The Plaques and Passover

THE PLAGUES

This is where the Bible says Moses showed his magic and brought ten plagues on the Egyptians. These plagues were;

1) turning the Nile water into blood,

2) frogs everywhere,

3) lice everywhere,

4) flies everywhere,

5) livestock sick and die,

6) boils,

7) hail,

8) locusts everywhere,

9) darkness,

10) killing first born Egyptian children.

Most people who read this imagine it to be somewhat like the Cecil B. DeMille version, as played out with Charlton Heston in ‘The Ten Commandments’. They assume Moses had the power of God behind him and just worked some pretty heavy magic. But, if you look a little closer and do some research, there are actually natural causes that Moses could have been privy to and claimed credit for.¹ Anything from a volcano or an algae bloom.

The one thing that these explanations don’t really cover is the killing of the firstborn child. Commonly known as Passover, it was a night where the angel(s) of God bypassed all the Hebrew households and killed all the first born of the Egyptians.

I know this will get me in a lot of trouble but let’s take a look at what might have really happened.

PASSOVER

Let’s take a step back here and see if we can take a look at this “set my people free” thing from a more secular vantage point.

First of all, this is all just theory so don’t get too freaked out if it goes up against your current beliefs. And let’s remember, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any of this happened in real life anyway, so your guess is as good as mine. There is no independent record of a guy named Moses leading a slave rebellion or anything else in the Exodus narrative. The Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians were notorious for meticulously documenting everything but, other than the Biblical writings themselves, there is no independent evidence of any of this.

But let’s assume it really happened. And let’s put the messages from God where they belong, as visions, dreams and intuitive interpretations by men who truly believed they were doing God’s work, not some booming voice from the sky.

So first let’s take on who Moses was. We know he was born a Hebrew and should have been thrown in the river at birth. But he wasn’t. He was saved by Pharaoh’s daughter and brought up in Pharaoh’s own house. How they pulled this off would be a miracle in itself, but let’s just accept that they did.

We know Moses’ real mother was brought in early on to nurse him. Let’s assume she stayed around as Moses grew up and secretly told him about his true heritage.

And let’s further assume that Moses took his Hebrew heritage to heart. He took it on enough to where, when he saw the cruel Egyptian taskmaster beating on a Hebrew slave, he killed him in cold blood. It’s obvious, for whatever reason, Moses was vested in the Hebrew’s plight. Vested enough to kill.

As we already know, when he was found out, he made a run for it and escaped to Midian. There he got married and seemed to be settling in.

But then, years later, someone showed up² and convinced him to go back to Egypt to help set his people free. Moses didn’t want to do it but the Lord worked on him until he wore him down and agreed to give it a try.

But why Moses? It had been almost 60 years since he left Egypt. Why him? Why now?

Well, let’s remember Moses was of the Royal household. Just that fact would ensure he could at least get an audience with the current Pharaoh who, as we’ve already established, was very likely a pretty close relative. And we know Moses felt deeply enough for his Hebrew heritage to kill for it. Deeply enough to go back and lead his people to freedom.

The way it’s written it looks like this was Moses’ first encounter with this messenger. But, as we’ve seen before,³ there are often big gaps in these stories. There very well could have been an ongoing dialogue between Moses and the Hebrew community back in Egypt. For all we know Moses was living in exile as the leader of the rebel resistance. Perhaps this messenger was relaying the decision that the people back home thought it was time to act but Moses didn’t think it was time yet. But it was too late, his brother Aaron was already on his way to Midian to meet him.⁴

I don’t know about you, but that sounds more feasible than some guy showing up out of the blue hoping Moses would lead them out of bondage.

So Moses went back to Egypt to call out Pharaoh and demand his people’s freedom. And this was no small group of ragtag rebels. Later on, when they finally escaped Egypt, we’ll find that there were over 600,000 men, not counting the women, children, parents and grandparents. That’s a formidable group. No wonder Pharaoh was afraid of them.

So Moses and Pharaoh went back and forth, both working their magic on each other. But Pharaoh had no more intention of letting his slaves go as a Mississippi slave owner would free his cotton pickers.

All the plaques didn’t work so now Moses had to play his last card, killing all the first born of the Egyptians. After all, the Egyptians had killed all those Hebrew babies way back when so it was only fair, right? Pay back time.

But how did this really go down?

First, Moses told all the Hebrews to kill a lamb, paint some blood on their doorposts, and don’t go outside no matter what. The blood on the doorposts would show ‘the destroyer’ that Hebrews lived in that house so leave them alone. It was like a secret code.

At midnight, all hell broke loose and innocent Egyptian children throughout the land were slaughtered by the thousands.

But how did all these children die? Was it the invisible hand of God striking them down in their beds? Cecil B. DeMille portrayed it as a shadow coming over and they all just died peacefully in their sleep.

Or was it jihad?; the passion of mujaheddin, ‘the angels of God’, an army of thousands of angry Hebrew freedom fighters coordinating a vicious attack in the name of God? The blood on the doorposts was their sign to pass over that home, but to enter every other house and kill the children. Only a human would need a sign like that. It’s hard to imagine an all-powerful, all-knowing God would need a mark on a doorpost so he wouldn’t get confused. That sign was for men, not God.

After that night the Egyptians couldn’t get rid of the Hebrews fast enough. “Here, take anything you want, just go!” And so the Hebrews plundered the Egyptians and took off. And that was no easy feat. Conservative estimates put over 2 million people hitting the road all at once ⁵. Talk about a traffic jam. Just to get an idea of how many people that is, imagine the entire populations of Louisville, Kentucky; Detroit, Michigan; and Dallas, Texas all going somewhere together all at once. Now that’s a traffic jam.

This night of Passover is of huge significance to the Jewish people and as such, is celebrated every year as a ‘night of watching kept throughout the generations.’ ^{6 7}

So, after 430 years in Egypt, over two million Jews took off into the desert with no clear destination in mind.

They got as far as the Red Sea before Pharaoh changed his mind and came after them. You can only imagine the pressure he was under to bring these child-murdering slaves to justice.

But Moses was ready. According to the Bible God told Moses to hold up and wait for Pharaoh so he could show off a little.

The Israelites weren’t too happy about it when they saw Pharaoh and his army coming. The elders started whining and having second thoughts. Apparently these people had short memories or didn’t really trust Moses or their God.

You probably already know what happened. God parted the Red Sea, the Israelites crossed and, when Pharaoh and his army chased them, the sea closed in on them and they all drowned.

The Biblical account says Moses stretched out his hand and a great wind came and separated the sea so there was a wall of water on either side. After the Israelites got across, he stretched his hand forth again and the waters closed in on the Egyptians, killing them all.

Aramaic lore is known for grandiose exaggeration so most scientists and scholars doubt this account. But they have other, more plausible, natural explanations. From extreme tidal changes to a strong wind exposing a reef hidden in the shallows. It’s easy enough to look these alternative theories up so I won’t waste too much time on them here.

Let’s remember Moses had spent over 20 years in the area around the Red Sea. He would have known it very well and would have known exactly where the shallows were, when they were likely to be exposed, and for how long. So it’s not inconceivable that Moses had a grand plan all along and set Pharaoh up. With this one gesture Moses would make sure the Egyptians would leave them alone for good. And it worked. Not another word is said about Egyptians chasing them through the desert, even though they were out there for a long time.

There’s also no record at all among Egyptian writings that any of this ever happened at all. So we can accept it as literal truth or as part of a long narrative meant to give meaning to the Hebrew people.⁸ We’ll get into that later on.

There’s a lot more to this story – miracles, manna and some other things – so, if you’re interested, I suggest you read it on your own.