40 Bicycles

At the moment I am seeking to explore the development of the Red Sea Crossing theme in Scripture. I am due to write a brief dissertation on the subject for college this next semester. I thought that my blog would provide an ideal place to gradually formulate my thoughts over the coming months. I would greatly appreciate any interaction and feedback that people could give. From time to time I intend to take a random verse and study its relation to this overarching theme. I am sure that, as my study of this topic progresses, I will find myself returning to verses I have already examined.

Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant… —Hebrews 13:20

This verse has a number of Old Testament echoes worth noting (including Ezekiel 34:23-25; 37:24-26; Zechariah 9:11). [On the subject of Scriptural echoes, read Hays]. However, I wish to concentrate primarily on the echo of Isaiah 63:11-12:—

Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people, saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? where is he that put his holy Spirit within him? That led them by the right hand of Moses with his glorious arm, dividing the water before them, to make himself an everlasting name?

References to the resurrection are almost wholly indirect in the body of the epistle to the Hebrews. Only in the concluding benediction is the resurrection, which has maintained an implied presence throughout the letter, brought into central focus. When it is finally placed in the foreground, it gains a deeper resonance from the form in which it is expressed — an ingenious pastiche of Old Testament allusions. Reading Hebrews 13:20 in dialogue with the passages to which it alludes can prove fruitful for our exegesis. The writer of the book of Hebrews has already explicitly paralleled Jesus and Moses in 3:1-7. However, in Hebrews 13:20 he brings the two characters together again, this time by use of a Scripture echo. Moses, the subject of Isaiah 63:11-12, is compared with Christ, the subject of Hebrews 13:20. In Isaiah 63:11-12 the prophet recounts God’s dealings with Israel in the Exodus, with especial reference to the Red Sea crossing, something he has already done earlier on in the book — 51:9-10. The verses describe the Red Sea crossing, with an emphasis upon the role of Moses. The passage speaks of ‘Moses and his people’, accenting the solidarity between Moses and the children of Israel. This is a recurring theme in Scripture. We can see it expressed with particular power in Exodus 32:7f. (this passage is doubtless in Isaiah’s mind; there are a number of interesting parallels) where Moses pleads with God for the children of Israel. God says to Moses:—

Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves

It is interesting to observe that God speaks of a clear sense in which the people of Israel are Moses’ people. This should not surprise us: the New Testament witnesses to the fact that it was the Red Sea crossing itself that established a solidarity between Moses and the Israelites (1 Corinthians 10:2 — baptized into Moses). [A side point on the issue of the solidarity established between Moses and his people: Should we see a deeper significance to the dispute over the ‘body of Moses’ in Jude 9? Could the ‘body of Moses’ bear an incorporative interpretation in addition to the obvious meaning (like ‘body of Christ’)?] The prophet here gives voice to this truth. The people were ‘brought up out of the sea’. I am sure that we should sense an echo between this and the prior experience of Moses himself (Exodus 2:10). What is the symbolic import of the ‘sea’? I would argue that the sea symbolizes the forces of chaos out of which God brought the land. The sea is the restless power. God’s might is seen in His dominance over this power. The Bible does not depict the forces of chaos as equal and opposite to God. God symbolically destroys these forces by bringing His people out of the sea. It is interesting to observe verse 12, where we see the close relationship between the work of Moses and the work of God. This is again seen in the Exodus 14 account, which concludes with the fact that the people believed both the LORD and His servant Moses. The parallels between this passage and Hebrews 13 are striking. Just as God brought Moses — ‘the shepherd of His flock’ —up out of the sea, so He brought Jesus — ‘that great shepherd of the sheep’ — again from the dead. In both events we see the victory of the covenant God over the forces of death and chaos (this is a theme I will explore in more depth in future posts, God-willing). In both accounts the reality of the solidarity between the ‘shepherd’ and ‘flock’ is immediately apparent. In Hebrews the Person who is the object of God’s work is described both in His relation to us (‘our’ Lord Jesus) and in His office (‘that great shepherd of the sheep’), which again underlines the solidarity. This should by no means surprise us. If the Red Sea crossing is seen as the event in which the solidarity between Moses and his people was most clearly established and manifested (1 Corinthians 10:2), then none can dispute a clear relationship between this and the death of the Messiah (Romans 6:3-6). As N.T. Wright observes in The Resurrection of the Son of God:—

Moses ‘was “led forth”, not as an isolated individual, but as the shepherd of the flock’; this is true of Jesus as well, the first to rise, anticipating the resurrection of all at the end…

The doctrine of union with the Messiah underlies a lot of the book of Hebrews. The import of this can easily be missed by evangelicals who often have a vaguely docetic view of Jesus. Jesus, as Hebrews 2 proves, was ‘one of us’ in every sense. Any position that undermines the humanity of the Messiah will undermine the reality of our union. As I might seek to prove at some later date, recapitulation of the experience of the Messiah can be seen to be a central theme in Hebrews 12 and other chapters. On the presupposition of union with the Messiah Hebrews 13:20 can become a source of deep encouragement to the Christian. We are assured of future resurrection because the ‘captain of our salvation’ has already achieved it and we are united with Him (Romans 6:5). To finish this study, I would like to give some brief comments on the meaning of the phrase ‘through the blood of the everlasting covenant’. Some have taken this to refer to an eternal covenant of redemption. Personally, I have not found such a position persuasive. The covenant, rather is established as an eternal (in the sense that it will never be destroyed or rendered obsolete) covenant in history by the blood of the Messiah (Matthew 26:28). We are, I believe, to read Hebrews 13:20 in parallel with Zechariah 9:11, where ‘the blood of the covenant’ probably refers to the blood of the sacrifices (so Calvin). In Hebrews 13:20, the blood is the blood of Jesus’ own death and the covenant is the New Covenant established by that death. If we read the ‘everlasting covenant’ as a reference to the covenant of redemption I fear that we may end up atemporalizing the death of our Lord.