There is no question that belief in the Exodus requires faith in an infinitely omnipotent Creator including the ability to control the triggering, timing and intensity of what could very likely have been a cascade of natural events comprising the plagues on Egypt.
The Exodus takes up four entire books for a reason. It is the seminal redemption event that drives all the rest of human history. The circumstances proved that
- invoking the name does establish a relationship,
- and that believing in the name does grant access to power over humanly insolvable problems and even death,
- which must be acted upon in faith to achieve salvation.
For the persons who are at the least willing to consider the biblical narrative, the point I would like to drive home in this post is that the Exodus occurred to Hebrews, NOT just Israelites.
“God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses…I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob…I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and… I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the…king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go. (Exodus 3)
The LORD God reiterates himself as the God of the Hebrews to be rescued out of Egypt.
“God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said…I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham the Hebrew, the God of Isaac the Hebrew, and the God of Jacob the Hebrew. I have surely seen the affliction of my [Hebrew] people which are in Egypt…And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians…Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel [only one of Abraham’s many nations in the Hebrew federation of ethnicities with a unique promise of inheriting the land described above] is come unto me:
Come now therefore, and I will send thee…And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee [as my representative / embassador / vicar / priest]: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God [as a priest] upon this mountain…Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning…And thou shalt say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath sent me unto thee, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. (Exodus 3, 9:1,13, 10:3)
The text plainly states that the children of Israel did not become identified as a unique nation ruled by God until after the Exodus from Egypt and the establishment of the Mosaic Covenant with God on Mount Sinai.
“And Moses and the priests the Levites spake unto all Israel, saying…O Israel; this day thou art become the people of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt therefore
- obey the voice of the LORD thy God,
- and do his commandments and his statutes”(Deuteronomy 27:9-10)
Historically and hermeneutically, besides the frank statements by Moses, statistical evidence for the multinational genetics of the Hebrew nation at the time of the Exodus is that it increased from a total of just 70 direct descendants from Jacob to 603,550 warriors in just two generations after entering Egypt.
“And the LORD spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai…in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: So were all those that were numbered…603,550 (Numbers 1)
And that doesn’t include women, children and infirm.
“Based on historical data, the adult population in a typical polity in the Middle Ages could support one fighting man for every 15 adults maximum.” In terms of proportion of fighting men per extended family of geriatrics, other infirm, women and children, this is realistic. So multiplying 600,000 fighting men x 15 we calculate a census of 9 million people.
But the alert reader protests – this says the children of Israel, families, fathers!
Follow the chronology.
- During the Passover and three months into the Exodus the group was a mixed bag of nationalities within the Egyptian Empire who, for personal benefit, had joined the Hebrew nation led by its Fighter God who had proven himself superior to the Egyptian gods.
- It was another two years later before there was a nation of Israel.
We need to track what happened in between, starting at three months into the Exodus at Mount Sinai when God addresses the multi-ethnic Hebrew nation within which is contained the genetically and spiritually related nation of Israel.
The Exodus from Egypt wasn’t unique in the history of the Hebrew Nation. Recall that many nationalities left Nimrod’s Empire under Abram. In both case various ethnicities within an oppressive empire renounced their allegiance to their source of daily bread and joined the Hebrew nation, which specifically meant trusting in the Hebrew God for provision and protection of their lives.
Why did a polyglot multitude of people have the faith to do so? Because they heard about the marvelous exploits God worked on behalf of his people. At the time of the Egyptian Exodus the amazing rescues of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were as recent as our own heroic events of World Wars I and II. Instead of watching television or reading books, the tales of the gods were recounted around the fires at night. The Hebrews’ accounts of their God’s empowerment were the source of their identity.
Even more compelling were the current eyewitness accounts of Moses surviving unscathed from confrontation after confrontation with Pharoah. God was proving that he would protect the people who served him by obeying his word.
“Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die.
- He that feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses:
- And he that regarded not the word of the LORD left his servants and his cattle in the field…(Exodus 9:19-23)
“And the LORD said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether...the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people. And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt: And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. But against any of the children of Israel shall a dog not move his tongue…that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.” (Exodus 11)
Egypt was the most prosperous nation at the time, as is America today, for the same reasons. Consequently it was packed with people from surrounding nations who came as traders, politicians, slaves, immigrants escaping hardships, especially the recent famine.
All these people, not just the Egyptians, experienced the plagues.
Imagine you are one of them, and have just heard the breaking news on the pandemic – the next plague will be the death of the first-born in every family in Egypt. By now you’ve seen enough to believe that the Hebrew God says what he means and he does what he says. You are desperate to save the life of your son, your grandsons, your nephews, your neighbors, and like Lot, rush around begging family and friends to seek shelter with the Hebrew God’s people who have been given a chance at life.
On the dreaded night of doom you crowd into the house of a Hebrew acquaintance with so many other people the door can hardly be closed, but closed it must be, and thank goodness, because the smell of blood on the door is sickening. Between the panic, the heat and the crush of sweaty bodies you are about to heave your guts but your host – speaking in a mix of a foreign language and broken Egyptian, urgently presses upon you the absolute necessity of eating the unfamiliar and unappetizing food, and you are not about to go against whatever covenantal ritual required of his God. Hour after hour passes in what becomes almost unbearable, you think you’ll pass out. Not that it would make a difference – the crowd around you will hold you up if that should happen. To be frank, you need to use the bathroom badly but you’re not going outside even if you could make your way through the crowd. And just when you think you’ve lost it and hear yourself screaming you realize that piercing shriek is coming from next door, follow seconds later by another, and another, until the whole world is a cacophony of horror. Frantically you begin screaming your son’s name, of course you can’t see him because he had squeezed between legs to join other kids and you will literally claw people out of your way if you have to, when suddenly you see his white face and wide eyes. He’s alive! And that’s all that matters.
And from that point on you are sticking with them Hebes, whatever it takes, wherever they go, whatever they do.
Kingdom Come 