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doesn’t speak of freedom, independence, redemption, or the birth of a nation.
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.
God, Pharaoh, and Moses—each
Any and all conceivable weapons are at your disposal: lightning, earthquakes, tidal waves, you name it. There’s simply nothing you can’t do. So how might you, as quickly and efficiently as possible, achieve your objective?
Why is Pharaoh’s consent so important to God? Why would God go to such lengths to secure that consent, even to the point of asking Pharaoh—seemingly deceptively—for just a three-day holiday? What was God’s agenda? What was He really after?
however, suggests that this darkness was different. Its cause was not an absence of light but a physical presence of darkness, almost palpable.
It happens twice in the Exodus story: once when God first encounters Moses at the Burning Bush, and again, just before the Ten Plagues begin. I want to explore both of these episodes with you. Let’s start with the second.
YHVH, is spelled with the four Hebrew letters yud, hei, vav, hei, and is sometimes known in English as the tetragrammaton. The problem—and this is plain for any reader of the Bible to see—is that this name is not really new at all. It is used constantly throughout the book of Genesis, oftentimes to characterize the Lord in conversation with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—the very people who, according to God’s declaration here, were not supposed to know about this name.
But that is not what God says: 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)
What’s in a Name? To bestow a name on someone, or something, is to begin to grapple with the identity of the one you are naming. We do this with our newborn children. A
What does that first part, El, or its longer form, Elohim, mean? More precisely, what do these terms mean when they are words, and not names? Consider how el is used in the following verse: I have it within my power to do harm to you (Genesis 31:29) That was the warning Laban gave to Jacob upon catching up to him after Jacob’s sudden departure from his home. In that verse, el is the Hebrew word for “power.” That seems to be the connotation of El, or Elohim, when it is used as a divine name, too. The Deity is being denoted as a powerful force.[9]
He had appeared to the forefathers not just as El, but as El Shaddai. What does that mean?
name given to Mi she’amar le’olamo ‘dai,’ or “the One who said to His world ‘Enough!’” As the Midrash goes on to explain, the heavens and the earth, after first coming into being, were not static and motionless. Rather, they were expanding rapidly—they were “stretching” or “swelling,” in the words of the Midrash. 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]
My name YHVH I never made known to them (Exodus 6:3)
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.
It is not who He is, fundamentally. God will make use of power, as He is about to do—but it does not define Him. Instead, the essence of God is about something else. It is about being YHVH.
What that means, is what we need to explore next.
Why do we call God The Place? Because He is the place of the world… and yet the world is not His place (Genesis Rabbah 68:9)
The answer is God. He is The Place of the World.[17] To make it short and sweet, the Sages simply called God The Place.
So, getting back to God’s speech to Moses just before the Ten Plagues begin, God was saying that in the past, He had been revealed as a powerful force (an el), perhaps even an ultimately powerful force (el shaddai); but now, through the Exodus, He would be revealed for who He really was: YHVH, the one who is “off the board,” outside of time and space; the Maker of time and space.[18] Parker. The Creator.
16. Despite all this, the mysterious fact remains that God asks humans to create a place for Him in this world: “Make a sanctuary for Me, and I will dwell among you” (Exodus 25:8). This world is not the “native place” of God, as it is a world of time and space, and God has neither spatial nor temporal qualities. Nevertheless, He asks humans to create a dwelling for Him in the world He created for them—and, paradoxically, He commits to inhabiting that dwelling. For more on the implications of this paradox, watch the following videos at Aleph Beta:
As we noted, those changes of mind are characterized by two different Hebrew phrases, chizuk halev and kibbud halev, which we have rendered as “strengthening of heart” and “hardening of heart,” respectively. As we go through the story of the Ten Plagues, we will note the particular moments each phrase is used. We will find that paying attention to these alternating turns of phrase will help us discern the outlines of an otherwise-hidden drama.
If you Hebrews are serving your god out of abject fear, the way we all serve our deities around here—that means you must fear this god more than you fear me. And that means I must be doing something wrong. I am the ultimate master here. My slaves’ fear of me should dwarf all other fears. If these Hebrews have time to think about serving their god, they’re evidently not working hard enough!
Pharaoh would have recognized God—not for what He truly was, to be sure, but at least as an el, a legitimate, if limited, power—and then it would be time to take a second baby step, to move the education process forward one step further.
Egypt would taste something of the harshness it inflicted on its “lazy” slaves.
There may be many powers out there, but there is one Power to rule them all.
Had Pharaoh been open to learning the truth about this Creator-God, it was there for him, on a silver platter. It was there in the only sign God ever instructed Moses to perform for Pharaoh, and it predated the plagues. The process of education did not necessitate the eventual violence of the plagues.
The text just told us that Pharaoh had strengthened his heart (chizuk halev), but then God Himself employs the term kibbud halev, suggesting that Pharaoh had hardened his heart, made himself stubborn. Which is it, then?
This deity is not just powerful, but completely and utterly in control, able to calibrate the cessation of the plague precisely to Pharaoh’s whims.
As we discussed in Chapter 11, Stubbornness and Courage.
Precision, in time and space, is the unmistakable signature of the Master of both these realms, YHVH Himself; this plague will demonstrate that the Creator is behind what is happening.
degree of raw power. The plagues are gradually building
If it was courage that Pharaoh was lacking—well, God would supply him with the courage to pursue his vision.
will send all My plagues into your heart… so
“I will send all My plagues into your heart”?
Despite your evil oppression of the Israelites, you can still play a constructive role here. But if you choose not to play it, there are other ways My ends can be achieved…
Reality becomes just another enemy to be managed, and what better weapon to combat it than bullheadedness?
His own hardened heart would become his fortress.
When a Fortress Becomes a Prison Stubbornness, though, is a fickle friend. It can swiftly be turned against you, as Pharaoh will soon learn. In the final three plagues, the Almighty transforms Pharaoh’s fortress into a prison.
Pharaoh decided to adopt an attitude of stubbornness, and God took advantage of that attitude, playing on it to further increase Pharaoh’s recalcitrance.
Pharaoh was wrong, though. Denial of reality is never a strength; it is always a weakness. So God exploited that vulnerability, carefully corralling Pharaoh’s own bullheadedness into the force that would bring about his ruin. To explain:
Maybe God was using Pharaoh’s own stubbornness against him as a weapon that would force the Egyptian king deeper and deeper into a prison of his own making. How, exactly, did it work?
‘a-n-h, appearing as it does in its pi’el form, is the classic Hebrew term for “enslavement” or “oppression.” It is, in fact, the precise term the Torah used earlier to describe the Egyptian subjugation of Israel.[40] The use of the term again, now, is wryly ironic. The biblical text has the flavor of something like this: Pharaoh, you have brutally subjugated My people, stripping them of their dignity—and now you will pay for that by subjugating yourself to Me, and being stripped of your own dignity.
Pride will keep Pharaoh in the fight, even as his imminent destruction looms. His ego will be his undoing.
Locusts are the economic nuclear option.
If Pharaoh is going to avoid destruction, at this point, he will have to sacrifice his pride. This, however, is not something he will do. Having made a fortress of his own hardened heart, Pharaoh is not likely to abandon it, even in the face of certain destruction.
Pharaoh had free will to the bitter end. His pride just didn’t let him use it.
"Free will" is something given by God...yet pharoah proves that often even with this freedom we will choose our own self-bent ways and be enslaved by it.
bechor,
If you made the choice, that night, to become God’s bechor, the bechor of the Transcendent Parent, you would survive. If you were the bechor only of an earthly parent, you would perish.
we can now see that these events were designed to achieve two purposes: they would free Israel, and demonstrate the existence of a Creator.
