Why did you write this commentary (Exodus)?

Alec Motyer writes the following about his excellent (and worth purchasing) commentary on Exodus (2005, IVP):

"This book began its life in 1974 when the Keswick Convention invited me to prepare the morning Bible expositions – with an additional request for something from the Old Testament – and I elected to undertake Exodus. The work alerted me all over again to the richness and importance of the book, and the attempt to compress forty chapters into four hours got me interested in its structure.

My first request is that this book be read with an open Bible alongside, for the best benefits will be reaped by patient reading which takes time to look up cross-references. Where the structure of a section or passage is given in diagram form, please work through it, point by point, before going on to read what is written about it. Reference must be made here to the number of footnotes attached to this study of Exodus. Not everything important to the understanding of Exodus can be accommodated in an expository treatment, where the emphasis is on the emerging message, and so the footnotes are offered in the hope that they will give students and preachers access to this additional material. From time to time the footnotes threatened to ‘swamp’ the page! In these cases they have been moved to become additional notes attached to the chapter in question.

Cassuto says about his extensive commentary that, ‘we shall not cite the various interpretations (but) content ourselves with expounding the simple meaning of the text in the manner we deem correct’. This is the case here too, indeed it has to be so, for neither ability nor space would permit a comprehensive review and critique of what all the commentaries say. I have chosen, for example, not to give any sort of extensive introduction to the documentary analysis of the Pentateuch and Exodus into the famous J, E, D and P strands. It would, however, be an absurd ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude to ignore totally an understanding of Exodus that has been so hugely influential. For myself, I have to confess that the documentary theory has never commanded my adherence or seemed to me the most helpful or natural way of approach. I plead for the tolerance of those who think otherwise. I have occasionally offered extra comments in the notes where it seems that this method particularly lacks coherence, evidence or persuasiveness.

Now that this particular bout of study on Exodus is finished, I shall miss it greatly: the sheer joy of engaging with its message; its frequently stately, sometimes earthy and businesslike, and always beautiful Hebrew; and its uplifting revelation of the Lord God in his power and patience, tenderness and redemption, and in his inflexible insistence on honouring his word and keeping his promises. In their history as recorded here, our early brothers, sisters and parents in the Israel of God found him in turn to be their covenant-keeping Redeemer in slavery, the Angel of the Lord, their divine companion in pilgrimage, and the Holy One indwelling their camp and sharing their lot. He is still unchangeably the same."