Exodus 5-15

Before I go much further, I should note that Exodus is not only where God becomes known as Yahweh, but also the Lord.

Moses and Aaron are now busy at the work of convincing the Pharaoh of Egypt to let the Hebrews, or people of Israel (at this point a person rather than a country) go out into the wilderness to pray.  They aren't even asking for freedom, just a chance to pray.  It's Pharaoh's stubbornness and pressing the issue that leads to the title event, and further wandering toward the promised land.  Since the time of Abraham they have been living in the lands of others, whether it be Philistines or Canaanites, and until the Egyptians at least to the point of Joseph they have only been able to win the good graces rather than full cooperation of their hosts.  Always the struggle.  I think the point of the Egyptian bondage might actually be to explain why Egypt never really expanded like other empires.  Clearly one of the most notable of the ancient civilizations, leaving a clear and lasting legacy, but in the end not quite like the Greeks or Romans.  God says several times that he's making Pharaoh "harden his heart" and make the situation worse in order to make a lasting impression on Egypt.  Unlike, say, Romans and the emerging Christian faith, it's not exactly that the result of all this is to make Egyptians into a Hebrew nation.

It's very interesting, too, that although described as Hebrews and therefore part of the Abrahamic tradition, the people Moses and Aaron free are not apparently all that aware of the specifics of their faith, especially how much they're supposed to care about God.  This may explain all the bellyaching that will follow, not to mention the Golden Calf episode, or perhaps merely denote that once again, the chroniclers of the Moses tradition were fully aware that there were other gods acknowledged even by God himself, who also makes reference to the Egyptian pantheon whose components have survived to this day in a mythology many people still know plenty about.

The genealogy work I was looking for early finally does show up.  Although similar in almost every respect, it's still not really as comprehensive as the family lines described in Genesis.  Readers of the Bible may have to wait for the even more exhaustive lineage ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament.

Also at this point God does not seem to need an intermediary of any kind to speak with Moses, although this will be necessary again later.  They talk just like anyone else did in Genesis.

Then the inducements begin:

• rod-into-snake
• Nile-and-other-water-into-blood
• frogs
• gnats (the first one Pharaoh's magicians couldn't duplicate)
• flies
• livestock plague
• boils
• hail
• locusts
• three days of darkness
• death of the first-borns (carried out by God himself)

The last of these also has the effect of establishing the tradition of the Passover, as you probably know already.

And finally, Pharaoh follows the edict to "let my people go," and the title event finally occurs.  But that still not being enough, and perhaps not enough to explain the curious lack of forward momentum on the part of Egypt itself, Moses then parts the Red Sea and then allows it to crash down on the pursuing Egyptian military.

And then my favorite part of this section, which is perhaps the first psalm, a poem about everything that has just occurred, the great victory.  It's really pretty awesome and deserves more recognition than I'm currently aware it gets.