Exodus 1-18: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary

Book excerpt: Graham I. Davies provides his long-awaited commentary on the first ten chapters of the second book of the Torah in this in-depth engagement with Exodus chapters 1-10. Davies brings together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, philological, archaeological, historical, literary, and theological - to help the reader understand the text at hand. The first ten chapters of Exodus cover the affliction in Egypt and the finding of Moses as well as the plagues of Egypt and Moses' interactions with Pharaoh. Davies plumbs the depths of these well-known texts, bringing out many profound insights into their structure and meaning, and into the history of scholarship. Two results of Davies's research are to place the old hypothesis of an Elohistic source on a much stronger footing and to reaffirm that both it and the J source extended through both Genesis and Exodus.