169 THE CONTINUITY OF THE NON-PRIESTLY NARRATIVE what has come before it in the narrative, in which the entire Israelite populace comprises no more than Jacob’s sons and their families 14. The notion that the Israelites constituted a foreign population within Egypt is a recurring one in the non-priestly account. We find mention of it again in Exod 2,22 (repeated in 18,3), when Moses names his son, Gershom, saying, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land”. It appears further in the laws of the Covenant Code: “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exod 22,20), and “for you know the feelings of the stranger, having been strangers in the land of Egypt” (23,9). Again, these descriptions depend on the reader’s knowledge of Israel’s origins outside of Egypt; furthermore, the use of the term gēr indicates that the Israelites were only temporary sojourners in Egypt and that they went there of their own accord 15. In other words, the description of the Israelites as strangers in Egypt requires a story very much like that of the patriarchal and Joseph narratives, which estab- lish Israel’s homeland and how and why they became a foreign pop- ulation in Egypt. The necessity of the patriarchal narratives for understanding the non-priestly exodus account is made even clearer in the call of Moses in Exodus 3. Three times in this chapter God describes himself as “the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (3,6.15. 16; so also in 4,5). This is not only a title established exclu- sively in the non-priestly patriarchal narrative (Gen 31,29; 43,23; 49,25; 50,17; it is nowhere in P), it is a concept that depends on the reader’s knowledge of God’s relationship with the characters Abra- ham, Isaac, and Jacob. Further, when God refers in this chapter to Is- rael as “my people” (Exod 3,7.10; see also 5,1; 7,16.26, etc.), it presumes some grounds for God’s relationship with this foreign pop- ulace in Egypt. Those grounds are nowhere provided in the exodus account; they derive only from the election of Abraham and his de- scendants in the patriarchal narrative. In this regard the non-priestly story contradicts that of P, in which the 14 Israelites have already multiplied (Gen 47,27). Schmid has noted that in the patriarchal accounts it is only P that refers 15 to the patriarchs as gērîm in Canaan. He takes this as an indication that P is already foreshadowing the exodus by making the patriarchal family’s stay in Canaan a temporary one. I am more inclined to read P’s use of gēr in the pa- triarchal stories as P’s recognition that the patriarchal family came to Canaan from elsewhere (as P describes in Gen 12,5). The term gēr is used to indicate a resident alien; it speaks to a person’s origin, rather than their destination. © Gregorian Biblical Press 2012 - Tutti i diritti riservati