The Murder of Children

The Exodus story begins with the multiplication of offspring and their murder. The descendants of Israel have been fruitful and have multiplied greatly to the point that the king of Egypt sees them as a threat.

His solution to kill the Hebrew’s male children so that the girls and women can be used as slaves and assimilated into the general population. Mothers and midwives were expected to kill them as they were born or drown them in the river. Egyptians were not commanded to kill their sons, the Hebrews were. The cry of despair went up from the people to a god they had forgotten. Yhwh remembered his promises to their ancestors and rose to their defense.

The story of Israel’s time in Egypt will also end with the death of children, this time Egyptian children not Hebrew children will die. Not all boy babies this time, just the first born. It will not come at the hand or the knife of a midwife or by drowning in the river, but by a disease that will kill quietly and quickly. Egyptians won’t be commanded to kill their children, the angel of death will take them.

This story is bookended by outcry, first from the Hebrews, then from the Egyptians.

Not the God We’re Looking For

For many of us the story of Yhwh sending the angel of death is a stumbling block. We’re happy he hears the cries of the Hebrew slaves and rescues them from genocide and slavery but we’d rather he do it with less violence. If God can spirit Philip out of the water where he baptized the Ethiopian in the book of Acts, why can’t he simply transport all of the Hebrews out of Egypt and plop them into the promised land flowing with milk and honey?

I think about these questions a lot and while I can’t really exhaust or explain them a number of issues come to mind. (See also: Not Getting How Horrible The Bible Is)

Owning Our Own Hypocrisies 

Part of what is noteworthy about this objection is that it is our own and so we should own it. Many other cultures don’t find these stories offensive, we do. Many cultures want to see some payback for Pharaoh and the Egyptians. This isn’t just a desire for vengeance, it’s a desire for justice.

The truth is that many of the stories we tell as a culture are filled with desire for retributive justice. Our books and movies are filled with violence and in almost every case the climax of the movie is a showdown between the evil villain and the rescue hero. Many, many times even after the salvation of the innocent has been achieved, the evil villain will reemerge out of spite in a desperate attempt to retake the victim and the rescue hero will be forced to finally kill the villain so that he can no longer bother the innocent.

The Way of the World

Part of why we find the story upsetting is because we don’t want to believe the world is really this way or that we have a part in making it so. Children are needy, inconvenient and weak so they easily become victims of the strong. The consequences of poor leadership are felt by the most vulnerable in a society. On one hand we appeal to Darwinian mechanisms for the creation of long term health but we disturbed when the poor and weak we care about suffer.

Yhwh’s actions against Pharaoh and his people have long been understood enhanced natural disasters that are common to this world. What was noteworthy was their targeted nature. Exodus uses different words for what we call plagues, but the tenth, the death of the firstborn of Egypt is called a plague, meaning an epidemic that causes the death of its victims. What is notable, as with the others, is the timing and that it happens to a specific group, the one designated by Moses, the spokesperson for Yhwh.

Myth: Identity and Relationship

I regularly am a guest presenter for a friend who teaches a class on “myth, ritual and magic” and the drama of the beginning of Exodus can be seen as laying out these relationships.

The best way I can understand the Exodus story of Israel in Egypt is a drama intended to shape our identity in the context of a relationship.

Pharaoh came into this drama as the earthly god who delivered security and prosperity to his people through his relationships with the Egyptian pantheon. The conflict that escalates over Yhwh’s demand to release the people to worship Him systematically dismantles Pharaoh’s identity within the Egyptian relational context and imposes a new context for Israel, Egypt and all the world to see. Yhwh establishes himself as the determiner of security and prosperity, He is the provider of a favorable natural context upon which we depend. He establishes order and maintains it, and he can withdraw his preservation of that order whenever he chooses to. The “plagues” as we call them is a parallel assertion to Genesis 1 played out before the world with Pharaoh as a foil.

One thing we sometimes don’t observe is that the firstborn of the animals are killed as well. Why would this be?

Pharaoh’s identity also involves his dominion over the animals as part of his realm. This again is not strange if you read the Hebrew Genesis creation stories. Yhwh gives humanity dominion over the animals and so they suffer because of our decisions just like the children do.

Ritual: Identity for a Community

Readers of Exodus will note that Chapter 11 is brief, in its laying out what the last plague will be and do and then the text cuts away to detailed description of the Passover preparations. Why would this be?

God doesn’t just pop Israel out of Egypt and into Palestine because he is creating a new people for himself and the story of their deliverance from Egypt will give them identity created by their relationship with him. The ritual of the Passover meal will be an annual reminded, intended to be taught to the children to shape their identity in relationship to Yhwh. It is clear that Yhwh believes this journey of suffering that they have undergone in Egypt will be necessary for their future, and the world’s future.

Remembering the Egyptian Dead

Another cause for revulsion in this story is all the blood. Why would blood on the doorpost repel the angel of death? Is God so bloodthirsty that he’s just looking for blood? Couldn’t they just make a sign out of wood or stones? Must it be out of blood?

God says the blood is “a sign for you” (Israel) (Exodus 12:13). It is blood because we all know blood has value. For the Hebrews (and others in the ancient world) blood is life. Lose your blood, lose your life.

Israel needs to know that someone has paid for their freedom and they need to know that this payment was costly. Who has paid? Lambs and goats?

Notice that the animal sacrifices of the Israelites must be the first born. Is this a coincidence? The animal sacrifices replace the first born of the households of Israel. The animal sacrifices remind the people of Israel that the children of Egypt, the dead firstborn of Egypt, have now paid for their freedom with their own lives.

Israel must always remember the dead Egyptian firstborn and the price that they paid for their redemption. Pharaoh has already shown that he didn’t value the lives of the Hebrew boys. Israel must value the lives of the Egyptian firstborn and remember them in perpetuity.

The Sin of Pharaoh and the Rest of Us

This entire story is a calamity at so many levels, but it is a calamity born out of confusion the story is designed to correct.

Pharaoh’s identity was born on the assumption of God’s generosity with little regard for God’s identity or a relationship with him. Pharaoh presumed to lay claim to be the guarantor of his own security, prosperity and future while leveraging the common gifts of God. He then employed those gifts to coerce other peoples, in this case the Hebrews, to provide for his wellbeing at their expense. He did not wish to acknowledge God, his power or his claim on the world. He would live by a narrative of threat and demand.

Israel, from the beginning, was being shaped by this story to see that their freedom was a gift. It was Yhwh who owns the world. It was the Egyptian first born whose lives bought them their freedom and finally made Pharaoh relent. Israel was not to presume upon God’s generosity nor assume that their freedom was gained without great cost.

It’s not hard to see our appropriation of God’s resources in a similar light. We take because it is within our power and use imagining that our management of these resources assures us of security, prosperity and a future. We do so with little though that everything under the sun are gifts to us for our wellbeing out of the generosity of another. In turn we take these gifts and use them to coerce others for our own wellbeing.

We are bothered by the story where a plague targets firstborn Egyptian boys and animals yet the thoughtless, gratitudeless employment of the stuff of earth has brought illness and death of far more children than were ever in Egypt at that time and whole species of animals. The plague of the first born is small compared to the death of God’s world caused by the human race by our wars, our consumerism, our environmental degradation. We do it all without thinking that nothing belongs to us but everything belongs to God.

Covenant Observers and the Mixed Multitude

Together with those who sacrificed the lamb and put the blood on the doorpost was “the mixed multitude”. These were others who saw the opportunity either to pledge allegiance to a more powerful God than Egypt or to get out of a bad situation themselves. The generosity of the Egyptian firstborn and of Yhwh’s power afforded them a new life. The mission of Israel to display God’s generosity would have an audience right from the beginning.

For Christians

It’s not hard to see where this goes for Christians. Israel for generations would be nurtured and nourished by the Passover meal that spoke of the death of lambs and Egyptian firstborn that created for them an identity of gratitude and generosity. They would understand that all that we have is a gift and our freedom has been purchased by another.

Jesus would of course appropriate this meal and declare that the death of firstborn and the lambs all pointed to him. He would now fall under angel of death so that the angel of death would pass over all those who ate his body and drank his blood.

The angel of death, like the rest of the plagues was only an intensified version of the age of decay that robs all living things of their life, security and prosperity. Just as the Passover lamb and the blood on the doorpost were signs to Israel that the angel of death would Passover them, this bread and cup are signs to you that the age of decay has been defeated by Jesus going under the plague with the firstborn sons of Egypt.

This cup ought to deliver gratitude to our hearts reminded us that we were bought with a great price and that all that we have has been given to us.