I led a seder today, as requested by the leadership of the Student Christian Fellowship. And while I was drawing up the plans for it, I realized that I couldn’t have a real conversation about the theological and ethical significance of the Confederacy without looking at the Passover story. The Passover story is a memorial of the birth of the Jewish nation, starting with the spectacular and violent deliverance of an enslaved ethnic group from the hands of its oppressive slave-drivers. This is a central story, undergirding, influencing, and casting light on all the rest of the Bible. In the first half of Genesis, Abraham is assured that one day his descendants will be enslaved, only to be freed later. Exodus is about the freeing of the slaves, and God’s Torah being given to prepare them to navigate the choices they will have in free life. Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy outline where the slaves were sent after bondage and the ethical and ritual principles that were to govern their national life. Joshua explains where they found rest after their slavery, and Judges outlines their ongoing struggles to keep their freedom. Samuel and Kings illustrate how the free declined once they sacrificed their freedom for security. The prophets seek to stop the Israelites from losing their freedom, and they tell a story of regaining freedom after the Babylonian captivity. Throughout, God repeatedly presents his credentials by saying, ‘I am YHWH who brought you out of Egypt.’

The Torah is given upon the deliverance of the Israelites, and the ten commandments open with ‘I am YHWH who brought you out of Egypt.’ It underlies everything for Judaism. This is underlined by the annual nature of the Passover meal. A lamb is slaughtered, blood is smeared on doors, and the Angel of Destruction passes by and does not kill the Israelite firstborns. An annual rehearsal dinner is instituted, its goal being, among other things, to teach the children so that the community as a whole can continue to remember, collectively, the deliverance. The Exodus self-consciously makes the deliverance underlying framework which supports the relationship of God with his people.

Now, I realize that some will object, saying that the Bible actually supports slavery and that there’s passages to prove it. And those objection will be dealt with in good time. But for the present, let’s keep the laws regulating slavery on the periphery, where they belong, and let’s keep the central thing in the center. God, the central narrative tells us, wants to free do so people from oppression and will go to extravagant lengths to do so. The central cry of the Bible is for freedom, from slavery, from serfdom, from sin, from division, from hatred, and from all that holds us back in running the race of life, from fighting the good fight.

A passing knowledge of the Hebrew Bible is enough to make clear the centrality of the seder story to the Jewish religion. But it’s there in the New Testament, undergirding it too. The New Testament is built on the Old, and Jesus himself was crucified after eating a passover meal. That last supper was a seder, and the institution of the Lord’s supper which he established was done with the bread and wine of the traditional Passover meal. Easter, celebrating the death of Jesus Christ, envisions him as a Passover sacrifice and makes Easter a transformed memorial based on the original Passover. 1 Corinthians 5, combating corruption in the Church, explains the need to avoid malice, evil, and boasting by comparing it to leaven, which leavens the whole loaf of bread. It urges us to make our metaphorical bread unleavened, and in case anyone has any doubts that combating corruption is not assisted by the Passover metaphor, we’re told that we are to purge out the leaven ‘because Christ, our passover, has been sacrificed.’

Later in the same letter (1 Corinthians 11), Paul goes spends eighteen verses regulating the reconstituted seder of the Church, threatening sickness or even death to those who do not take seriously God’s memorial of his deliverance of his people.

Jesus was also very conscious of his role as the one who frees. When in Luke four he came out of the desert after defeating the devil’s attempts to tempt him, Jesus went into a synagogue and announced the debut of his ministry through powerful freedom language, language so forceful that it resulted in an attempt on his life:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to evangelize the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to announce liberation to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty the broken.

Through and through, Christianity is permeated by the seder story and all its variants. The Bible spends a massive amount of ink telling one central story: God has, God does, God will set his people free from what enslaves them.

And Mizraim (Egypt) was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naftuhites, Pathrusites, Casluhites (from whom the Philistines came), and Caftorites.

But we find something that appears different in the book of Amos (9:7):

Are you not like the sons of the Kushites to me, O sons of Israel?, says Jehovah.  Did I not bring up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines out of Caftor, and Aram out of Kir?

So this lead my mind to wonder, could there perhaps be a typographical error in the Table of Nations (Gen 10), wrongfully assigning the Philistines to the Casluhites when they really came from the Caftorites?  I’m not sure.  But here’s a Wikipedia article to get you started.

Here’s Amos 1 13-15:

Thus says Jehovah, For three transgressions of B’nei Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away their punishment;  because they have ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead to enlarge their own territory.  And I will set fire to the wall of Rabbah [their capital city], and it will devour its palaces, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind;  and their king will go into captivity, he and his princes together, says Jehovah.

Here’s Amos 2 6-8

Thus says Jehovah, For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away their punishment;  because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes;  who trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the earth, and they turn aside the way of the lowly.  And a man and his father go in to the same girl, to dishoner my holy name.  And they lay themselves down on clothes taken in pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of those they condemned in the temple of their God.

And Amos 3 8-11

The lion has roared;  who will not fear?  The Lord Jehovah has spoken, who can keep from prophesying?  Announce this in the palaces at Ashdod, and in the palaces in the land of Mizraim, and say, Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Shomron, and behold the great tumults in the midst of it, and the oppressed in the midst of it.  For they do not know to do right, says Jehovah, they who store up violence and destruction in their palaces.  So thus says the Lord Jehovah, An adversary will encircle the land, and he will take away your palaces will be looted.

Amos 4 1-2

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are in the mountain of Shomron, who oppress the poor, and who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, Bring us more to drink!  The Lord Jehovah has sworn by his holiness that behold, the days will come upon you that he will take you away with hooks, and your offspring with fishhooks.

Amos 4 11 (one Mitchell point if you can tell me what this might have to do with social justice)

I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sedom and Amorah, and you were like firebrand plucked out of the flames, yet you have not returned to me, says Jehovah.

Amos 5 8-9

Jehovah is his name, who strengthens strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled will come against the fortress.  They hate him who rebukes in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks uprightly.  So because you enact taxes upon the poor, taking from him taxes of wheat;  you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them;  you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink wine of them.  For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins.  They afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from what is rightfully theirs.  So the prudent will keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time.  Seek good, and not evil, that you may live;  and so Jehovah, the God of Hosts, will be with you as you have spoken.  Have was is evil, and love what is good, and establish justice in the gate.  Perhaps Jehovah God of Hosts will be gracious to those who remain of Joseph.

Amos 6 1-8:

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and put their trust in the mountain of Shomron, who are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel came!  Pass to Calneh, and see;  and from there go to Hamath the great;  then go down to Gath of the Philistines–are they better than these kingdoms?  Or is their border greater than your border?  You who put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near;  who lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves in the stall;  who chant to the sound of the viol, and invent for themselves instruments of music, like David;  who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest ointments;  but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.  Therefore they will now be carried off into captivity with the first who are carried away, and the banquent of those who stretched themselves out will be removed.  The Lord Jehovah has sworn by himself, says Jehovah the God of Hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob, and hate his palaces;  therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is in it.