exodus

The departure of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt under the leadership of Moses.

The second of the Books of Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible, the second book in the Torah describing the Exodus.

A sudden departure of a large number of people.

There were no less than three exodi from Egypt. The first was the one just named, viz: the expulsion of two hundred and forty thousand Cuthites by Halisphragmuthosis; this occurred about two hundred years before the entrance of the Israelitish shepherds into Egypt. The second exodus was that of this once holy people, under the guidance of the Almighty, through his servant Moses, the account of which we have in profane history, substantiated in the minutest particulars by the sacred writings given us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which protected and preserved the race. But the third is not so generally known.

Now if, as we have seen good reason for believing, the documents were composed within forty or fifty years after the leaving of Egypt, it is hard to believe that their authors should have been so confused and so forgetful that they confounded two city-lands so distinct and separate as Goshen and Raamses, and were ignorant as to which was really the Israelite habitat when in Egypt. There suggests itself at once the hypothetical question, Were there two exodi, one from Raamses and the other from Goshen? […] Only on the hypothesis of two exodi, one to the south, the other to the north, do the two accounts of the route out of Egypt become explainable.

To depart from a place in a large group.