I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

I am not sure where I am going to go with today’s blog.  The first thing which struck me was toward the end of the passage when God told the people of Israel, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, …, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians,…”  In the context one could easily conclude that the diseases mentioned are those from among the ten plagues.  However, I do not believe that is the case.  When one looks at the history of disease one quickly sees that when people begin to gather in cities disease becomes much more common place than when people live a more rural existence.  Interestingly, while population density plays a role in the spread of many of those diseases, most of them also spread as a result of human behavior.  So, if we do what is right in God’s eyes, we will be less likely to experience disease…and if we all, as a society, do what is right in God’s eyes, we will not experience those diseases at all.  This applies to all types of social ills,  The higher the percentage of people in a society who do what is right in God’s eyes, the fewer social ills the people of that society will experience.  The best part about this is that if we, individually, do what is right in God’s eyes, we ourselves will be less likely to experience the negative impact of many social ills.

NOTE: My title today is an oversimplification

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 10-12.

Every time I read this passage it feels like someone, perhaps the original writer, added some of the later descriptions of the instructions for the Feast of Unleavened Bread on to the instructions which Moses gave the Children of Israel before the first Passover.  I am not saying Moses did not give these instructions at that time, just that it feels like the instructions would have been more bare-boned, with the explanatory parts about celebrating in memory of this event left out.  It feels that way because the description of when they actually left indicates that it was sudden and urgent.  The meal they would have eaten needed to be one which could be prepared and eaten quickly and easily without using anything they would want to take with them.  My real point here is that we can easily miss the fear and urgency which the Israelites must have felt as they prepared to leave Egypt.  Something momentous was about to happen and they did not truly understand what was going on.   Moses had assured them that if they followed his instructions all would be well, but how could they be sure.  There will be times in our lives where we feel a little bit of what they were feeling that night.  I pray that you never feel more than a little of that feeling.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 4-6.

There are two main points in this passage which I want to highlight today.  First, Moses did not want to go back to Egypt.  He was content with his life as a shepherd of Midian.  Each of his objections was just an excuse.  He raised issues which had validity, but once God had addressed them, Moses begged God to send someone else.  Yet, when God insisted, Moses went.  Second, when Moses confronted Pharaoh, things got worse for the Israelites, not better.  We need to remember that this is often the case when God begins to act.  Generally, God does not begin to make things better until the situation is such that no one can take credit for the change.  So that we know things got better through God’s action, not because of ours.  Really, these two points are related.  God chose Moses to rescue the Israelites because Moses knew that he did not have the skills to accomplish it on his own.  And God allowed Pharaoh to make things worse so that everyone would see that the Israelites were released through God’s power, not Pharaoh’s good will.

I initially said there were only two points I wanted to touch on.  However, as I re-read to write the above I was struck by the fact that Moses had not circumcised his sons until he was returning to Egypt.  Further, it is interesting that it was his Midianite wife who did so when she perceived that God was angry with Moses.  The reason this is significant is that the Midianites were also descended from Abraham (by way of Midian, who was born to Keturah who Abraham married after the death of Sarah).  Further, Moses’ father-in-law was a priest of God.  Did Moses not circumcise his sons because the Midianites did not circumcise their sons?  But if that was the reason, how did his wife know to do so in this situation?  Just some food for thought.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 1-3.

When I first started to actually pay attention to history, I “learned” that the Exodus has to be a myth because none of the Egyptian (or other archeological records) support the idea that the events in Exodus happened.  Then I learned about the Hyksos “invasion” and rule over Egypt.  My mind immediately thought that a Hyksos ruler becoming Pharaoh would perfectly explain the line in today’s passage where it says, “a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.”  However, I was told that would not work because the Exodus happened long after the Hyksos were driven from Egypt.  As I learned more, I discovered that despite historical scholars dating the Exodus to the 13th Century BC (1300-1200 BC), Biblical dates put the Exodus at 1446 BC.  While I question the logic of arriving at such precise dates from Biblical sources (all other written records from the time period when the Old Testament was written were not concerned with precise dates), it fits with the date of the transformation in character of an Egyptian Pharaoh (before 1446 BC Pharaoh Amenhotep II was portrayed as arrogant and bombastic, after 1446 he was portrayed as thoughtful and wise).  And 1446 BC would have been about 100 years after the Hyksos were driven from Egypt.  Which allows time for what happened in verses 1-15 to happen.  Relative to my questioning of using the Bible for precisely identifying a year, there are debates about the chronology of Egypt.  One set of scholars has Amenhotep II ascending to the throne in 1454 BC and another saying that happened in 1427 BC.

While there are many spiritual lessons for us in this passage, this year I am going to spend a little more time on the “history” of the passage (although I hope, as always, that you read the passage for yourself).  One of those points is Moses’ name.  If the Exodus happened in 1446 BC, the Pharaoh when he was a child would have been Thutmoses III.  Note the similarity in names.  This is especially important when you realize that the first part of Thutmoses was a variation of the name of the Egyptian god Thoth, and that the name meant “born of Thoth.”  Similarly, other Pharaohs had names which ended in “moses” or “mses” and started with the name of an Egyptian god.  Now, the Israelites did not speak the name of God, as a general rule.  So, Moses being raised by a daughter of Pharaoh, who knew he was a Hebrew (an Israelite), may have named him “__Moses”, meaning “born of __” where “__” was the unspoken name of God.