Exod 20 – The Ten “Words” or Commandments:  The Schocken Bible points out that they are unusual in that no penalties are attached for breaking them as in the more detailed regulations that will follow.  They are the framework against which the more detailed infractions must be understood.  The order differs for Jews as it does for Catholics and Protestants.  The following is the Jewish division:

Tablet 1

• I am YHWH “who…

Exod 16 – The Israelites take the “long way around” to Canaan, through the Wilderness of Shur, around the western coast of the Sinai Peninsula through the towns of Marah and Elim, then to the Wilderness of Sin - see the map if you are as unfamiliar with this territory as I was: http://www.wall-maps.com/bible/232783-over.htm - you have to love the internet.  Here they begin to grumble: “Would that we had died at the Lord’s…

The journey of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to new life in the land of promise is a journey that will take 40 years - a symbolic number again, a number that seems to embody the sense of completeness, fullness. This exodus journey, which in some ways, has come to represent spiritual journeying generally will not be a journey planned out in any kind of detail. It will be rooted in faith and trust in the God Moses looks to.

Exod 13 – The journey will be celebrated and…