Exodus 13:17

The passage opens just after the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, which moved Pharaoh to send Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 12:29–33). The shortest way from Egypt to Canaan was “the way of the land of the Philistines”, the coast road known as the Via Maris, the “Way of the Sea”. It ran along the Mediterranean shore from Egypt into Canaan and on toward Mesopotamia. It was a road for traders and armies, guarded by Egyptian forts and passing through the lands of warlike peoples, the Philistines among them. The verse says plainly that it “was near”.

God “led them not” that way. The verb, nâchâh, means to lead, guide or bring, and here it is God choosing the route himself. Then Scripture gives his reason in his own words: “Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” The word for war, milchâmâh, is the ordinary word for battle or warfare. The people who had just walked out of Egypt were former slaves, untrained, barely armed and worn down by long years of hard bondage. A battle in the first days of their freedom would have frightened them back toward the slavery they knew.

So the long road was a mercy. God knew his people’s weakness better than they did, and he fitted his leading to it. A psalm says of him, “For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). The wilderness road also gave Israel time to learn to trust him, to receive his law at Sinai (Exodus 19), and to grow into a people who could one day go up into Canaan (Numbers 13). God’s thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9), and the road that looks slow to us can be the very one he has chosen for our good.

“But God led the people about.” The verb çâbab means to turn, go around or surround, and “led about” describes a roundabout way that God took on purpose. The word for God here, ʼĕlôhîym, is plural in form, a plural of majesty, and it usually takes a singular verb, as it does here: God led. The choice of road is his alone. The way he chose ran through the wilderness toward the Red Sea, and in the next chapter he gives Moses exact directions for where to camp beside the sea (Exodus 14:1–2), which sets the stage for the crossing.

Moses later told Israel what the wilderness had been for. God led them “to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no”, and he fed them with manna so that they would learn “that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live” (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). Isaiah gives God’s own words for this kind of leading: “I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go” (Isaiah 48:17).

In the haste of leaving, in the same days as the Passover (Exodus 12), Moses takes the bones of Joseph. Joseph had died in Egypt centuries before, and as he died he made the sons of Israel swear to carry his bones out with them. His request is recorded in Genesis 50:25, and this verse quotes it. Moses, generations later, kept the oath.

“Straitly sworn” translates shâbaʻ, to swear or bind by an oath. The root has been explained as “to seven oneself”, as if a declaration were repeated seven times, and “straitly”, meaning strictly, stresses how solemn and binding the oath was. “Bones” is ʻetsem, from a root meaning to be strong. It is the word for a bone, it can stand for the body, and used of a day or a thing it marks “the selfsame” one.

Joseph’s words rest on the verb pâqad, which means to attend to, visit, inspect, muster or appoint. “God will surely visit you” means that God will come to his people and act for them. The Hebrew doubles the verb, pâqod yiphqod, and the doubling makes it emphatic: God will certainly come. Joseph had ruled in Egypt and could have been buried there with every honour. He chose to wait for the land God had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Genesis 15:18). In his day, to be buried in one’s own land with one’s fathers mattered deeply for identity and belonging, and to lie in foreign soil was a sorrow. So his request was a confession of faith that Israel’s home was Canaan. God remembers his covenant (Exodus 2:24), and Joseph staked his own grave on it.

The bones travelled with Israel through the wilderness and were buried at last in Shechem, after Israel had entered the land (Joshua 24:32). A promise made by a dying man was kept across the generations, and the place of his burial became a mark of God’s faithfulness. Hebrews counts the request among the great acts of faith: “By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones” (Hebrews 11:22).

Israel had already passed through the consecration of the firstborn (Exodus 13:1–2) and received the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 13:3–10), which marked them as a people redeemed and set apart for God. Their first stop after leaving Rameses was Succoth (Exodus 12:37), a name meaning “booths” or “tents”. From there “they took their journey”, nâçaʻ, a verb that means to pull up the tent pegs and so to set out. At Etham they “encamped”, chânâh, to pitch a tent and camp. Together the two verbs describe a people on the move, pulling up stakes in one place and pitching them in the next. Where Etham lay is debated today.

The verse places it “in the edge of the wilderness”. Behind Israel lay the Nile Delta, settled, farmed and ordered, the land of their slavery. Ahead lay the midbâr, the wilderness or desert, open country with few people and no fields, though it need not be bare sand. On that edge they were exposed to the heat, to the want of water and food, and soon to Pharaoh’s pursuing army. That is where God showed himself in the pillar and then opened the sea for them (Exodus 14:21–31). Place names like Succoth and Etham record that the exodus was a journey God led stage by stage, to the very spot he meant them to be.

Verse 21 names God by his covenant name, the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh. This is the God who made promises to Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), to Isaac (Genesis 26:3) and to Jacob (Genesis 28:15). He had once led Abraham on his own journey (Genesis 12:4–9), and now he leads Abraham’s children. The verb “went”, hâlak, is the common word for walking or going, and here it is the LORD himself going at the head of his people. He had promised Moses at the bush, “Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:12), and now all Israel can see it.

The pillar, ʻammûwd, is the word for a column or upright pillar, from the root for standing, and it also names pillar-shaped things such as this cloud and this fire. By day the pillar was a cloud, “to lead them the way” through country with no road to follow. A psalm adds that he “spread a cloud for a covering” (Psalm 105:39), shade over a people walking in the desert heat. By night it was fire, “to give them light”. The last words, “to go by day and night”, mean that they could travel at either time, with light for the road after dark.

Kings of that day often marched at the head of their armies or peoples, sometimes behind standards and banners. Israel’s King went before them himself, in a sign the whole multitude could see. The cloud and fire went on guiding Israel all through the wilderness, as Numbers 9 describes.

Israel kept this in memory for centuries. Moses reminded them of the LORD, “Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day” (Deuteronomy 1:33). Nehemiah’s prayer recalls, “Moreover thou leddest them in the day by a cloudy pillar; and in the night by a pillar of fire, to give them light in the way wherein they should go” (Nehemiah 9:12), and a psalm sings, “In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire” (Psalm 78:14).

The pillar belongs with all the places where God comes near to his people. He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8). He gave Moses the pattern of the tabernacle (Exodus 25), and when it was finished the cloud covered it and his glory filled it (Exodus 40:34–38). His glory filled Solomon’s temple in the same way (1 Kings 8:10–11). God wants to dwell with those he has redeemed, and the pillar is one of the clearest pictures of it.

The passage closes on a promise kept: “He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.” The verb mûwsh means to withdraw, depart, remove or take away, and with “not” before it the verse says that the pillar stayed. The cloud, ʻânân, is the ordinary word for a cloud covering the sky, here made the daytime sign of God’s presence. “From before the people” means in front of them, where all could see it.

The pillar stayed through the grumbling that soon followed (Exodus 16) and through all the rebellions of the wilderness. Nehemiah, confessing Israel’s sins, praised God for exactly this: “Yet thou in thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness: the pillar of the cloud departed not from them by day, to lead them in the way; neither the pillar of fire by night, to shew them light, and the way wherein they should go” (Nehemiah 9:19). At the end of his life Moses gave Israel the same assurance in words: “the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Deuteronomy 31:6).

The God who led Israel through the wilderness leads his people still, in Christ. Jesus calls himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). As the shepherd, he calls his own sheep out and goes before them (John 10:3–4), and he is the good shepherd who knows his own (John 10:11–14). The psalm says, “he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3). Jesus himself went into the wilderness and was tempted there, and he trusted and obeyed his Father perfectly where Israel had failed (Matthew 4:1–11). He is the bread of life for the journey (John 6:35), and he has delivered us from the power of darkness into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13–14).

The pillar was God with his people. Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), the Word made flesh who dwelt among us (John 1:14), the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). The pillar of fire gave light in the desert night, and Jesus says, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). Before he went to the Father he promised the Holy Spirit, who would be with his disciples for ever (John 14:16–17), teach them all things (John 14:26) and guide them into all truth (John 16:13). The Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us (Romans 8:26–27), and God’s word is “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105). As the pillar stayed before Israel, so Christ says, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20), and God says, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

God’s care for Israel’s weakness is also seen in Christ. Our high priest was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin, and so he is touched with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). God lets his people be tempted only so far as they can bear and makes a way to escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). Jesus prayed for Peter that his faith would fail not (Luke 22:31–32), and so he keeps his own from the final turning back to Egypt. Israel was spared a battle at the start. Believers do face a spiritual battle, and God arms them for it with his whole armour (Ephesians 6:10–18).

Joseph’s bones point the same way. All the promises of God are yea and Amen in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). The hope that kept Joseph looking toward Canaan is ours in a fuller form, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), and an inheritance incorruptible, reserved in heaven and kept by God’s power (1 Peter 1:3–5).

These six verses show a God who plans the road before his people take a step. He knew Israel’s frailty better than they did and chose the longer way to spare them a fight they could not yet face. When the road we are given is longer than the one we would have picked, this passage tells us who chose it and why. He promises, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye” (Psalm 32:8), and the proverb calls us to trust in him with all our heart, for “he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6).

Joseph’s bones show the long reach of the same faithfulness. A word spoken by a dying man was kept centuries later, because it rested on God’s promise that he would surely visit his people. And the pillar stayed. Through grumbling camps and dark nights it stood before Israel, and the One who walked in it goes before his people still.