The Exodus is one of the foundational stories of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. Whilst the historicity of the story is debated by scholars and Bible archaeologists, it lends itself to a range of spiritual interpretations.
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Calvinism
Calvinists such as Marc Pernot read the story of Exodus as a spiritual allegory. Pernot states that "It is impossible to read the story of Exodus literally... To read this text literally is bad theology and bad theology creates a bad idea of what is just, bad ethics. It even generates bad prayer, still troubled by a fear of a potentially arbitrary and cruel God ... While everything is already given by grace." He notes, "The purpose of this writing is in its moral, theological and spiritual dimensions. This is particularly clear with regard to the liberation of the Hebrew people out of Egypt. In itself this event, even if it were miraculous, would have little historical significance if it was only about the people living at the time. It is because of its theological and spiritual significance that this text is now in the Bible: this is why this release is the first article of the Decalogue, this is why the Hebrew Passover has been commemorated the past three good millennia. And that's why this release is compared to salvation in Jesus Christ."
Pernot notes that the slavery in the story has, for centuries been read as symbolising human slavery to sin and that "we are at times the Hebrew and the Pharaoh... Pharaoh is thus a figure of our sin. The Hebrew is a figure of our better ourselves, our... creativity, our inner self, the child of God who loves, hopes, advancing and advancing... Pharaoh, the Hebrew people, Moses and Aaron here are dimensions that are in each of us... Moses represents our faith, our strength, our vitality, our desire to commit ourselves to justice. But at first, like Moses... we are like a wild horse. God will do everything to raise us to our best... Salvation is given by pure grace without repentance from the sinners."
He notes that, "It is said that the Christian interpretation of this history is in line with the classic reading among rabbis since we teach that history... This is true with Paul for example when he says that the Red Sea which lets the Hebrew passes through but drowns the Pharaoh's soldiers is a symbol of baptism, which is itself a sign of the death of sin in us, releasing... us... But this does not happen in an instant. The salvation of God is like a pedagogy for us, a psychoanalysis, a cure. Our inner Pharaoh is clever, he is ready to negotiate... God hardened the heart of Pharaoh. There are things in ourselves and in humanity to be converted, but there others to simply eliminate. God hardens our Pharaonic aspect to show us its true face. When we see it unmasked as tyrannical then God can save us." When an Egyptian is swallowed up in the Red Sea with his horse or when a Philistine was slain by Samson, when humanity is engulfed by the flood waters ... it is horrible if we take it literally because the loss of one man's is a scandal, particularly in the eyes of the Creator of life. How do we read these texts in the light of the Gospel?... In the symbolic meaning, the Philistine is synonymous with savagery and rejection of God. We must therefore translate "massacre Philistines" as "removing a bit of trouble, hatred and violence" in ourselves. The symbolic meaning of Egyptian in the Bible is synonymous with this material wealth which sometimes turns us into slaves. It is fair to translate: "The Lord has thrown into the sea Pharaoh's chariots and his army" with "The Lord has delivered us from the slavery of our materialism," or, as it says in the Gospel bearing witness to Christ, "God frees us from sin and death." (see Luke 4:19, John 8:32, Rom 8: 2)... Each of us has a dimension of violence, everyone is a little slave to his material concerns, whether we are rich or poor. There is thus the Philistine in every man, there is also the Egyptian, and we are often unable to free ourselves of these dimensions by our powers alone. Tremendous progress can be God-given... He can even work miracles, as in the miracle of the Red Sea... God opens barriers for us that we would have been unable to open our own strength."
Roman Catholicism
Catholic scholars have noted that "The present text [of the Book of Exodus] is not [an] historical report but Torah (catechesis or instruction via narrative), assembled many centuries after the time in which the narrative is set...The tools of modern historical research do not enable us to penetrate behind these traditions to [the] raw event... In terms of the larger context, Pharaoh and Egypt seem to serve as an illustration of God's promise to Abraham in Gen 12:3-'I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse'... Is Pharaoh (and Egypt) meant to be a figure of the one who curses Israel by threatening its very existence? Patristic and Jewish exegetes were adept at spotting what they believed to be the symbolic or figurative function of key persons depicted in biblical texts."