What Does Exodus 6:7 Mean?

"I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." Verse 7 is the covenant formula at the center of the seven promises: "I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God." This bi-lateral covenant statement, in various formulations, runs through the entire Hebrew prophetic tradition as the essential summary of the covenant relationship (Jeremiah 30:22; Ezekiel 36:28; Hosea 2:23; Zechariah 8:8).

The formula names the mutual identity that the covenant creates: Israel is YHWH's people; YHWH is Israel's God. Both relationships are constituted by the same covenant act.

The "you shall know that I am the LORD your God" at the center of verse 7 provides the epistemological purpose of the Exodus event: Israel will know. The same "I do not know" claim that Pharaoh made in chapter 5:2 will not be Israel's claim after the Exodus.

Israel's knowing of YHWH is not primarily intellectual information but the experiential knowing that comes from having been brought through the event. The people who crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, who watched the Egyptian army drown, who ate the manna and drank from the rock, know who YHWH is in a way that cannot be produced by teaching alone. The Exodus creates the knowledge it promises.

The covenant formula "I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God" finds its New Testament fulfillment in Revelation 21:3: "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.'" The formula that originates in the Exodus commissioning of chapter 6 is the formula for the eschatological new creation: the full realization of what the burning bush, the plagues, the Sinai covenant, and the entire prophetic witness have been moving toward. "I am the LORD your God" is both the beginning of the Sinai law and the content of the new Jerusalem.