The Exodus You Almost Passed Over

by David Fohrman

Universe would like to make a shiny new festival that celebrates His miraculous deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. You immediately get down to work with your colleagues to brainstorm some possible names.

to recall the way God spared our firstborn the night we left Egypt and went free (Exodus 13:14–16).

The threat to the firstborn on the night we went free, and their redemption from that threat—these ideas are evidently more fundamental than we might have supposed. Passover gets its name from them.

And you shall tell Pharaoh, Thus says God: My firstborn child is Israel. And I say to you: Send out my child that he may serve Me... (Exodus 4:22–23)

And if you refrain from sending him out, behold, I will kill your firstborn child (Exodus 4:23)

The Almighty makes a direct comparison between Israel, His firstborn, and the actual firstborn children of the Egyptians.

the firstborn theme is everywhere in the Exodus story. The

The firstborn theme is the fabric out of which this story is woven. To know the Exodus is to know firstbornness.

In this book, I want to argue that the Exodus story tells us who we are. It is a story that tells us not just about our past, but about our future. It speaks not only of our birth, but of our destiny. It speaks of why we are here and what we are meant to achieve. The story is about what it means to be a firstborn nation.

Do you think you would need ten different plagues to set your people free? Probably not. Surely you could come up with a scheme that would accomplish your goal more quickly and efficiently than that.

but does not employ them to quickly allow the Israelites to leave. Instead, a long, laborious process ensues, involving no less than ten distinct plagues. Why did God dismiss these marvelous alternative possibilities, and insist on doing it the long way? Was He simply trying to be dramatic? Was He worried that future generations wouldn’t find the story intriguing if He got it over with too quickly?

“The God of the Hebrews has called to us; let us go, please, for three days in the desert to sacrifice to him, lest he strike us with the sword or with pestilence” (Exodus 5:3).

there appears to be an unwritten rule throughout the Exodus narrative, a rule that God is choosing to adhere to: the Israelites aren’t going anywhere unless Pharaoh says they are.

But that’s not quite it either. For just when you think Pharaoh’s consent is everything, it turns out to be nothing at all.

To the extent that Pharaoh’s free will was compromised by God Himself, how can this same God hold Pharaoh responsible for his actions? It seems axiomatic that people are responsible for their choices only if they are the ones making those choices.

At the end of the day, it’s a catch-22. Does God care about Pharaoh’s free-willed consent, or not? If He does, then once Pharaoh gives that consent, the game should be over. And if the Almighty doesn’t care about that consent, why needlessly ask for it to begin with?

Thus says the Lord: At about midnight, I shall go out into the midst of Egypt; and all firstborn in Egypt shall die (Exodus 11:4–5)

Thus, to prevent any possible mix-up, Moses avoided pinning the plague down to a precise time. Better safe than sorry.

Beseech YHVH,[8] that he take away the frogs from me and my people; I will let the people go, that they may sacrifice to YHVH (Exodus 8:4) And now listen to Moses’s reply: Glorify yourself over me: Exactly when should I beseech God, on behalf of your servants and your people, to rid you and your houses of frogs? (Exodus 8:5)

He’ll do anything to be rid of them—but now he is willing to endure another twenty-four hours of frogs, just to see whether Moses can turn off the frogs at exactly the moment Pharaoh picks?

There was clearly a test of wills going on between Pharaoh and God, but maybe the test of wills wasn’t entirely about what we thought. We tend to assume Pharaoh was battling God exclusively over the release of the enslaved Hebrews. But maybe that wasn’t the only agenda. Maybe he was battling God over something for which precision, strangely, counts even more than power. What could that be?

The first is simply to accept Pharaoh’s answer, throw up your hands, and go back to God for further instructions.

Your second option is to do the exact opposite. Instead of retreating, you could up the ante: Look, Pharaoh, you don’t realize who you’re provoking here. It’s the Master of the Universe, and trust me, you don’t want to get Him angry.

The God of the Hebrews happened upon us. Let us go, please, for three days in the desert and sacrifice to our God; otherwise, he might hurt us with pestilence or with the sword. (Exodus 5:3)

It might be possible to discover the plan if we look carefully at the two speeches of Moses and compare them side by side. The tale of these two speeches is told not just in the generalities but in the specific, granular details that distinguish each speech from the other.

Speech 1 Thus says YHVH, God of Israel: Send out My people, and let them rejoice before Me in the desert. (Exodus 5:1) Speech 2 The God of the Hebrews happened upon us. Let us go, please, for three days in the desert and sacrifice to our God; otherwise, he might hurt us with pestilence or with the sword. (Exodus 5:3)

Here is a quick summary of some of the main differences I’ve found between the speeches:

God who wants His people to celebrate with Him.

This God seems to evince a personal connection to the people, calling them My people.

He doesn’t address human beings directly; at best, He might “happen upon” them now and then.

He can be vindictive if not appeased. Celebration with this Being would be out of the question.

In his first speech to Pharaoh, Moses spoke of God using His ineffable name, spelled—as we’ve rendered it in English—YHVH. In the second speech, Moses did not introduce the Almighty this way. He instead spoke of the Lord as Elokei Ha’Ivrim, the God of the Hebrews.

To my knowledge, it’s the only place in the Bible where the Deity Himself wants to make sure everyone is on the same page about His name.

And the very next thing God does is tell Moses about His names: And God spoke to Moses, and said to him: I am YHVH. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but My name YHVH I did not make known to them (Exodus 6:2–3)

In the face of all this, God assures Moses that he has no idea, yet, of the divine might that will be unleashed against Egypt. Moses cannot fathom, in his wildest dreams, what is about to happen to Pharaoh and to Egypt.

The Lord seems to be telling Moses that He is revealing a new name to him—one that his forbears, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were not aware of.

And Moses said to God: Here I am, coming to the Children of Israel, and I am going to tell them ‘the God of your ancestors sent me to you.’ They’ll say to me, ‘What’s His name?’ What shall I tell them? (Exodus 3:13)

And God said to Moses: I Will Be That Which I Will Be. Thus you shall say to the Children of Israel: ‘I Will Be’ sent me to you (Exodus 3:14)

Moses, at the Burning Bush, seems to want to understand God’s name before accepting the leadership role God is thrusting upon him. And, just before the Ten Plagues begin, the Almighty seems to want to “introduce” Himself, via His name, to Moses, Egypt, and perhaps the world. These names are important. The rest of the Exodus seems to ride upon them. What are we to make of them?

At the Burning Bush, Moses asks God about His name. What he is really saying is: The people will want to know who You are; what shall I tell them? And later, just before the Ten Plagues begin, God comes back to the issue of names. He tells Moses that He is revealing Himself to the world using a new “name,” as it were. A new facet of His identity, earlier hidden, will now, in the Exodus, start to become clear. It is bound up in the name YHVH.

God had said that He appeared to Moses’s ancestors as El Shaddai, and only now would He become known as YHVH. What do these two names signify?

I have it within my power to do harm to you (Genesis 31:29)

The Deity is being denoted as a powerful force.[9]

The second commandment states: “Thou shalt not have [allegiance to] any other elohim before Me.”

Shaddai doesn’t have a life in Biblical Hebrew outside its use as a divine name—so we can’t directly apply our strategy to this name.

And were it not for God declaring “Enough!” and reigning in that process of expansion, the expansion would have careened out of control over infinite stretches of time—leaving us with a universe very different from the comparatively nice and tidy one we inhabit today.[11]

People would thus have spoken of God as El Shaddai—a very significant power, a Being possessing great might.

Now, though, in the Exodus, that would change. Just as the Ten Plagues are about to begin, God seems to be saying: Before we go any further in this process, there’s something I need to tell you. You need to know who I truly am. And to that effect, God tells Moses His name: it is YHVH.

If YHVH were a word, what would it mean?

The only way to experience all states of time simultaneously is to be, somehow, outside the tunnel; only from that vantage point could one look at time “all at once.” That, the name YHVH implies, is how God experiences time. But what about God makes Him experience time that way? How did God get outside of time? The answer is: He exists outside of time because He is the creator of time.[14]