The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

So begin the plagues.

Then, of course, come the frogs, and gnats, and flies, and livestock dying, and boils on man and beast, hail, locusts, darkness, and the threat of death to all newborns. But still the Pharaoh would not budge. Why? Because God (Jehovah) had hardened the Pharaoh’s heart, “that (His) wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”

Wait. God puts Moses, the Israelites, the Egyptians, and the Pharaoh through all of this in order to glorify Himself? Yup. That’s what the book says. I have a problem with that. I understand the King of Egypt telling the midwives to kill all the Israeli first-born. I understand Herod, later on, to kill all of the infant male Jews. I understand why Hitler did what he did. Don’t condone any of it, of course, but they all did it for a purpose – the Pharaoh and Herod to hold on to their dominance, Hitler to build a new race. I don’t understand anyone, including God, murdering people just to prove He/he/she can.

After all, if He could harden the Pharaoh’s heart, he obviously could have softened it, and caused Pharaoh to let the Israelites go right after Aaron’s rod/snake’s big lunch. Or not make them captives in the first place. Instead He sends unimaginable misery on the Egyptians, at the same time “hardening the Pharaoh’s heart,” keeping him from relenting “that His wonders may be multiplied.”

Causing the slaughter of the newborns – the first Passover.

God lays down a set of guidelines for the Israelites to follow, including marking their doors with blood. I have another problem with that episode. If God is really God, he knows who is in every house, both Egyptians and Israelites. Why would His people have to mark their doors so the angel of death would pass them by? This is another instance, I believe, of the storytellers not thinking deeply enough about the story to make it believable to a neutral reader. Of course it was told in a time and in such a way that those who heard it didn’t question it seriously. The centuries that have passed since give us – or at least give me – another perspective.

Anyway, on one dark midnight God (Jehovah) smites all the first-born in the land of Egypt, including the Pharaoh’s son and all the first-born cattle. After which God evidently released His hold on Pharaoh’s heart, for he calls for Aaron and Moses, saying “get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve Jehovah, as ye have said.”

Whereupon the Israelites demand all the riches of Egypt – the jewels, gold, silver, etc. – prepare food for the trip, pack up and go, having “despoiled the Egyptians.”

Free at last, after four hundred and thirty years of bondage. And “God led the people about, by the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea: and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt,” giving them a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to lead them.

But like any good story, this one doesn’t end there.