Passover

The symbolism of the passover is so deep that I am sure 1000's of books and articles have been written about it. I wrote a good blog post about Genesis 7-13 in 2022. One thing I mentioned then was how the different plagues were created to show that Jehova was more powerful than the Egyptian gods, with each plague referring to a different god. One insite I got from the podcasts I listened to this week was a different way of seeing the plagues. This week Dave Hadlock on Follow Him talked about how the plagues were a dismantling of creation.  

I have talked about before how the flood at the time of Noah was an undoing of creation. It was a chance for God to reset the world with a new founder and a new covenant. That is basically what is happening in the story of the Exodus. God, through the plagues, ritualistically reverses creation so the pharaoh will free Israel and then God can re-establishes a new creation and a new covenant with the house of Israel.  Here are the parallels.

During the Creation, God orders and separates light from darkness and water from land.  He sets lights in the heavens and creates plants and animals. His final creation is man. The plagues reverse all that.  The Lord starts by cursing the Nile, the main water source.  He later causes darkness where there can be no light. He destroys crops and sends the locusts who destroy all the plants.  He also destroys the cattle. He causes hail and fire to fall from heaven (reversing the placement of lights in heaven). His final curse is the death of the firstborn. When the house of Israel is finally allowed to leave Egypt, the world the Hebrews have known has been completely destroyed, or un-created. 

As Israel leaves the ruined world behind, the Lord starts to re-create their world again. First, he separates the land from the water when he divides the Red Sea. He separates light from darkness when he establishes the Pillar of Fire to lead them by night. Later we will learn that he creates food (like the plants created in Eden) in the form of Manna, and gives them animals to eat, in the form of quail (Ex 16). He leads the people to Mount Sinai where Moses talks with the Lord. When the people are ready to meet the Lord on the Mountain, the mountain is filled with lighting and thunder (Ex 19:16-19).  The Lord is restoring the lights that had fallen from heaven. The creation has been re-established.  All that was destroyed by the plagues are back in place. This done, they are ready for a new covenant, with a new priesthood leadership, lead by Moses and Miriam, instead of Adam and Eve. We will talk in later weeks about how Israel refused the full covenant that the Lord wanted to make with them, and were given a lesser covenant.

If you look, you can see this pattern of uncreation and recreation repeated in the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon and even in Church history. A few examples are the Babylonian Captivity, the events of 3rd Nephi, the coming of Christ in the meridian of time, and the restoration of the Gospel through Joseph Smith.  In each case people have strayed so far from God's path they need a really dramatic reset in order for them to get back on track. In each of these cases, look for the elements of water, light, plants, animals, and signs in the heavens. In each case there is a catastrophic failure, but then the Lord starts over with a new covenant. 

This pattern can bring us hope in our own lives.  Sometimes it seems like our own lives experience a catastrophic failure. This can be due to our own sin, or through exterior forces that make our life unravel. The scriptures show us that God is faithful.  When "un-creation" happens, if we turn to Him he can recreate our lives in ways we could not have anticipated.