The Structure of Exodus

Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.

Exodus 1:1 (Spoke 2, Cycle 1)

Bet KeyWords: Ben, Bayit, Bo

The Hebrew name of Exodus is שמות (Shemuth, Names), taken from the opening words of the book. This integrates with the Inner Cycle of Genesis, with the first occurrence of Shemuth being found in Genesis 2. This further integrates with the symbolic meaning of Beyt as Word, in that the idea of naming is essential to the concept of the Word (cf. The House Called By My Name).

The Hebrew practice of naming a book by its first word seems to be in recognition of God's deliberate design of the books. The great themes of many books are marked with highly specific KeyWords in the opening verse. This is particularly clear in the Book of Exodus, where the relations between the ideas of the Name, Word, Son, House, and the letter Beyt are greatly expanded upon with three fundamental Beyt Keywords appearing in the opening verse:

• בן (Ben, Son): This is perhaps the ultimate Beyt KeyWord. It integrates with the nature of the eternal Godhead, being the name of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Son. It appears in the plural construct form "Beni", translated as children in Exodus 1.1 Thus we have the pair of KeyWord Aleph (Av = Father) and Beyt (Ben = Son). Their union forms the Stone of Prophecy (cf. The Second Commandment).
• בית (Bayit, House): This is the name of the Second Letter. It is profoundly integrated with the analytic meaning of Ben as The Posterity (Nun) of the House (Beyt).
• בא (Bo, Come/Enter Into): This KeyWord exhibits the fundamental force of Beyt revealed when the letter is combined with Aleph (cf. 231 Gates). The "House" is a natural image of a place to "go in" which is the meaning of Beyt when prefixed to a word, as discussed in the Beyt Alphabetic Verses. A good example is seen in the First Word of the Bible, Berashith (In the beginning). The House is also a natural symbol of that which divides between what is "in" and what is "out." It is the archetypical "container" of concepts, hence it integrates with concept of the Word, sharper than any two-edged sword (cf. Logos Holograph and the Second Seal) dividing all creation into this and that, coming from the Mouth of the Creator Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Godhead, God the Son, whose name is called "The Word of God." This is but a fragment of the cascading convergence of archetypical concepts correlated via Geometry, Theology, Scripture and the Numerical Category defined by the Number 2.

I will now discuss how these three ideas derived from the words of the first verse of Exodus provide an outline of that entire book.

The Independent Witness of J. Sidlow Baxter

One of the great joys of God's Truth is found in the great cloud of witnesses testifying to it. This coheres with the fundamental guiding principle of Biblical studies - indeed of all studies for that matter - which is that every word or fact must be confirmed by "two or three witnesses." Applied to Epistemology  (the study of "how we know things"), this simply means that Truth is established by multiple independent converging lines of evidence. When this is coupled with divine Simplicity, Beauty, and Clarity, we know we have received the very Truth of God.

The table on the right is adapted from the introduction to the Book of Exodus (pg. 74) in J. Sidlow Baxter's wonderful analysis of the entire Bible called Explore the Book. It is his outline for his study of Exodus, with the left red column being my association of his outline with fundamental concepts from Spoke 2 of the