(ca. eighth century)
Exodus is an OLD ENGLISH poem of 590 lines, preserved as the second poem in the JUNIUS MANUSCRIPT in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The poem is not a mere paraphrase of the biblical Book of Exodus; rather, it is conceived as an epic with Moses as hero, both in the sense of a leader of battles and of a speaker of wisdom familiar in Old English heroic poetry. Focusing chiefly on chapters 13 and 14 from the book of Exodus, the poem concentrates on the central episodes of the Hebrews’ flight from Egypt, the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, and the subsequent destruction of the Egyptians that ensures their escape.
The poem begins by introducing Moses as lawgiver. It moves into the description of the 10th plague of Egypt—the killing of the first-born—and to the release of the Hebrews. A pillar of cloud leads and protects the people as they flee toward the sea. The Israelites’ escape from Egypt and crossing of the Red Sea are presented largely as heroic military operations, with Moses being described in vocabulary suited for a military commander. The armor and weapons of both the Hebrews and the Egyptians are described in a manner consistent with heroic poetry, and after the Egyptians have been drowned, the Hebrews are described plundering the bodies as they would after a victorious battle.
Thematically, the poem focuses on God’s protection of his chosen people, as a long digression (considered an interpolation by some critics) concerning God’s protection of Noah and of Abraham follows the vivid description of the Egyptian defeat. The Anglo-Saxon church would have seen itself as similarly in need of God’s protection, and as dealing, like Moses, with a wayward people needing constantly to be brought back to God. Further, they would have seen the Exodus story as allegorical: Traditionally, the Hebrews fleeing Egypt were interpreted as representing Christians leaving the prison of this life for their eternal home (the Promised Land). Pharaoh in this reading represents the devil, and the crossing of the Red Sea the baptism by which the devil is defeated. Such an allegorical reading is invited in the poem, as are other symbolic readings. The poet’s use of nautical imagery, for example, to describe the Hebrews’ movement over the desert may relate to Old English poems like The SEAFARER and The WANDERER, where traveling on the sea is seen as a metaphor for the pilgrimage of this life as the Christian looks for safe haven in the eternal, promised paradise— an interpretation that would underscore the traditional allegorical interpretation of the poem’s events.
Exodus is a poem of epic grandeur. Particularly admirable is the vivid description of the converging forces of Egyptians and Israelites—a description involving the shifting of points of view between the two armies in a style Greenfield and Calder describe as “cinematic” (1986, 213). Though the poem is difficult, such passages make Exodus one of the most exhilarating of all the poems in the Old English canon.
Bibliography
■ Godden,Malcolm. “Biblical Literature: The Old Testament.” In The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 206–226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
■ Greenfield, Stanley B., and Daniel G. Calder. A New Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1986.
■ Krapp, George Philip. The Junius Manuscript. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, I. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931.
Encyclopedia of medieval literature. 2013.