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DID YOU KNOW?

In the usual telling, Moses leads the Israelites, and only the Israelites, out of Egypt. Does the Bible say anyone else left with them?

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The answer

Yes. Right after the six hundred thousand men, Exodus adds: "A mixed crowd also went up with them and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds" (Exodus 12:38). A study Bible, the New Oxford Annotated Bible, reads the mixed crowd as non-Israelites who escaped too. Numbers 11:4 later speaks of camp followers with them.

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Why it’s interesting

Michael Coogan and Cynthia Chapman, in their Old Testament textbook, say the mixed crowd shows the writers looking back from a later time. Seen that way, the verse says Israel had always been a mix of peoples, held together by more than family ties. Coogan and Chapman also point to Moses's marriage to a Midianite woman, Zipporah (Exodus 2:21).

Scholarly consensus
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