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...