Beyond a “historic” column, the epic of the Hebrew slaves of Egypt towards the promised land freedom is a metaphor for the spiritual quest for monotheism. Decryption, when Pessah begins, Jewish celebration celebrating this episode.
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If the Hebrews are elected by God to seal his alliance with men, they are first of all a people “to the steep neck” [book of Exodus]. And this character is far from being a quality, both their resistance to divine orders will delay, according to the tradition, in the great purpose he designed for them.
Nevertheless, in the obstinacy to do it only at their heads lies all the depth of the Égégrination of the Hebrew people reported within the books of the exodus and the numbers: the Hebrews are above all human, And it is with this humanity that they will follow Moses in the desert – geographical location which, in a spiritual reading, must be understood symbolicly.
“The desert prayer is the image of the inner life of the believer” and his tests are “so many purifications of the human heart,” explains the religious Philippe Plet in the Hebrews in the desert. Reading the book of Exodus (Salvator, 2018), a spiritual reading of the biblical episode. Chemining to the desert calls for an initial act of faith: the Hebrews advance towards a land only promised as the believer fireplaces himself armed with the only certainty he goes towards God.
But before reaching the country “where the milk and honey flow” (Exodus 3, 8), it is necessary to endure the desert, first a place of light and counting, so of purification. This one is also the place of temptations – Jesus will spend forty days withstanding the devil – because any lack.
And it’s precisely because any lacks that, put to naked, man can not take refuge behind the vanities of worldly life. The violence of the test can therefore shake the believer, as it inspires the murders of the Jewish people against their fate.
Two months after getting out of Egypt, the Hebrews are thirsty and hungry. They get carried away: “Why are not we dead from the Lord’s hand in Egypt, when we were sitting near the meat’s pots, when we ate satiety bread? On the contrary, you drove us in this Desert to die of hunger all this assembly “(Ex 16, 3). Faced with the difficulty of the path of faith, the believer is tempted to turn back and return to Egypt.
Get out of the world of idols
Here, the land of the Pharaoh is the metaphor of a world of immanence, whose spiritual path must allow to extricate. With his monuments, his paintings and statues, “Egypt is by nature the world of images” and appearances, Analysis Philippe Plet, who sees a parallel with the world today. According to him, “getting out of Egypt was coming back to get out of the world of images and idols, to enter the desert without form, which purifies the view of all human representations [and] prepares for the contemplation of God”.
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