Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

12:42-51 - As the Israelites are in the process of leaving Egypt on the night of the Passover, Moses takes the opportunity here to go over more specifics of what the annual ordinance will entail. It is to be observed at night and “observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt.” Strangers aren’t allowed to partake in it, unless they and all the men with them are circumcised beforehand. It is all to be eaten within one household, which I think would mean that if the households were too small to consume one sheep and had to combine to share the sheep, then they would probably perform the ordinance together in the same house, and all had to be consumed on the same night, there weren’t supposed to be any leftovers. This might be so that the significance of the of the event is not diminished by making the items commonplace afterward. One more note that is made is that when it comes to sacrificing the sheep, “neither shall ye break a bone thereof.” After going through...

12:21-27 - If we think about the timeline that TB put forth initially, that the whole process with the plagues and all that too 8-9 months, it must have been pretty unexpected for God to say, “tonight is the night,” and really only give M&A a few hours notice to not only find the sheep, but to paint the blood, and then get ready to leave the place that had been their home for the past 400+ years. But that’s exactly what happens, Moses tells “the elders of Israel” to take a lamb “according to your families, and kill the Passover,” then use a tree branch to paint the blood of that lamb onto the door posts of your house because God is coming through tonight to kill people. It's probably one of those things that you don’t think is that big of a deal until you can look back and say, “oh yeah that was something.” He also notes that “ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever,” as a way to remember that God “passed over the houses of the children ...

12:14-20 - There are multiple purposes for God to come through Egypt and take the lives of the first born in households that don’t have blood painted on their door posts. The first is so as a punishment to Pharaoh and all the Egyptian people who would not accept the Hebrew God’s commands and forced Him to do all these things to them like the plagues. The second reason for this event is to confront Pharaoh so violently with the power of God that he will have no choice but to let the Hebrews go. A third reason, however, is to make this event so memorable in the Hebrew culture that it will play a large part of in who they are for the rest of time. A fourth reason is to teach the Hebrew people principles of the plan of salvation and prepare them to accept the Messiah when He comes some 1400 year later, although this seems to be a purpose that is only realized in hindsight far down the road. God has told M&A what He will be doing during the event, but not he gets into the instruction ...

12:1-13 - Chapter 12 is very long, 51 verses, and kind of overwhelming, but let’s see what we have here. After the disastrous meeting with Pharaoh, God comes to M&A and gives them a timeline for what comes next. Interestingly, it starts with apparently God giving them a new calendar system, which I’m not going to go into. TB explains how God’s phrase of “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you,” coordinates with the current Jewish calendar, our Julian calendar, the lunar, solar, fiscal, harvest, etc calendar. It’s very confusing and not that important to my purposes here, so I’m not going to mess with it too much. Now he sets forth the method of the Passover, which is celebrated by Jews all over the world since this time, like 3400 years ago. On the 10th day of the month, they are to pick out a ram or goat, male about a year old “without blemish”, the on the 14th day they kill it and use it’s blood to paint the door pos...

11:1-10 - The timing here seems interesting because at the end of chapter 10 we see Pharaoh and Moses having a stand off where Pharaoh tells Moses, basically, “if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you,” but then in chapter 12 we see them having a conversation again. TB notes that this obviously is because the parts of chapter 11 where Moses is speaking to Pharaoh happened during their last encounter, so there was some stuff out of order where Pharaoh called for Moses during the time of spiritual darkness, and told him to take his people to the desert but leave the livestock, Moses declines, then tells Pharaoh, as TB says, “that THAT night, about midnight, all of Egypt’s firstborn would die,” which included “the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beast,” but that Israel would be spared. That makes more sense as far as why Pharaoh threatened Moses’ life if he ever saw him again, bec...

10:21-29 – The ninth plague and the last one in the last group of three shows up like the other “last of three” unannounced to Pharaoh after he hardened his heart once again. This time it’s a little bit different and I relied heavily on TB to get a different perspective on it. This time God tells Moses to “stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt,” and Moses obeyed and “there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: they saw now one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.” TB brings up two instances in which he was in, not actual blackness, but where the weather was so thick that he couldn’t see hardly anything and that is heavy fog and a dust storm. I’ve also been in both and can confirm that the visibility is limited. But if we think about the escalation of the seriousness of these plagues, the last few are li...

9:13-35 - The seventh plague is the first of the last group of three and brings us back to Pharaoh being warned again. M&A go and tell him that God says, “Let my people go, that they may serve me,” and if not then the next day “I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail,” and even warns them to gather in their cattle and servants from the field for safety. Those who heeded the warning of God saved their cattle and their servants, but those who didn’t “left his servants and his cattle in the field,” and presumably they died. I don’t read here specifically if Pharaoh listened or not, and honestly I can’t even guess. Moses “stretched forth his rod toward heaven,” and the thunder and hail that followed destroyed all the crops in the fields, any livestock or servants that were left in the field, and pretty much devastated the Egyptian crop yield for that season. While later verses point out that there would have been other crops grown at other times of the year so the Egyptian peopl...

9:1-7 - The 5th plague isn’t super specific, but I can see how it comes off the tail of the last one. The Lord tells M&A to go to Pharaoh and warn him that if he doesn’t let the people go, then “the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle,” and also all the other livestock animals like horses, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep. But this would only affect the animals of the Egyptians and not the Hebrews. Maybe Pharaoh didn’t think it was that big of a deal seeing as how he could just confiscate the Hebrew’s animals, maybe he didn’t think it would be possible for this God to kill only Egyptian livestock and leave the Hebrew’s animals alone just because of the mechanism of disease and how close everyone’s animals were in proximity to each other. Pharaoh, of course, didn’t listen so the next day the Egyptian livestock start dying, but not that of the Hebrews. As far as how this happened, let’s remember that just before this was the plague of flies, the big dog flies that attach to the soft,...