There was only one plague left, the plague of the firstborn, where God declared He would kill every firstborn son, from the sons of the slaves to the prince of Egypt himself. God told Moses that this was the one that was going to change Pharaoh’s mind and they would finally be allowed to leave Egypt.
The bulk of this section of the book is about how the Israelites are supposed to prepare themselves. The last plagues all avoided the Israelites in Goshen automatically. The darkness didn’t touch them and the frogs and gnats and flies all just stayed away, but now Moses was given a very complex set of rules for avoiding the plague. They had to slaughter a lamb and smear a little of the blood on their doorway so God would know Israelites were there and not go in and kill anyone in that house. That’s the Sunday school version, but they also had to cook it a certain way and eat it with bread with no yeast in it, and then they had to be sure to eat it all, if there were any leftovers at all they had to burn them. Also, everyone was supposed to go ask their neighbors for pieces of silver and gold and God made all their Egyptian neighbors feel generous that day, or else made them feel terrified of the Israelites who kept cursing them all the time. Either way, they gave away lots of gold.
The Israelites also had to make a commitment to commemorate this plague every year with the Passover feast and nearly a month of spiritual services and prayer and special meals. A major theme is eating bread with no yeast in it.
The final obligation is that Israel’s first-born sons are now God’s, both man and animal. Not just now, but forever it sounds like. Everyone has to take their first born son and explain how the Passover works and why they do it and all about God. We’ve finally got our first dogma. Until now everyone’s relationship with God was completely personal. God told them to do stuff and did stuff for them and usually only seemed to really be with one person at a time. Now there’s a codified system of worship though, that everyone is supposed to do.
The fact that all the firstborn sons of the Israelites are now set aside for God is interesting given the plague that’s going on around them at the time. It’s like God is saying that the miracle happening here isn’t that He’s killing all these Egyptians, but that he’s saving all the Israelites from it. All those sons would be dead if it wasn’t for God interceding on their behalf so now they’re His, even though He’s the one who is running the plague anyway. That’s the kind of distinction you get to make though when you make the rules I guess.
Actually, now that I think about it it’s a lot like the old Pharaoh’s arrangement once everyone in the nation was his slave to have them return to their lands and farm them for him. It seems benevolent but it wouldn’t be possible unless Pharaoh had annexed all their grain to sell back to them to begin with, but then they’d all have starved to death if he hadn’t. Similarly, God not killing al those first-born Israelites seems benevolent except He’s the one killing all the other first-borns anyway, but if He didn’t do this, then the Israelites would be doomed to stay imprisoned in Egypt.
Maybe that’s kind of a thin comparison.
No comments:
Post a Comment