Exodus 7-13: Moses before Pharaoh

 Once again, this passage has so much in it! The story of the Exodus is perhaps the most important story of the Old Testament, especially to the Jews.  I could try to a four -old interpretation of it, but that might turn out to be a book rather than a blog post.  So, here are a just few things that stood out to me this week.

The plagues=smack-down of Egyptian Gods

One new idea this week was from Andrew Skinner on the Follow Him podcast.  He talked about how many of the 10 plagues the Lord inflicted on Egypt through Moses and Aaron were targeted at specific Egyptian gods.  For example:

Aaron's staff-snake eating up Pharaoh's staff-snakes: The snake is one of the personal symbols of Pharaoh. Remember how Pharaoh's crown has a snake on it?  One might ask why the Lord asked Moses to do the staff-snake trick first when He knew that Pharaoh's magicians could do the same trick.  It was because he wanted Moses' snake to eat Pharaoh's snakes as a foreshadowing of the ultimate outcome of this confrontation.

The the Nile to Blood: The Nile was also considered a deity in the Egyptian pantheon. The cursing of the Nile was also a foreshadowing of when the Egyptians would be swallowed up in the Red Sea later in the story.

The frogs, the killing of livestock, destroying crops, and the swarms of insects:  There are Egyptian gods with frog heads, cattle heads, gods of the harvest and even an insect god, the Scarab Beetle.  The message is "our God is greater than your gods"

The Darkness: the highest god in the Egyptian Pantheon was Ra.  He was the creator god and the sun god.  When God, in his penultimate curse, darkened the sky, he was showing his dominance over the most powerful Egyptian god. 

There may be more, but these were the most obvious to me.

Crucifixion Imagery

The other thing that struck me this week was how the New Testament writers were very concious of the Old Testament when they wrote the account of the crucifixion. They clearly saw it as the manifestation of the symbols of the Passover.  There are tons of parallels, but two small details struck me, both surrounding the blood that was put on the doorposts of the houses of the Hebrews so that they would be saved from death.  They were supposed to kill a lamb, and use a hyssop branch to put the blood on the top and sides of the door.  This always seemed like a really gruesome and random thing to ask them to do.  But if you think about the visual image, and then think about the crucifixion it, all of a sudden, becomes the same image.  The question is, where is the blood.  When Jesus was crucified, the blood was coming from his feet, his hands, and his head, from the crown of thorns.  That's where the blood in the Passover would have been as well.  On the floor, because that is where they would have slaughtered the lamb, and then at the sides, and across the top, because that is where they had to put it with the hyssop branch. 

I think it is no coincidence that, in John 19:29, when Jesus asked for a drink as he hung on the cross, the soldiers dipped a hyssop branch in sour wine and lifted it to his lips. It is the same visual image; lifting the reddened hyssop branch up. The New Testament writers, especially John, was clearly saying, "Look, this is what you have been celebrating every year at the Passover.  This is the Lamb of God who was sacrificed to save us from Death, and the captivity of sin."