Bride Price

My colleague Toby Sumpter suggests that the plunder Israel takes from Egypt is a “bride price” as well as the proper gift for a manumitted slave.

The “bride price” idea works.  Pharaoh has, like the Pharaoh of Abram’s day, claimed a bride for himself, Yahweh’s bride.  He has tried to seize her, and now he is sending her out, under duress, to her true husband, Yahweh.  To compensate for his attempt to seize her, she takes gold and silver and material along with her.  Israel the bride goes out to cut a marriage covenant at Sinai, with the materials she’ll need to build a honeymoon home.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Notes on Anosmia

John Wilson

One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…

Empire of Unreality

Algis Valiunas

Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…

The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist

Peter J. Leithart

It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…