Children at this age have probably learned about slavery in the early days of the United States. Because of this they may associate the word slave with African Americans. This story provides an opportunity to broaden their understanding of oppression and slavery, to help them avoid stereotypical thinking. The motivating questions ask them to think about times when they felt oppressed. This may be difficult for them to do, but if you can relate a short personal story, you Il may elicit some personal stories from the children.

Beginning with the definition of slavery as "the total subjection of one person to another" (Mays, Harper’s Bible Commentary, p. 959), children can see that slavery is not necessarily related to color, race, gender, or religion, although all of those categories have been used to define classes of slaves. The Hebrews held different religious beliefs from the Egyptians. They were easy to identify by their patterns of worship, their dress, their daily life–and they had become numerous enough to threaten the ruling class. Thus, though they had been welcomed as settlers by earlier generations of Egyptians, by Moses’ time they had become an oppressed class of people, subject to the cruel taskmasters of the Pharaoh.

The Hebrews worked on the tombs, temples, and obelisks designed by Egyptian architects. (The famed pyramids had been built approximately a thousand years earlier.) Because they were called lazy workers–a charge commonly leveled against oppressed classes–the Hebrews were forced to make their bricks without straw. Strawless bricks do not hold together well, yet the Hebrews were required to make their usual quota. It was either no straw, or take extra time to glean the stubble from the fields. Either way, the task was nearly hopeless, and the punishment was a beating. For Moses, the lack of straw was the "last straw. " It was time to try the magic that YHWH had shown him. Popularly known as the ten plagues, the calamities inflicted on Egypt were familiar threats to the well-being of the nation. The power of the Exodus story is that they occur one right after the other. Written down many centuries after it occurred, and drawn from three traditions J, E, and P), the story as recorded in Exodus is full of repetition and confusion. The plagues were natural occurrences in an unnatural time frame–folk history in its most dramatic form.

The story of the plagues and the crossing of the Reed Sea is the basis tbr the Jewish celebration of Passover. At the Passover meal the story of the Exodus is recounted through words, symbols, and songs. One seder ritual has to do with the plagues. Before drinking the first cup of wine, one removes a drop for each plague visited upon the Egyptians, diminishing one’s own pleasure because of the suffering of the oppressor. The theme of the Passover seder is that our joy in freedom is possible only if we remember our own suffering and the suffering of others.

In the telling of this story, we have referred to the Reed Sea. There is on modern maps a sea called the Red Sea, but the Hebrew term used in Exodus is yam suph or Sea of Reeds. Great confusion exists among biblical scholars about the route of the Exodus–in fact, three routes have been suggested, each with respected literary and geographical credentials. The source of confusion seems to be the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint, dating back perhaps to the third century B.C.E. Reed was translated Red, and on the basis of that error it was long assumed that the Red Sea was the site of the crossing.