Exodus — who's who

Born to a Levite couple under Pharaoh's death decree; hidden in a basket of reeds, drawn out by Pharaoh's daughter, raised at court. Kills an Egyptian overseer at forty, flees to Midian, keeps sheep for another forty years. Called at the burning bush and sent back to Egypt. Goes before Pharaoh ten times. Leads the crossing of the sea. Climbs Sinai alone. Smashes the first tablets when he sees the golden calf. Negotiates the covenant's renewal. Descends with a face so bright the people are afraid. Dies on Mount Nebo at one hundred and twenty, having seen the land but not entered it. The Bible says no prophet like him arose again.

Three years older than Moses; designated as his spokesman when Moses pleads inability of speech. His staff performs the first miracles before Pharaoh. He goes through all ten plagues at Moses's side. Consecrated as the first high priest of Israel in elaborate seven-day ceremonies in chapters 28–29 and carried out in chapter 40. Also the man who makes the golden calf while Moses is on the mountain — a detail the book does not soften or excuse.

The unnamed sister who watches Moses's basket among the reeds in chapter 2 and arranges for his mother to nurse him. Named for the first time in chapter 15, where she takes a tambourine and leads the women in the Song of the Sea after the crossing. The text calls her a prophet — one of the few women in the Hebrew Bible to receive the title explicitly. She will figure more prominently in Numbers.

Unnamed in the book, deliberately. The text alternates between saying he hardened his own heart and saying God hardened it — an alternation that has generated two thousand years of theological argument about divine sovereignty and human freedom. He loses his firstborn son in the final plague and his army in the sea. He does not appear again. He is not a character so much as a force — the embodiment of a system built on the slavery of others.

Unnamed, like her father. She comes down to the Nile to bathe, sees the basket among the reeds, sends a servant to bring it, opens it, and sees the baby crying. She knows it is one of the Hebrew children. She keeps him, gives him the name Moses — from the Egyptian for "to draw out" — and has him raised at court. One of the small pivots in the book: the instrument of the baby's destruction becomes the instrument of his survival.

The two midwives Pharaoh orders to kill every Hebrew boy on the delivery stool. They fear God more than Pharaoh and let the boys live, explaining to Pharaoh that Hebrew women give birth before the midwife arrives. God gives them households of their own. They are the first act of civil disobedience in the Bible, named where Pharaoh is not.

Also called Reuel in the text. Takes Moses in when he flees Egypt, gives him work and his daughter Zipporah in marriage. Visits Moses in the wilderness in chapter 18, hears the account of the deliverance, blesses the Lord, and gives Moses the practical advice that shapes the judicial structure of Israel: delegate the small cases to capable men under you. Then he goes home to Midian.

Daughter of Jethro, met at a well where Moses defends her and her sisters from rough shepherds. She marries Moses and bears him two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. Centre of the inexplicable encounter in chapter 4 on the road to Egypt, where she circumcises her son and touches Moses with the foreskin in a scene three verses long that has resisted explanation for three thousand years. She returns to her father during most of the wilderness period and rejoins Moses after Sinai.

From the tribe of Judah; the text says God filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts — to make artistic designs in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood. He and his assistant Oholiab are designated in chapter 31 and their work occupies chapters 35–39. The tabernacle is the material embodiment of the covenant, and Bezalel is the man who builds it.