From Genesis 1, we understand that Elohim created humans to be in an intimate relationship with Them. Sculpted by God’s hands and made alive by God’s own breath, we are the image and likeness of our Creator. Adam watched God create the Garden; then God placed the human in the Garden to name the animals, discerning their characteristics. The blessing of abundant life was all around Adam, but there was no one for him to be fruitful with. So, God, taking half of Adam, made him a helper, an ezer, who would bring forth humankind. Adam and Eve walked with God, eating the garden tree’s fruit, taking in God’s instruction. But by swallowing the snake’s seeds of deceit, the humans discarded God’s wisdom for folly, His light for darkness, defiling their garden sanctuary.

Having rejected the Tree of Life’s instruction, humanity chose death over the Fountain of Life. We found ourselves severed from His presence, His voice of wisdom, and His abundance. In exile, we lost more than the connection with our Creator. We lost our identity and purpose. We traded the fulfillment of joy and peace in His presence for emptiness, pain, and enmity. In our brokenness, we fill our barrenness with sensual pleasures, securing blessings to the self at the expense of others. Our lives are twisted with lies and hypocrisy, enslaved to sin and reaping its cruel reward. Historically, we abuse and oppress in our insecurity, giving birth only to the rubble of dead works. Living in a society built on autonomy from God, where human ingenuity is our savior, evil lurks openly at every corner.

Yet YHWH Elohim left us with a promise of rescue by the “seed of the woman.” The woman’s offspring would crush the head of the snake and restore the Presence of God in our lives, leading an exodus out of humanity’s slavery to death. He, conquering sin, brings us forth to become slaves of righteousness as we wait to return home to the city whose maker and builder is God. And we will know who we are when we know who He is, experiencing His exodus.

How will we know the Covenant God, YHWH? We know Him by what He does in our lives. Breaking the chains of slavery to sin, He frees us and teaches us to rule over evil by living good works. He replaces our insecurity with security, giving us refuge in Him in times of trouble. By His cherishing, our desires of the flesh fall away, surrendering to the fruits of the Spirit. The truth of His love produces abundance and rich fulfillment. YHWH is the God of our exodus out of death’s bondage to return to our garden home.

The Biblical story contains not just the history of our exile from God but multiple exoduses from exile in humanity’s generations. While the exiles carried us further and further away from God’s presence and hearing His voice, our exoduses bring us closer and closer to Him and His Word. God took Enoch, the seventh from Adam, out of this world without experiencing death (Heb. 11:5). During God’s cleansing of the earth from violence, Noah found grace with God and left the gone-astray world in a tabernacle-ark to a new beginning. Abram trekked out of Ur of the Chaldees to a land God would show him, and he later exited from Egypt and Gerar with spoil. God taught Abram under the terebinth trees during his sojourning in the land. After Abram and his 318 men conquered the kings of the world to rescue Lot, angels urgently removed Lot and his family from Sodom and Gomorrah before fire and brimstone demolished the cities. Following YHWH’s destructive plagues upon Egypt, Israel left the land of their oppression laden with victory spoils. At Sinai, YHWH revealed Himself to Israel, covenanting with His people through His Tree of Life Torah commands. When Israel was in the land of promise, they forgot the words of YHWH, and foreign powers enslaved them. Each time, their deliverance was an exodus from the plight of oppression back to the covenant blessings. Israel’s northern ten tribes were dispersed among the nations to await their exodus at an appointed time. Likewise, YHWH exiled Judah to Babylon for subscribing to idolatry and Sabbath-breaking and then brought about her exodus back to the land after the Medes and Persians destroyed Babylon.

Reversing exile from God’s presence, an exodus contains two essential components: first, the conquering of the enemy, and second, YHWH delivering His people to Himself to receive instruction. Yeshua first crushed the head of the snake and then called all nations to Himself to hear His voice, restoring the Tree of Life’s knowledge of God.

Takeaway:
Without the God of the Exodus, humanity is the living dead, cursed and without hope, exiled from the Source of life. Since we live in a fallen world, banished from the Presence of God, each of us must have a personal exodus out of loss back to dwelling with YHWH and hearing His voice. An exodus re-establishes our bond, the covenant blessings, with our Creator. When we belong to Yeshua, we belong to the purpose God created us for. We do not lose our personality or ethnicity, but we become one people, one body united in the Messiah, doing the will of the Father. Through an exodus, we connect to Eden’s Tree of Life wisdom and the Fountain of Life waters.

Fun Factors:
The Book of Exodus in Hebrew is called “These are the names,” 8 letters in 2 words, totaling 788, 4 x 197,  28² + 2².  There is no Hebrew word “exodus,” but some Hebrew words give us the idea of an exodus. Yaw-tsaw, יָצָא, (letter sum 101, the 26^th prime and 12^th Pythagorean prime, 10² + 1²) is commonly used in Israel’s exodus story, meaning to go out or forth, exit, depart, to proceed toward (Thayer’s H3318).
“The names,” שׁמוֹת, has a numeric value of 746, equal to 2 × 373, or the sum of two squares, 25² + 11². It can also be written as 3(18² + 7²), implying the sure power of YHWH’s life force in perfection. John 1:1’s Logos is 373, associated with light.