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

There are two aspects to the way in which we generally understand the Exodus from Egypt which are not exactly supported by the passages.  The first one I want to point out is rather minor.  We generally read the account about the plagues as Moses leaving Pharaoh’s presence after Pharaoh refused to let the people go, then returning to warn Pharaoh of the next plague.  However, after the Plague of Darkness, Pharaoh warns Moses that if he ever sees him again, he will kill Moses (or have him killed) and Moses agrees that he will never appear before Pharaoh again.  As I read the passage today, I realized that after telling Pharaoh that he would never appear before him again, Moses told him about the Plague on the Firstborn before leaving.  It occurred to me that you would structure the account this way if you were telling each plague as a night time story to children that would be continued the following night.

Now the other mistake we make when thinking about Exodus is a major mistake.  It partly results from movie adaptations.  We think that Moses came to Pharaoh and demanded that he free the Israelites, but that is not what Moses did.  Moses came to Pharaoh and requested that he allow the Israelites to go into the wilderness for three days to make an offering to God and then return to their slavery.  After the death of the Egyptian firstborn, Pharaoh told Moses to take all of the Israelites and their flocks to worship God “as you have requested”.  This suggests that Pharaoh intended for the Israelites to go into the wilderness to worship and then return to their slavery.  However, other parts of the passage suggest that the rest of the Egyptians wished for the Israelites to never return.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 7-9.

I first noticed that Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of Pharaoh’s advisers when they were all snakes when I watched the animated movie, “The Prince of Egypt”.  In the movie, Pharaoh does not notice this, but I believe the passage intends for us to understand that Pharaoh was aware of it happening yet chose to refuse God’s command anyway.  Pharaoh’s advisers were able to reproduce the signs which Moses and Aaron performed up until they produced gnats.  At which point, Pharaoh’s advisers warned him that he was going up against God (or, at least, against a god).   I want to note that even though God told Moses before he performed his first sign for Pharaoh that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart, the passage describes Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites go in a manner which suggests Pharaoh making a choice until the sixth plague, the plague of boils.  The Egyptian people believed that the Pharaoh was a god, or perhaps better phrased as they believed he was the incarnation of a god. Thinking about that makes me wonder if this Pharaoh believed that he was a god and that his advisers were duplicating the signs Moses and Aaron performed using his power.  Or, did he know that his advisers were performing tricks and assume that the signs performed by Moses and Aaron which his advisers could not reproduce were also tricks which his advisers did not know the secret to perform?  In any case, Pharaoh had all of the evidence he needed from when the staffs turned into snakes to know that he should listen to what Moses and Aaron had to say.  Of course, I write that as if there is no way I would have made that mistake.  And I know that there is a good chance I would have made the same mistake.  How many times have we failed to listen when God was speaking to us?

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

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

Part of this passage confuses me.  When Moses left his father-in-law it tells us that he took his wife and sons (note the plural there) with him.  A couple of verses later, the passage says that the Lord met “him” (which the translators decided meant Moses, and probably does) and was about to kill him.  The only reason the Lord did not kill Moses was because Zipporah circumcised her son (note the singular there) with a flint knife.  I am confused by the fact that God had sent Moses to Egypt but now was seeking to kill him.  Why was the Lord seeking to kill Moses here?  Was it because his son was uncircumcised?  Were both of his sons uncircumcised, or just the one?   The best explanation I have seen for this is that these few verses were part of a larger account which has been lost to us over time.  As best I can make it out, Moses had failed, for one reason or another, to circumcise the younger of his two sons (there is no biblical basis for it being the younger, that is just what makes sense to me). God could not have his representative not be in compliance with the rules he had laid down for the descendants of Abraham.  I further speculate that Moses had not circumcised his son for one of two reasons.  First, he did not circumcise him because Zipporah objected.  Second, maybe Zipporah had wanted Moses to circumcise his sons (she was also a descendant of Abraham by way of Midian whose mother was Keturah), but Moses did not do so(perhaps only refusing on one of the sons).  Both of these explanations would explain why Zipporah was the one to perform the circumcision here when Moses was apparently unable to do so.  Another factor in our trouble understanding this account is that it was written in Hebrew more than 3,000 years ago.  We may lack some understanding of the words used which may have been common at that time which would have made the meaning more clear.

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

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

A few days ago I had mentioned that one of the signs that a story you hear is an urban legend is that it does not contain the names of any of the people involved.  (I want to note that the absence of names does not prove the story did not happen.  It is merely an indicator that you should look at the story a little closer before accepting it as true).  This led me to take note that when the passage talks about the pharaoh telling the Hebrew midwives to kill the males born to Hebrew women, it mentions their names.  Further, the name of one of those midwives appears in a list of slaves held in Egypt from a time which could potentially have been the time of the Exodus, although a little early(I will note that recent discoveries have led to archeologists re-evaluating the dates they had previously given many events in Egypt, which might move this list right into the dates for the Exodus which can be derived from the Bible).  I found the information about the name of one of the midwives while doing a quick Internet search to see if they are mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.  They are not.  As part of that search I came across the existence of a document written by an ancient Egyptian sage, Ipuwer, which recounts a time of great disruption in Egypt.  This document contains an account which resembles the account of the Israelites leaving Egypt found in Exodus.  The resemblance is similar enough that it could be describing the same event, but different enough that it may be about a completely different event.  So, while the Ipuwer Papyrus does not prove Exodus, it does mean there are the sort of records which one would expect to exist if it did.

I really struggled with today’s title, because the extrabiblical documents I mentioned in today’s passage do not provide evidence for the biblical account, but they do tell us something about the biblical account.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 39-40.

The things I had looked up when the earlier passage talked about the Urim and Thummim being placed in the high priest’s breast piece led me to look closely at the description here of how the high priest’s breast piece and ephod was put together.  In particular I was looking to see if there was anything further about the breast piece being the “breast piece of decision”.  All I got on that was that the breast piece was a single cloth folded over.   So, as the instructions given earlier, the Urim and Thummim would be placed in the pocket thus created.  The other thing I thought seemed relevant, even if only for the symbolism, was the description that the breast piece would have twelve different gemstones mounted on it, with each stone having the name of a different one of Israel’s sons engraved on it.  The presence of those names engraved on the gemstones mounted on the shoulder pieces of the ephod indicate that the stones on the breast piece had more meaning than just a reminder to the high priest that he represented the twelve tribes before God.  I believe these 12 stones related to the usage of this breast piece, in conjunction with the Urim and Thummim which were kept within it, to divine God’s will on issues.

Today is an example of something that happens from time to time when I write my blog.  I started writing this as an exercise in pure curiosity because I saw no spiritual lessons in the passage as I read it.  However, when I finished writing the above I realized that just as the high priest needed to be reminded of the fact that the decisions he sought God’s guidance had an impact on all of the people of Israel, when we seek God’s guidance on decisions we need to make we should identify all of those who will be impacted by the decision we reach, doing so will help us understand God’s guidance.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 36-38.

Today’s passage provides a description of the process of putting together the Tabernacle.  If, like me, you do not get much out of descriptions of glorious building, this passage may seem redundant since the design for the Tabernacle has been described previously.  However, this passage contains a detailed description of what the artisans actually did to build the Tabernacle.  I also want to also highlight that the artisans had to ask Moses to tell the people to stop providing them with materials for building the Tabernacle because they had enough.  Reading between the lines, the reason the artisans went to Moses was because the people had given so much that the excess was starting to get in the way.  One take away I always get from these passages, and the ones later describing the building of Solomon’s Temple,  is that there is a time for us to expend resources to make a place designed to turn people’s focus to God.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 33-35.

I think it was last year that I first noticed that Moses started setting up a “tent of meeting” before he had the Israelites construct the Tabernacle (which then took over that function).   However, I had not noticed until today that this passage implies that anyone could go there to inquire of God, even when Moses was not there.  I am not entirely sure about how that connects with the fact that Joshua never left the pre-Tabernacle tent of meeting.  Did Joshua listen to those who came to inquire of God and perhaps help them determine God’s will?  Or, perhaps relay their requests to Moses?  In addition to that, we have Moses doing more interceding with God for the Israelites.  God told the Israelites that He would not travel with them as they made their way to the Promised Land because He might destroy them as a result of their stiff-necked ways.  In response, the Israelites stopped wearing any ornaments to show their contrition.  I am really not sure where I am going with this. I have been working on it off and on all day trying to put the sentences together which convey what this passage, in conjunction with yesterday’s, is saying to me.  Before asking God to accompany the Israelites in their travel, Moses said that God had told him “I know you by name and you have found favor with me.”  Then, after Moses asks God to accompany the Israelites, God said, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”  But I want to go back to the rest of what Moses said when he quoted God.  Moses said, “ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.”  I think a reason that the time sequence for several things in this passage, where the passage seems to say that people did things before God told them to and then that they did them because God told them to is to communicate the complicated message in that exchange between God and Moses.  God was pleased with Moses because Moses asked Him to teach him His ways, and Moses asked God to teach him His ways because God was pleased with him.  Even there I cannot quite make it come out right.  If we wish evidence that God is pleased with us, let us seek for Him to teach us His ways so that we may know Him.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 30-32.

I want to note that when the people asked Aaron to make them gods for them to worship it had been less than two months after they had said, “We will do what the Lord has said.”  And one of the things they were agreeing to was to make no gods out of gold or silver.  However, I want to focus on the fact that Moses intervened with God for the sake of sinners.  It reminds me of when Abraham negotiated with God on how many righteous  people it would take for God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.   I think both of these instances represent behavior we should follow.  We should pray for God to have mercy on those whom we know have done things which have terrible consequences.  The Israelites did not deserve God’s mercy, but then, neither do we.  Let us petition God to have mercy on those we know do not deserve it.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 28-29.

I have never been particularly interested in ceremonial garb.  As a result this passage tends to go “over my head”.  However, one thing which has always bothered me about this passage is the lack of detail concerning the Urim and Thummim, which were to be used by Aaron, and his successors to consult God in order to make a decision.  I did a little Internet research today and learned more than I had known before (I had previously looked for information and found nothing useful).  Thummim is believed to be derived from a Hebrew word which means “innocent”, while Urim may be derived from a word which means “cursed”.  This leads to the idea that they were two stones of identical size and shape with a marking on them to indicate which was which.  If this is correct, that would mean that questions for which they were used would need to be “yes” or “no” questions.  Of course, I also noticed something about this passage which I have never noticed before.  The breastpiece into which the Urim and Thummim were to be placed  was referred to as the “breastpeice of decision”  (or perhaps, “breastpiece of judgement”), which suggests that the breastpiece may have been used in some manner for more complicated decisions.  Nevertheless, the basic nature of the Urim and Thummim suggest that when we seek God’s guidance we should seek to break the decision we are seeking guidance on down into yes or no questions.  Which is really a good idea for any decision…and right after I wrote that I realized that we should be seeking God’s guidance on every decision we make, even if it is just “What should I eat for lunch?”

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 25-27.

So, when God gave Moses the instructions for building the Tabernacle, the place for the Israelites to worship God, He told Moses to accept offerings from everyone whose heart prompted them to give any of the items needed to build it (which God then listed for Moses).  We learn from this that giving for our place of worship should be both voluntary and according to the way in which God’s Spirit prompts us.   Really, all of our giving to charity should be voluntary and according to the prompt of the Holy Spirit.  We do not satisfy God’s direction to give by paying taxes, not even if those taxes are used to aid the poor.

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