When the book of Exodus begins, the Hebrews have been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. In the middle of the covenant ceremony that God made with Abraham in Genesis 15, Abraham was told that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land for 400 years before being delivered (Gen. 15:13-14). We can understand their move to Egypt to avoid starvation but were there reasons even behind that? Eugene Merrill in the Holman Concise Bible Commentary (HCBC) offers his suggestion,
Israel’s role as the people of promise was being jeopardized by their acceptance of the loose moral standards of the native Canaanites. The incest between Reuben and his father’s servant-wife (35:22) hints at that moral compromise. Judah’s marriage to the Canaanite Shua and his later affair with his own daughter-in-law, Tamar, makes the danger clear. To preserve His people, Yahweh removed them from that sinful environment to Egypt, where they could mature into the covenant nation that He was preparing them to be.
This explains the Joseph story.[1]
The importance of the book of Exodus and the events it describes would be hard to overstate. Most reference Bibles have about 1,300 cross-references to the book of Exodus in the books of Joshua through Revelation. In Ex. 3:13-15 at the ‘burning bush’ Moses learns the covenant name of God. If you have a copy of the HCBC be sure and read the article on page 25 ‘Names of God.’ The name revealed to Moses in this passage has the Hebrew consonants YHWH and is usually spelled Yahweh. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘tetragrammaton’ meaning four letters. The HCBC article mentions that it is usually translated as LORD or GOD, not to be confused with Lord or God. Some translations will occasionally translate the Name as Jehovah. In the longer form found in Ex. 3:14 the CSB translates as “I AM WHO I AM” with a footnote that reads “Or I AM BECAUSE I AM, or I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE”[2] God’s name points to the fact that He is. Recall in the Gospel of John the many times Jesus referred to Himself as ‘I Am.’
In the Bible Project videos of Exodus, (available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH_aojNJM3E for chapters 1-18, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNpTha80yyE for chapters 19-40) they mention that the Tabernacle was like another Garden of Eden. The purpose of the Tabernacle was to allow God to again dwell with mankind as He did in the Garden of Eden. This is mentioned in Ex. 25:8 where the CSB translates, “They are to make a sanctuary for me so that I may dwell among them.”2 The same thought is found in Ex. 29:45-46. In John’s Gospel we read in Jn. 1:14 “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”2 The CSB has a footnote on the word ‘dwelt’ that reads, “Or and dwelt in a tent; lit and tabernacled,” With the incarnation God literally ‘tabernacled’ again with mankind or as Matthew records in Mt.1:23, “See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”2
If you purchased the HCBC you’ll find an article on the Tabernacle on page 54 that you’ll want to read. The article mentions that thirteen of the forty chapters in Exodus relate to the Tabernacle or its furnishings. It gives the size of the Tabernacle as 45 ft. by 15 ft. with the Holy Place at the entrance of the Tabernacle 30 ft. by 15 ft. which was separated with a curtain from the Holy of Holies which was 15 ft. by 15 ft. The height of the Tabernacle was 15 ft. making the Holy of Holies a perfect cube. When the Tabernacle was replaced by Solomon’s Temple the Holy of Holies was again a cube this time of about 30 feet (1 Kgs. 6:19-20). Then in the book of Revelation, in chapter 21, we read there is no Temple in the New Jerusalem but the city itself is a cube of 12,000 stadia and God is again dwelling with His people.
[1] Merrill, Eugene H. 1998. “The Pentateuch.” In Holman Concise Bible Commentary, edited by David S. Dockery, 19. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
[2] Christian Standard Bible. 2020. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
