Israel leaves Egypt
Exodus 12:29–42; 13:17–22; Galatians 3:17
Pharaoh finally let Israel go; about 600,000 men plus women and children marched out from Rameses, 430 years after God's promise to Abram.
At the end of four hundred thirty years, to the day, all of Yahweh’s armies went out from the land of Egypt.
Exodus 12:41 (World English Bible)
The Egyptians urged the Israelites to leave and gave them silver, gold, and clothing. A mixed crowd went with them, and they carried Joseph's bones. God led them by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, not by the short coastal road through Philistine country but toward the wilderness and the Red Sea.
The Exodus became the defining rescue of the Old Testament, the event Israel would remember every year, and the pattern for the greater rescue Jesus would accomplish (Luke 9:31, where “departure” is literally “exodus”).
Places
Ancient witnesses outside the Bible
Historical sources, not Scripture.
- Against Apion 1.14–16 — Manetho, an Egyptian priest, on the “shepherds” who left Egypt; Josephus takes them to be Israel, which most historians today do not
Dating notes
Ussher: 15 Abib, 5 May 1491 BC (Julian). He reaches 1491 BC by counting 479 full years back from his date for the start of Solomon's temple (1012 BC) using 1 Kings 6:1, and he counts the 430 years from Abram's call (1921 BC). Alternate: most conservative scholars today date the temple to 966 BC, which puts the Exodus in 1446 BC.