Don't Let the Door Hit You - Exodus 12:21-41

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 of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.” So it’s going to be a big deal in the future, and it’s an ordinance so it’s going to be binding as a covenant between them as a people and God, but he doesn’t get into the specifics of the ordinance just yet, he’ll get into it later in the chapter.

12:28-41 - The people do what Moses tells them and “at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.” I always thought about my own household, seeing as I’m the oldest, my mom is the oldest, my ex-husband is the oldest and obviously my daughter is the oldest, so as a kid, this would have taken me and my mom, but as an adult, only my son would remain from our household, as he is the only non-firstborn.

I do think it’s important to note here that as far as I know this only affected males, so actually, me, my mom, and my daughter would have been fine. But even that was kind of insulting then because why couldn’t we count? I certainly performed the lion’s share of the work of the household, but no we aren’t male so we aren’t involved. Whatever. Not that I’m advocating for my own death, but it’s just so hand-wavy, like “oh don’t worry your pretty little head about this baby girl, this is man stuff,” but then who’s going to be doing the bulk of the work when all these men are dead? Who’s going to be providing for the family and children when these dudes are gone? It’s very much, “this is man business, it doesn’t affect you,” when in fact it DOES affect the women disproportionately because the men get to die and the women have to pick up the slack for everything else. Anyway.

I wonder just how seriously Pharaoh took the conversation with M&A from earlier, because it says that he “rose up in the night,” so did that mean that this guy who clearly wields the power of the most high God has just informed you that your family is going to be devastated by death in less than 24 hours and you just go to bed like it’s any other day? In the movies, it shows the Pharaoh up and pacing all night, which I always felt would have been more accurate. It also shows in the movies this being a lengthy process where the angel of death goes house to house, The Prince of Egypt has my favorite depiction but who knows what would have been an accurate time line. Once the deaths had occurred, Pharaoh calls for M&A “by night,” and told them to get out of Egypt, “and get your forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said. Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also.”

That last part was interesting, “and bless me also.” Clearly, if this is to be understood the way that I take it, straight forward, Pharaoh has accepted defeat by the Hebrew God and is asking for just any type of grace from Him here. In this instance, Pharaoh is clearly representing Satan and Jesus Christ’s overcoming of sin and death and anything that Satan can come up with or convince mankind to do, but clearly Pharaoh is not Satan, he’s just a bad guy, and hopefully he has found some peace in the gospel of Christ on the other side after he died. It will be interesting to see how that worked out when we get there, maybe that will be one of my first questions.

This night is brutal because “there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was no one dead,” so even though it’s night time, no one is sleeping, there is just pain and anger and heartbreak all over the land. No wonder when it came time to go, the Egyptian people gave the Hebrews whatever they wanted, all their valuables. This overwhelming show of force by their God has clearly shown Him to be the most powerful entity that they had ever encountered, and not only were they sad for their loved ones who had died, but they were terrified for themselves, “for they said, we be all dead men.” I couldn’t imagine experiencing this great loss of life and everything that had come with it over the last several months, all the suffering with boils and insects and hunger and then all these people die, but none of it affects the slaves. What a mind-screw that would be.

The Hebrews took all their stuff, I assume that they could carry, they had their bread dough in their kneading bowls wrapped up on their shoulders, they had all the jewelry, gold, silver, and “raiment,” that the Egyptians had given them while terrified and “journeyed from Rameses to Succoth,” which I don’t really know the distance or significance, but apparently there was about 600,000 men. TB points out that ancient Hebrew census taking only counted men of fighting age, so that doesn’t count women, children, or the elderly making a total estimate of about 3 million to be more accurate of a people count. This also is only for the men of fighting age that were strictly Hebrew, but verse 38 notes that it was also a “mixed multitude,” meaning it also had many Egyptians and other non-Hebrew nationality people who had assimilated into the Hebrew religion either through conversion or marriage and that’s not including any of the myriad of livestock. It must have been a HUGE movement of people.

On the way out, the people “baked unleavened cakes of the dough with they brought forth out of Egypt,” which couldn’t be leavened because of the speed of their flight out of Egypt, which will play a big role in the Passover later. All this time from Joseph being sold into Egypt as a slave until Moses leads the people out through the power of God is 430 years, “even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.” We’ve spent the last 10 months with Israel in Egypt so it’s kind of momentous to be finally getting out of it and moving on.