, you’re remembering, Oh yeah! That was made out of things that we got when the Lord redeemed us from Egypt. So, it’s a reminder of redemption. When you look at the tent, you’re reminded that Yahweh is King. This is a palace tent in the people’s midst, and it speaks to his kingship. So, how do you know you’re at a palace? It’s furniture is unlike any other furniture. That’s true at the tent of meeting: golden furniture. No one in Israel has golden furniture. How do you know you’re at a palace? There are uniformed servants there. That’s exactly what the priests are doing. How do you know you’re at a palace? People bring tribute there. That’s what the Israelites are doing with their offerings. So, you’re seeing he’s a redeemer, he’s a king, and then you’re seeing he’s a holy King. Because when you look at where he dwells, it’s not in the holy place. He’s in the most holy place. Who can go in there? Not ritually pure Israelites, not holy priests. Only the most holy high priests, and only once a year. What are the materials there? Well, in the forecourt, you’ve got bronze. By the time you get to the most holy place, everything is gold and silver. The most precious materials for the most holy King. So, when you’re looking at the tabernacle, we get lost in all the details. But an Israelite seeing the finished product would be like, *That is a redeemer who is a King, who is a holy king, who wants to be near us.

37:18 - Later Reflections of Exodus Throughout the Bible

Matt Tully
That’s a great segue into one of my final questions. The story of the exodus, the exodus proper but also all the other things that happen after Israel leaves Egypt and is in the wilderness all captured in this incredible book, these themes and these stories set all these trajectories that then pop up again and ultimately come to fruition throughout the rest of the Bible. I wonder if you could just speak to that a little bit and the way that the message of Exodus continues to reappear in Scripture, culminating ultimately in Jesus. Give us a little bit of a taste of how that works.

Jay Sklar
That was one of the fun things to do in the commentary was think through in the intro, How do we see later reflections of Exodus throughout the rest of the Bible? How does Exodus help us understand the rest of the Bible well? And so let me just give you a few that I had there. This list is not exhaustive. It’s not exhaustive in the commentary, but it was so fun to begin to see some of these themes. In Exodus, the Lord declares himself to be the great I AM. In John 8, Jesus does the same. In Exodus, you have a Passover lamb that is sacrificed to deliver the Israelites from destruction. In Jesus, we have a Passover Lamb who’s sacrificed to deliver us from final destruction. In Exodus, why do the Israelites celebrate the Passover? To celebrate the Lord’s protective deliverance. In the New Testament, why do we celebrate communion? Communion was actually inaugurated at the Passover feast as a sign for us and symbol and seal of what Jesus does for us in delivering us from judgment to come. In Exodus, the Lord provides bread from heaven to feed physical hunger. In Jesus, he provides the bread from heaven to feed us in terms of our spiritual hunger. In Exodus, how’s the covenant inaugurated? With blood. In the New Testament, how is the new covenant inaugurated? With blood—this time of a perfect Lamb, a perfect priest. In Exodus, part of the covenant responsibilities were being a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. In the New Testament, what are we called to be? A kingdom of priests and a holy nation. One final one. In Exodus, the Lord dwells in Israel’s midst in the tabernacle where he manifests his glory. In Jesus, what do we see? That God shows up in the flesh, and we have beheld his glory. In fact, John 1:14 talks about this, and the Greek says that he "tabernacled" among us. It uses a root that’s used in the Old Testament in the Greek translation to describe the tabernacle, so that when you’re reading John 1 in the context of Exodus, it’s clear that Yahweh has shown up in our midst. He’s with us again in Christ.

[00:40:08]
Matt Tully
I imagine there are people, like me right now, who are hearing you talk through that list and are listening to this conversation as a whole, and they feel a desire right now to jump into the book of Exodus. I want to go back and read through that book. Maybe there are people who have never actually read through the whole book straight through. What would be three or four tips you’d offer? What is some practical advice for someone like that before they actually jump in and start reading?

Jay Sklar
I’d say three things. There are three main types of literature inExodus. You have stories, you have laws, and then you have tabernacle instructions.

Matt Tully
That’s its own genre, huh?

Jay Sklar
That’s its own genre. And so here’s what to remember for each one. For stories, remember that God is always the hero of the story. And what I mean by that is that it’s easy to read one of these stories and say, Oh, clearly the Israelites were bad here. They didn’t trust. Don’t be bad. Make sure to trust. Well, that’s moralism. When you look at what’s going on in these stories, the writer of Hebrews picks up on these stories and it uses them as a warning, but how does it do it? It begins the warning by saying, "Fix your thoughts on Jesus." And it follows the warning by saying, "Yes, sin makes you turn away from the living God." In other words, when you’re reading through these stories, you want to be asking, What were they forgetting about God? What were they no longer believing about God? And what is true about God and how he provides for us and how he cares for us? So that instead of ending up with moralism, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, you’re remembering, Oh, the reason that I can behave differently than the Israelites is because of who God is. So, you’re looking to God for his strength. You’re looking to what happens in the gospel in Jesus for your strength instead of your own. With stories, that’s one of the keys to remember. With laws, as we’ve talked about, I just say remember values and the floor and the ceiling. Values and the floor and the ceiling. That will help you when you read through the sections on laws. And then when it comes to the tabernacle section, it’s helpful to remember the bigger picture. When you’re looking at the tabernacle, you’re remembering this reminds us of a redeemer who is a king, who is a holy king, who wants to dwell among his people.

Matt Tully
Jay, thank you so much for taking us on this tour through the book of Exodus and helping us understand a little bit better how we should approach it and think about it as Christians reading it today. We really appreciate it.

Jay Sklar
My pleasure. Thanks, Matt, for having me.

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