One cheer for Exodus

WORLD members, the objects of heavy marketing by the makers of the new movie Exodus, are asking me about the film. I’m referring them to the good review in the latest issue of our magazine, but I did see Exodus yesterday and liked its underlying worldview: God exists. God is sovereign. We cannot ignore Him.

Sure, director Ridley Scott and his screenwriters fill in the blanks in Moses’s biography. They make him an Egyptian general with adoptee angst. They have Moses’ wife angry with him as he leaves their peaceful life to return to Egypt. (That may even explain her fury in Exodus 4:24–26.) They have him lead a guerrilla war to liberate enslaved Israel, with an escalating death count on both sides, until Moses obeys a command to desist and watch what God will do.

Those entertaining, fictional additions shouldn’t bother us as long as they don’t contradict the biblical account or undercut our respect for biblical fact. (Yes, movie Moses at Exodus time is middle-aged rather than the biblical 80-years-old, but Ridley Scott spent so much on special effects that he probably had to economize on makeup artists.) Most of the harmless accretions are like the Midrash storytelling tradition of rabbis about 2,000 years ago.

(For example, the rabbis explained Moses’ slowness of speech by saying that at age 3 he playfully pulled the crown off of adoptive Grandpa Pharaoh’s head. Soothsayers demanded his death but agreed to a test instead: Put a shiny jewel—symbolizing power and wealth—and a hot coal in front of Moses and see which he grabs. The toddler of course went for the sparkle, but the angel Gabriel pushed his hand to the coal, which Moses grabbed and put momentarily in his mouth, thus burning his tongue and creating his speech impediment.)

One element is troubling: God in Exodus speaks to Moses not directly or through biblical angels who are so frightening that their first words are generally along the lines of don’t panic. Instead, in what seems like a bow to Hinduism and Buddhism, with their depictions of Krishna and the Buddha as kids, a New Agey–looking 11-year-old is God’s messenger. The filmmakers say they needed more than a deep voice speaking to Moses—but why? In Moses’s first encounter, “God called to him out of the bush. …” At other times in the Bible God’s voice sounds like thunder.

The movie has other weaknesses, including a limp ending, but if you’re looking for entertainment with a PG-13 rating for violence but without adultery or bad language, Exodus isn’t bad. At a time when atheism is on the march and we’re only 16 months from the golden anniversary of Time’s famous “Is God Dead?” cover, it’s good to see a movie in which He’s very much alive.