Exodus - Lesson 11

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-11 
Second Cycle of Plagues 
Lesson Transcript

So we've already talked about the prologue, Staff into Snake, and the first five of the traditional ten plagues. So that's six of the twelve that we have to talk about. We're going to pick it up, we're now in the second cycle, towards the end of the second cycle, with the sign of boils.

And this is a fascinating sign. It's a really short one in our Bibles, but the origin of it is really interesting. We're told, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, take handfuls of soot from a furnace, and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh.

This is Exodus 9, verse 8. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on people and animals throughout the land. It's very interesting that God has him do this sign, where he takes ash or dust out of the furnace or kiln and throw it into the air. What's going on here? Well, this could be understood as a kiln for making bricks, or a furnace for forging metal, and either is possible.

We have a reference in Deuteronomy 4, verse 20, to Egypt as a furnace, the furnace of affliction that they lived in. It's a different word for furnace than what we have here, so it's not an exact connection, but there may be a wider resonance of this being a place of great suffering and affliction. It's also possible that it's a kiln, and therefore, we're supposed to think of it as a place for firing bricks.

Now, if it's a place for firing bricks, immediately you're probably thinking, yes, well, the Egyptians, they asked the Hebrews to make bricks for them. They forced the Hebrews to make bricks, so isn't that perfect? Well, most of the bricks that the Hebrews would have been making were sun-dried. They wouldn't have involved a kiln.

So, it's not entirely clear whether this was an instrument that they used in their work. We don't have any evidence that the Hebrews fired bricks, but we do have evidence from 400 miles away in Thebes, around the same time, where the pyramids are, and what they would do is they would build a pyramid out of sun-dried mud bricks, but then they would have an outer layer, a couple of layers of kiln-fired bricks, which are more impervious to the elements. They would hold up better over time, and so it's possible that that same building method was used in Goshen, where the Israelites are making bricks, so that maybe most of their bricks were sun-dried, but some of them were fired in a kiln, and if so, then there could be, again, a sort of punishment fits the crime.

You're forcing my people to make bricks. I'm going to take the ash of what they've made and use it to afflict you. It's possible that that's happening here.

There's one other mention of kiln in the book of Exodus, and that's in chapter 19, verse 18, when Yahweh appears at Sinai, smoke billows from the mountain like smoke from a kiln. So, I think here we have a possible contrast between Pharaoh and his policies in Egypt, which force the people to labor, maybe using kilns, and Yahweh who appears at Sinai, and they see smoke from a kiln, but Yahweh isn't forcing them to do anything. He's inviting them into a relationship of service that permits human flourishing.

There's definitely a contrast in many other ways, and this might contribute to that. There's been a fair bit of speculation about what these boils actually are, what kind of boils. The term in the NIV, festering boils, is that phrase appears only here in the Bible, and so it's not entirely sure what it means is festering the right way to say it.

Are these boils oozing? Are they breaking out as blisters? We could even back up and ask the question, does the ash resemble the boils in some way? There are kinds of psoriasis or skin diseases that have flaky skin, like white flaky skin, and so it's possible that the ash of the furnace or the kiln resembles what's happening to the skin of the Egyptians. And this could even be related to the sign that God gave Moses when he was first at Mount Sinai, where he put his hand in his cloak and pulled it out, and it had a skin disease. Maybe now we're finally seeing that come to pass.

It's not the same word, but it's a similar concept. Some have suggested that rather than an oozing boil or blistering boil, that this is a form of anthrax that's native to Egypt and from time to time makes a comeback. And some scholars have suggested that there is a cognate or cousin word in Arabic and in Aramaic that sounds like this word for boil, shaheen, and in those languages it refers to a fever or inflammation.

So some have suggested that these boils might have been hot, like feverish boils, and that would then explain why we have a kiln or furnace to begin with, if the result is a hot kind of rash that appears on the Egyptian skin. We have a reappearance of the magicians in this sign. They were told, or actually they can't appear, were told the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians.

So not only have the magicians been bested, and we've seen the end of their power, but now they're personally being afflicted by this sign. And one more thing to say about the boils is that in Deuteronomy 28-27, when God is explaining the stipulations of the covenant and the consequences for disobeying the covenant with him that we'll see at Sinai, he explains that covenant unfaithfulness could result in boils, that boils are one of the ways that God might get their attention to indicate that they have transgressed and they've been unfaithful to him, and we certainly see that here. Okay, so now we've come to the final cycle of signs, hail, locusts, darkness, and death, and these are the most intense and the longest.

They're three times longer than the accounts of the other signs, and so there's lots we could say about them. The sign of hail is introduced in a slightly different way than the other signs. In the past we've been told that the signs are so that you may know that I am Yahweh, so that you may know that I am Yahweh.

This time we get a little bit of a variation on that. I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. So it's not just by the way Yahweh exists, but Yahweh is incomparable, and God plans to show his power and so that his name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

That's in chapter 9 verse 16. So the purpose of this plague is to show Yahweh's incomparability and to proclaim his name everywhere. We're told when this happens that nothing like this has happened since the founding of Egypt, which is an interesting phrase.

You might remember way back to the first or second session that we did together where we were looking at Egyptian words and phrases in the book of Exodus. This phrase from the founding of Egypt is a very clear Egyptianism, and in an Egyptian context they referred to the founding of Egypt as the time when they thought of ancient Egyptian history as a time when the gods ruled the land directly. So there was divine rulership over Egypt, and then eventually there was a transition where they appointed kings to rule on their behalf, but they appointed these kings and gave them divine authority to maintain order or ma'at.

And so from the founding of Egypt is that time of the baton pass to earthly kings, and the pharaohs subsequently were called the founder of Egypt. So a leader of a nation might have many different titles, president, prime minister, commander in chief, etc. In Egypt, one of those titles for pharaoh was founder of Egypt.

And so to bring a disaster of hail on the land that nobody's seen since the founding of Egypt means this pharaoh that we've been interacting with has completely been undone. He has now been bested in that he's failing to maintain order in his realm, and he's been unable to do what all the other pharaohs were able to do. They were able to keep things moving in a good direction, but this pharaoh has completely failed.

We haven't seen anything like this since the founding of Egypt. So it's a specific aim at pharaoh. We notice that the hail especially impacts the elite because they were the ones who had livestock, and we looked at the death of livestock in a previous plague as well.

And what I didn't say there, and I'll emphasize now, is that the average Egyptian did not have animals. As best as I can tell from my study of Egyptian villages and homes and how they were structured from the work of archaeologists, there was no stable for the average Egyptian. They didn't keep animals with them in their houses.

They just didn't keep animals at all. It was only the rich who had animals, and so here when they're being warned that if they don't take their animals indoors, their animals will die, this is again taking aim at the elite. In the past several signs, we've seen God make a distinction between the Egyptians and the Hebrews, where the Egyptians are affected by a sign, the sign, and the Hebrews are not.

This is the first sign in which the Egyptians are able to opt out of being affected by it. They are told to prepare for it, and it says in verse 19, give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field and they will die. So this is the first opportunity that the Egyptians have had to say, I am afraid of Yahweh, and I believe that he's going to do what he says and what he announces, and I'm going to, I'm going to take precautionary measures so that I'm not impacted by this.

And so for the first time, the Egyptians are able to distinguish themselves from Pharaoh. Pharaoh's been hardhearted and resolute about not doing what Yahweh said, but now individual Egyptians can opt out of the consequences that Pharaoh is bringing on his nation. It's worth noting the ecological impact of rebellion that we see in this plague.

Of course, the crops are destroyed, the animals who are in the field are destroyed, even servants who are out working in the field whose masters were hardhearted and didn't bring them in. They are destroyed by the hail. It's a terribly devastating time for Egypt, and this is not a new thing.

There is always an ecological impact when humans are violent towards one another and rebellious towards God. We see this back in the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3. We're told that Adam and Eve's rebellion results in a curse on the ground so that thorns and thistles will grow. In chapter 4 of Genesis, when Cain kills his brother Abel, God says, your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground.

The ground itself is like, we can't, we can't handle this. There's a sense of injustice that must be talked about. The flood is brought in Genesis 6 through 9 in response to human violence in chapter 6. And so there is always an ecological impact to human greed and violence, and we see that here as well.

Some people have speculated that this is not just hail falling, but they're fireballs falling from heaven. In the NIV, verse 23 reads, when Moses stretched his staff toward the sky, Yahweh sent thunder and hail and lightning flashed down to the ground. This is also how I understand it.

The Hebrew word for lightning is eish, which means fire, and so they don't have a separate word for lightning as compared to any other kind of fire. But this fire in the sky is what we would expect in a hailstorm. Most hailstorms are accompanied by lightning.

In fact, lightning needs ice in the atmosphere in order to form. And so here we see just a typical but very severe lightning and hailstorm. Pharaoh's response is really remarkable in this incident because he summons Moses and Aaron in verse 27 and says, this time I have sinned.

Sinned? How is it that Pharaoh has an idea about what sin is, and what does sin even mean in an Egyptian context? Well, for the Pharaohs, their prime responsibility was to do the will of the gods. And so by saying I have sinned, he's acknowledging that he has failed to do what God told him to do. So he's acknowledging that Yahweh is a god, at least a god.

He hasn't crowned him king of all yet in his mind, but there is an acknowledgment that he sinned. And he is going to harden his heart and sin yet further. In verse 34, we're told he sinned again by not letting them go.

But we have the beginnings of an acknowledgment on Pharaoh's part that he's in the wrong. We have a very interesting parenthetical comment in verse 31 and verse 32 that I want to point out, and that is, we're told the flax and barley were destroyed since the barley had headed and the flax was in bloom. The wheat and spelt, however, were not destroyed because they ripen later.

This is an interesting little aside, and it sent me on a rabbit trail of studying what are these grains and what significance would they have had in an Egyptian context? So the first thing to say is that flax and barley have a growing season that overlaps in early February. So flax is ready first and then barley, but they're both growing. You would have seen them growing in early February.

So for this sign, we have a pretty reasonable guess about when it happened. That would have been the time that they could both be destroyed at the same time. Now in our culture, we use flax to make oil or we can add flax seed to food for extra fiber and extra nutrition.

But in an ancient Egyptian context, flax was particularly used to make linen. So they made their clothing from it. And barley, on the other hand, is a grain that you can boil and eat and you can even make a cheap bread from it.

But the primary use of barley in ancient Egypt was to make beer, which was a staple of the Egyptian diet. And so they would make a dough out of barley grains ground up and then they would form it into a loaf of bread and they would bake it partially and then they would crumble it up before it's all fully baked and they would soak it in water and let it soak for days. And then they would strain the mushy bread out and what's left would be a kind of beer.

And everyone from young to old, rich and poor, would drink beer with their meals. And so this is interesting because when I hear flax and barley, I'm thinking, oh, they're losing their food supply. But not quite.

It's more like they're losing their clothing supply and their beer. That's the first thing God takes aim at. Another thing I learned is that wages for hired workers were often paid in grain.

So people would have been paid in barley. So if the barley crop fails, then they are not going to be able to be paid. But the note here tells us the wheat and spelt were not destroyed because they ripen later.

Wheat and spelt or emmer is more likely to be emmer rather than spelt because spelt was not in Egypt at this time. But both of them are a similar lower in gluten kind of grain that you can make bread out of. These overlap, their growing seasons overlap in late March and they would have made the staple food of the Egyptian diet, which is bread.

What I love about this and what I learned from this is that God is, again, graciously, incrementally raising the stakes. He's first making it so that they don't get new clothes for next season and they can't drink beer. They're not going to die without flax and barley.

The thing that where it's going to become a major crisis is if the wheat and the emmer are destroyed. And that is what happens next. But God is giving them an opportunity to see, look what I can do.

I can wipe out your entire agriculture, everything that's growing right now. Do you really want me to do that to your next crop as well? So it's a way of gently showing who's boss and inspiring their response. The next sign in this last cycle of signs is the sign of locusts.

And we're told here that they destroy the green plants and the fruit that would be on the trees. This is similarly devastating. It does not specifically mention that wheat and emmer were eaten by the locusts, but it implies that because this is the next thing that happens right on the heels of the first sign.

And there's an interesting phrase in verse five that I thought I'd point out. It says in verse four, if you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. There it is again, the judgment tomorrow.

They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. The Hebrew says they will cover the eye of the land. So there's a couple of ways to understand this.

One is this could be a figure of speech known as metonymy, which is how the NIV has taken it. And that is to cover the eye of the land is to cover everywhere the eye can see. It's so eye is standing in for what the eye sees.

But there's another possibility that I am particularly intrigued by. And that is that in Egyptian thought, the sun was the right eye of Ra, the god Ra, the sun god. And so to cover the eye of the land would be to cover the sun or block out the sun.

And it would mean the defeat of the god Ra. So I mentioned in an earlier session that I'm not persuaded that every sign takes aim at one of the gods of Egypt. But I do think it's worth considering whether Ra is being defeated in the signs and wonders because there are several things that correspond to him and he was the ultimate god over all of Egypt.

And Pharaoh saw himself as the human embodiment of Ra. So this would have been an especially significant connection to make. We're also told at the end of Genesis that Joseph is married to Potiphar, or the daughter of Potiphar, which is given of Ra.

So there's already been a mention in the biblical text in a sort of hidden way of the god Ra. And everyone would have been familiar with Ra. So I think the narrator stops short of saying the names of Egyptian gods because that would be dignifying them too much.

But in a context where everyone knew about the god Ra, there are these subtle ways of undermining or bringing a polemic against the god, particularly this one. So if it is covering the sun, that would mean the the swarm of locusts is so massive and so dense that you can't even see the sunshine. It's making a shadow on the land.

In verse 7, the officials come to Pharaoh and they say, how long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go so they may worship Yahweh their god. Do you not realize that Egypt is ruined? So now the officials have turned against Pharaoh. They're now asking, let the people go, and they're naming Yahweh.

And so Pharaoh makes a concession here. He tries to again kind of call the shots rather than letting Yahweh call the shots. So he says, go worship Yahweh your god.

Now Pharaoh is naming him. But tell me who will be going or who and who will be going in Hebrew? And Moses answered, we will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, with our flocks and our herds, because we are to celebrate a festival to Yahweh. So Pharaoh is suggesting that just the men be sent away.

And Moses is saying, that's not how this works. And this is really significant because it's setting the tone for and teaching us for the first time, what does Israelite religion look like? Who's it for? Who gets to be involved in this? And from the very beginning, Moses makes clear this is for the entire community. This is not just for the men.

We can't just go with our men. We need young and old, sons and daughters, male and female, and we need our flocks and herds. And Pharaoh says, may Yahweh be with you if I let you go with your women and children.

Clearly you are bent on evil. No, have only the men go and worship Yahweh, since that's what you've been asking for. So he is trying to push back on Moses' request to have everybody go and just let the men go.

And that's not acceptable to Yahweh. This is the first mention, verse 9, when Moses announces we are to celebrate a festival to Yahweh. This is the first mention of a festival or hag in the Bible.

And as it turns out, the festival that the Israelites end up celebrating in this book is the Passover, which happens technically in Egypt before they get out to the wilderness. But it's the first of many festivals. And again, this sets the tone for this being a community event that involves everybody.

None of Israel's festivals are limited to just certain members. But Pharaoh's comment here, clearly you are bent on evil, deserves a little bit of attention here. There's a couple ways we can understand it.

The Hebrew says, Ra is before your faces. And the Hebrew word Ra means evil. So he could be saying, you're headed for trouble.

That is when you get out to the wilderness, you could die out there. It's an inhospitable wilderness and you might not survive. He could also be saying this in a more idiomatic way.

Ra is before your faces would be a way of saying, I can see you're bent on mischief or you're planning mischief. You have evil in mind. The word evil in Hebrew is much broader than it is in English.

It's anything negative, not just something morally problematic. So you're headed for danger or you're planning trouble. But the third possibility intrigues me the most.

And again, this is back to Ra. This could be a bilingual wordplay because the Hebrew word for trouble, Ra, sounds like Ra, the god of Egypt. And so he might be saying, if I let you go, Ra is before your faces.

That is, you're going to face Ra out there in the desert. And good luck with that because he's more powerful than Yahweh. If that's what he is, if that's the gauntlet that he's throwing down, then don't you find it fascinating that the next sign is three days of darkness where God basically shuts out the sun and completely defeats Ra? So it's possible that this is a wordplay where Pharaoh is requesting a showdown or intimating that there will be a showdown with his god.

And then God takes him up on that challenge and says, let me show you how it goes when Yahweh versus Ra plays out. In verse 12, Yahweh says to Moses, stretch out your hand over Egypt so that locusts swarm over the land and devour everything growing in the fields, everything left by the hail. And so Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt and Yahweh made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night.

And by morning, the wind had brought the locusts and they invaded the land and settled everywhere. The east wind is interesting because in the Bible an east wind always brings judgment. Genesis 41 verse 6 and verse 23 is the dream that Pharaoh had.

And in Pharaoh's dream, the Pharaoh of Genesis, he dreams that an east wind brings a drought and kills off all the agriculture. And so that's even in an Egyptian context, east wind has connoted trouble or judgment. But if we fast forward a few chapters, we'll see that an east wind is also what God brings to divide the Sea of Reeds so that the Israelites can walk through.

So he brings deliverance for the Israelites and then sends the wind back to cover over the Egyptian army. Again, this is foreshadowing the judgment that is to come. Pharaoh admits sin again in this sign.

Verse 16, he quickly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, I have sinned against Yahweh, your God, and against you. His acknowledgement, his confession is getting more specific and more accurate. And so he prays that they will forgive his sin and pray to Yahweh to take the deadly plague away from him.

Now, to call locusts a deadly plague is a bit of an overstatement given that locusts don't kill people. But he seems to be acknowledging God's power to bring life and death. And so the response of God is to change the wind and to blow the locusts into the Sea of Reeds.

The locusts are blown into the sea, which is exactly what will happen in chapter 14 when God uses a wind to blow the sea back over and cover over the Egyptians. So many different resonances between this and the final sign, the climactic sign. As Terence Fredheim puts it, the locusts and the Egyptians did comparable damage to the land, and they will share a common end.

Wind will blow them or drive them into the sea. All right, so we've come to the sign of darkness. And as I already suggested, this sign is a really interesting follow-up to Pharaoh's challenge in the previous sign.

It's interesting to me that the darkness lasts for three days, which is precisely the length of time that the Israelites have been requesting to go into the wilderness to worship Yahweh. And Pharaoh has continually said, especially back in chapter five, has said, you're lazy. No way.

You can't go. You can't leave for three days. Think of all the labor I would lose if you left for three days.

And here God says, all right, I'll show you what it looks like to lose three days of labor because everything grinds to a screeching halt without the sun. Some people have wondered whether this plague of darkness is kind of an anti-climax. As things have been getting more and more intense and more devastating, it could feel a bit like, really? The power just went out for three days? That's it? I mean, you're still fine.

It doesn't actually harm you if the lights go out. But in an ancient context where they don't have private bathrooms and refrigeration and all the same facilities that we have in our homes, when they're having to go out of their home, not only to work, but to do all their commerce, to find sustenance, to go to the well, to get water, when everything they need for life is out there, this constitutes a major disruption to Egyptian society. It is also a debilitating blow to the sun god, Ra, and to Pharaoh, who is known as Ra's primary representative.

Another one of Pharaoh's titles, in addition to founder of Egypt, is son of Ra. And people actually referred to Pharaoh as my son, S-U-N. So to turn out the lights for three days is a major slam to the leader who's supposed to represent the sun.

This also incidentally provides three days of respite for the Hebrews who don't have to be working for those three days, and they have light in their dwellings. So God again makes a distinction between the Hebrews and the Egyptians. So in response to this, Pharaoh makes another concession.

He says the men and the dependents can leave. Women and children are allowed to go with along with the men, but he says leave your flocks and herds behind. And this is striking because Moses is not interested in this at all.

Yahweh's deliverance of the oppressed people in Egypt included their animals. Pharaoh has proven himself to be a ruthless taskmaster. He cannot even be trusted with animals.

Besides, this is the Pharaoh who has already lost all of his animals to a plague, and whatever was left or whatever animals he procured after that to hail. So what's going to happen if all of the Hebrews leave and leave their animals behind? It seems to me that Pharaoh would quickly just take them all for himself to restore his herds. And Yahweh says no, you have to bring all of your animals.

Moses says you must allow us to have sacrifices and burnt offerings to present to Yahweh our God. Our livestock too must go with us. Not a hoof is to be left behind.

We have to use some of them in worshiping Yahweh our God, and until we get there we will not know what we are to use to worship Yahweh. So we've already learned that the location is important of worship, that God has told them to come out to the wilderness to worship. We've learned that the participants of worship include all the people, and we're learning here that Yahweh is the one who makes a careful prescription to how that worship needs to look.

What animals are offered as sacrifice to him? This is not some kind of choose-your-own-adventure. The people can't just freestyle their worship with Yahweh. They have to be ready to hear his precise requirements for their worship, and in order to do that they have to have everything with them.

So we've come to the last of the traditional signs or the traditional ten plagues, the death of the firstborn. And it's interesting to notice that this one is actually enveloped inside the plague of darkness. We don't have a clear end to the darkness before this one begins.

Pharaoh has just told Moses at the end of chapter 10, get out of my sight, which is kind of what we've been waiting for. He's been asking for permission to leave all this time. Get out of my sight.

In other words, go make sure you don't appear before me again. The day you see my face you will die. And Moses says, just as you say, I will never appear before you again.

But we're not told he leaves. And what we have in chapter 11 is a retrospective. Now the Lord had said to Moses, I'm going to bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt.

After that he'll let you go. So 11, 12, and 13 is this mash-up of the announcement of the death of the firstborn, the instructions for the Passover, the actual death of the firstborn, and the leaving from Egypt. And all of it happens at night in the dark.

And so the darkness that came on the land of Egypt at the end of chapter 10 does not lift until the people are walking out of Egypt, which is why in my chart I included darkness and death of the firstborn together as one. This is a fulfillment of what God announced to Moses in chapter 4. Remember right before the strange circumcision scene, God had said, you tell Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn son, so you better let them go or I'm going to kill your firstborn son. So we're finally seeing the fulfillment of that after a long and very patient series of warnings to Pharaoh.

The fact that this occurs at night might also indicate the failure of Ra to protect Egypt at night. Ra is powerless at night, so God brings darkness and then he's able to take the firstborn of Pharaoh. Now I'm curious about this, and I don't have a firm answer, but I'm curious about which firstborn are affected.

We're told that it's everyone from the slave in the dungeon to the household of Pharaoh. So from the powerful to the powerless are affected by the death of the firstborn. It's not entirely clear whether this only affects males or if it also includes females dying.

The text is not clear about whether these are the firstborn of the father only or the firstborn of the mother. Later in chapter 13, when we have regulations about dedicating the firstborn Hebrews to God, it's the ones who open the womb, which seems to be the firstborn of the mother. But here they're called the the core, which traditionally is the firstborn of the father.

Obviously if there's been any remarriage or if there's multiple spouses, then that complicates things. And it's also not clear how old these firstborn are. Is this only children who are still dependents who are affected, or does this include adults? And if it includes adults, then why is Pharaoh still alive? Wouldn't he have been the firstborn who became king? So that makes me think this is only affecting children at first.

And it seems to me that the army of Pharaoh would be largely decimated if all of the firstborn males were dead, who were even adults. So it seems to me like maybe we're just looking at children here, but it doesn't specify. It is really interesting to learn what what role the firstborn son plays in Egyptian culture, because every culture is a little different as far as gender roles and roles in the family.

And here I learned that the eldest son of an Egyptian household was trained by his father to carry on his career. And then his most important job in life was actually to bury his parents, which was a very elaborate process in Egyptian culture. And his job was to ensure that there were continuous food offerings being made at his parents tomb.

So for the eldest son to die on that night in Egypt would be a way of snuffing out the future of Egypt, and would be a way of cutting off the the perpetual worship of their ancestors, because the one designated to do it is now not available to do it anymore. So it would have been a really a really low blow for adult Egyptians in this case. As the people are leaving, they're supposed to ask their neighbors for articles of silver and gold.

Usually that phrase articles of silver and gold is indicates congratulatory items in in the rest of the Bible. Here it's curious, why are the neighbors so willing to give silver and gold? Are they just really close friends by this point? Or are they attempting to win Yahweh's favor, like maybe if I give you my wealth, Yahweh will leave me alone? Or is there a sense in which they recognize they owe a great debt to the Hebrews for unpaid labor, and so they're making reparations as the people are leaving, again so that Yahweh will leave them alone and and stop bringing judgment on them. Most significantly, in chapter 12 verse 30, when the actual the firstborn actually die, we're told Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night.

Remember I said this is still this whole thing takes place at night, and there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. We're told a couple of times that a great cry rose up from Egypt, and that is a mirror to the great cry of the Hebrews that came up from Egypt to God. So those who caused the Hebrews to cry out are now experiencing distress.

At long last, in verses 31 to 32, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, up leave my people, you and the Israelites. This is the first place where Pharaoh actually calls them by name as a people, the Israelites, and he's now telling them to go. He's acknowledging them as a nation, he's telling them to get out, which is what we've been waiting for, and he says, go worship Yahweh as you have requested, take your flocks and herds as you have said and go, and also bless me.

So he's finally realizing the full weight of God's demands, and he's fully complying with that. He's acknowledging Yahweh's name and his claim for the service of the Hebrews and all that he demands, including flocks and herds. And I couldn't help but think of Hebrews chapter 7, verse 7, which is the reflection on the story of Melchizedek and Abraham.

And when Abraham gives a tithe to Melchizedek, and the author of Hebrews explains, without a doubt, the lesser is blessed by the greater. And so in this last moment, as Pharaoh's sending them away, and he says, and also bless me, he's implicitly acknowledging that Moses and his God are greater than he is, that he requires their blessing. He's now, it's like he's kneeling down and recognizing his need for what they have to offer him.

So I'm going to save the actual sea crossing for its own session because there's a lot to talk about there. But now we've made our way through each of the other signs and wonders. I hope it's been interesting to you.

Any questions before we move on? Wouldn't that have been a great contrast to the people of Israel to have been knowing that they've been in Egypt for hundreds of years now, and seeing their situation deteriorate more and more, and then all of a sudden to hear about Moses and to think, oh, this might be happening, and then to see the plagues, and then to be released, and then to have all the Egyptians give them all their stuff in the process. I mean, to think what that would have been like for them to see that whole process. It's almost like this just occurred to me.

When Joseph goes to Egypt, he starts out as a slave, and then he's raised to this high position, and he's clothed and has all this wealth, and now they're experiencing what Joseph experienced on their way out. They're being raised to this exalted position, bless me also, and they're being given silver and gold and garments for their children. It's fascinating.

For us to know that God is faithful to us, just like he is to them, and we may not see it all the time, but God's at work to be faithful. Here he's at work behind the scenes, and it might feel like forever, but God has not forgotten his promises, and when the time is right, he's ready to take action.