Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

4:21 - If God truly is omniscient and knows the end from the beginning then He would have known that this portion of the Bible would have implicated Him in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart and thrown all the believers through a loop. The question becomes why did He allow that? For a lot of this we are going to go with TB’s explanation because the IM says almost nothing about it except to note the JST, but TB’s suggestion also helps us understand other scriptural happenings when it comes to free will. TB explains, “there is a time when we have hardened out own hearts sufficiently, that our oath is locked in, and our destruction at the time of Judgment is assured. That was Pharaoh’s situation.” This helps us understand more about situations like cities being destroyed or like in the case of Laban, when his death was for the greater good. We also see this in instances like when entire cities are destroyed such as Sodom, Gomorrah, and Ammonihah. I’ve asked myself, when studying these situ...

4:19-20 - Having Jethro’s blessing to go back to Egypt, Moses gets ready to take his wife and sons “the rod of God in his hand” to go back to Egypt. There are a couple of conversations that take place next, the first where God tells Moses that “all the men are dead which sought thy life.” A couple of things strike me with this statement, first is that I thought it would have been implied that the people who wanted Moses dead were did not have the power to do so at that point. The second point is that Moses had finally agreed to go back to Egypt fully expecting to face a death sentence when he got there. This is a factor that we didn’t consider yesterday when debating Moses’ motivations for refusing God’s call. We can see his courage in that he finally did accept it fully believing that he would be executed as soon as he showed up there. Think about the faith it would have taken to say, “ok I’ll go back and face execution and if God wants me to do a work, then He’s going to have to get ...

4:13-18 - Finally, for the last time, Moses BEGS “O my Lord, send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send.” Now this might sound like Moses is accepting, but he, in fact, is not, and as TB so precisely put it, “wrong answer.” God answers, saying, “Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well.” This is the solution that God has presented, “your brother Aaron will speak for you.” The appointment of Aaron as spokesman makes a few important points. First, it makes me wonder just how involved Moses had been with his birth family the whole time he was in Egypt. This might seem obvious because Miriam took Moses as a baby back to his mother to be raised, but because I mostly only know the movies, according to them, when Moses meets Aaron and Miriam for the first time, they don’t know each other. This is obviously incorrect, but it makes me wonder just how involved he was with them before he left Egypt completely. Second, is that is that Aaron is a Levite, wh...

4:11-12 - After all the begging and pleading and miracles demonstrated, and Moses finally saying, “I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue,” God really kind of pulls the ultimate trump card, answering, “Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord?” I’ve had have an experience like this before and I think I talked about it here before but back probably 10 years ago, I was working the night shift at the hospital but it was this weird quasi-swing shift and I only saw my kids for like an hour a day and I was SO tired and the work sucked, etc. Another tech got into big trouble because of something that kind of got out of hand and when I heard that she was possibly going to be fired, I was SO happy because that meant that I could move into her day shift. A strong voice said to me, “do I care for you so poorly that you hope for someone else’s downfall? If I wanted, I could deposit $25 million into your bank account. I could cr...

4:10 - It’s been a big day for Moses and while it’s taken multiple days for us to go through this ordeal, it’s probably only been less than an hour for Moses, so it’s a lot to take it. And it’s kind of a catch 22 when it comes to prophets because the kind of personal characteristics that are required for someone to be a good prophet also makes them less inclined to do so. So yes, they might have the requisite faith and humility but that faith and humility also lends to them feeling inadequate for the job. This is par for the course and God knows this, not only for the job description in general, but also for the individuals that He calls. It’s kind of like how the beat down and defeat required to prepare someone spiritually to do great things can also really have an impact on someone’s confidence to do the things that are asked. That’s exactly what happens with Moses here, after all the signs and wonders and miracles that he’s seen in the last few minutes, he begs “O my Lord, I am not...

4:6-9 - The stick into and out of snake sign was cool and all, but the Lord continues, giving Moses a second sign that he can give the people to show that he is indeed sent by God. This second sign is shown to Moses by God instructing him to “put thine hand into thy bosom,” which must have been something like “put your hand into your coat.” When Moses pulled his hand back out, “his hand was leprous as snow.” TB contests that it “was NOT leprosy,” not nearly as serious as leprosy, but the significant part is that the word used here was Tzara’at, which was an ugly and contagious disease, but more importantly was “an outward sign of the infected person’s inward spiritual condition. In other words, a person with Tzara’at was seen as under a condition of discipline or curse from God… Moses’ diseased hand represented Israel’s inward spiritual condition in God’s eyes. And, just as important, God then removed the Tzara’at from Moses’ hand; that is, He was able to, and going to, purify Israel f...

On the timeline of LDS Bible chronology, between Exodus 3 and 4 comes Moses 1, which is the vision that Moses had while on a mountain. As far as I know, it doesn’t specify that it was the very first initial vision that Moses had, but it probably was. I would go through it, but honestly, it’s just too deep for me to think about right now. It’s long and very dense and I’m tired, so I’m just going to plow on to Exodus 4. 4:1-5 - Even though chapter 3 ended, the conversation with God is continuing in chapter 4. God has assured Moses that the Hebrews will listen to him, but Moses is still doubtful, which is understandable considering all his experiences with them previously. Moses states emphatically, “they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice.” So the Lord answers, “What is that in thine hand?” Moses, of course, had a shepherd’s staff. God continued, “Cast in on the ground,” and when Moses threw it on the ground, “it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.” I’ve spent...

3:16-17 – No doubt, this conversation with God has been overwhelming and Moses really isn’t enthusiastic about his job assignment, so God lays out a step-by-step plan on what exactly Moses is to say and do and who with to accomplish this. First, God says that Moses is to “Go, and gather the elders of Israel together,” and tell them what God has said, as far as Him seeing them and their struggles and that God is here to save them and give them “the land of the Canaanites… unto a land flowing with milk and honey,” and there are several other tribes that inhabit this land right now. We’ve discussed the concept of “mild and honey” before, but I’m satisfied here to just let it mean a land of abundance. It's interesting here too that this land that the Hebrews are being given is already inhabited and I’ve always thought that this wasn’t fair to the people who live there to be thrust out of their homes. But this discussion in 1 Nephi 17:33-35 helped me understand this when Nephi asks of ...

3:13-15 – There is a second reason why the name “I AM” is significant, and we see it centuries later during the mortal ministry of Jesus Christ. From what I understand, the name/phrase/word “I AM” became associated with the revered name of God YHVH which becomes Yahveh, which was shortened to only those letters to become unpronounceable. The name was purposefully made to be unpronounceable because, as the IM demonstrates, “this practice shows deference to the reverential feelings of the Jews who never pronounced the name, substituting instead their word for Lord-Adonai.” I don’t remember where I saw it previously, but this practice was tied to the verses in the D&C that cautioned against using the name of God too frequently, showing that this has been an issue throughout human history. The name “I AM” was translated in such a way that people were not meant to use it frequently, and during the time of Christ, I think that the Pharisees had made it a cultural issue to the point wher...

3:13-15 - The next part is very interesting because it’s significance spans over millennia and the whole concept has never really made sense to me. It appears that Moses has accepted the fact that he is being called by God to a big task, but then he asks a question that I’ve never understood, and that is “when I come unto the children of Israel… and they shall say to me, what is his name? what shall I saw unto them?” And here’s God’s response, “I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou saw unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” TB really brings the point home for me when, after reading this passage, he asks, “Does anyone else find this a curious question? What’s the big deal about knowing God’s name that Moses is just so sure the Israelites will demand? What’s wrong with just saying, ‘the God of our fathers sent me’?” This was really the question for me, like who cares what his name is, if someone is giving me $100, I don’t care what he wants to be called, and I ...

3:11-12 – This is going to be a short one because the next part is pretty important and I want to devote enough time to it tomorrow while still working within my new time window. God has pretty clearly spelled out to Moses that He wanted him to go back to Egypt and free the Hebrews from slavery there and bring them to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Understandably Moses is not excited and asks, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” We discussed yesterday exactly why Moes might have been one of the least popular people in Egypt at this point. He was hated and even wanted for execution among the Egyptians, not only for killing one of their own, but for living amongst them as equals when he was in fact of the slave ethnicity. Likewise, even though he was Hebrew by birth and even spent the first 5+ years of his life with them and certainly spoke their language, he was taken back to the palace and spent 35+ year...

3:6-9 - Standing bare foot on this Holy Ground, God introduces himself to Moses, saying, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” From several sources that I’ve read, this introduction as the God of his fathers ties this God who is speaking to the Abrahamic covenant, indicating God’s desire to now start fulfilling those promises. I’m not exactly sure how widely known, understood, and valued the concept of the Abrahamic covenant was to the Hebrews in Egypt. Referencing his identity as half of the promissory parties of the covenant seems to indicate that God thought that Moses should at least have recognized what He was talking about. We know that Moses’ father in law Jethro was the priest of Midian which means that they shared the common ancestor of Abraham, so it would stand to reason that Jethro would have preached about the Abrahamic covenant because they too would have been a distant part. However, because Abraham’s son Midian was no...

I’m going to try something a little bit different because I am starting a school program in a couple of weeks that is going to be pretty time and energy intensive for the next 1-2 years, but I don’t want to give this up, even though I have not been as vigilant with it as I should have been. I’ve been having some health problems as well as just being mentally drained in general with a lot of family drama. Anyway, all this is to say that I’m going to do something where I only spend about 30 minutes doing an entry, but trying to do it more consistently because this scripture study is very important to me. With that being said though, I do recognize that I get overwhelmed with all the information that I want to study and then include because I want my study to be super comprehensive but there is just SO much information at this point that it is very daunting looking at spending several hours on an entry every day. Anyway, all this is to say that what my plan is moving forward is to spend a...

3:1-3 - Chapter 3 is only 22 verses, and the IM has a couple of paragraphs explaining some aspects of it, but TB insists that chapter 3 is VERY important to everything going forward, and really, looking at everything that is covered in such a short period of time, it seems like he’s right. We’ve covered the time that Moses is married to Zipporah and has his first son to now, which my guess has covered at least a decade, but probably longer. We see that Moses is a shepherd who “kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian.” TB contrasts this to Jacob’s arrangement with Laban where Jacob got to keep some of the flocks that he cared for, building his wealth, thus indicating that Moses was not a wealth man, and was basically an employee. Moses takes the sheep “to the backside of the desert… even to Horeb.” TB goes on for several minutes, spanning two lectures, about the actual location of Mount Horeb being on the Arabian Peninsula as opposed to the Sinai peninsula. He ...