I just spent incredible hours re-reading the book of Exodus. You know the story of Moses and the plagues, but I hoped and expected there would be new thought and new revelations. I was not dish pointers. ⏪😂(Autocorrect)
I just read it (Amplified version) in the YouVersion app. But I'm so eager and impatient----I'm going to attempt some of my Children's bible for references.
This started because in Acts 7 Stephen says that Moses was 40 when he killed that Egyptian and it was 40 years later that the same man came back and said the same thing. Pronouns don't travel well across languages so I wanted to #1 verify he was said to be 40 years. #2 was it the same dude who spoke to Moses and said the exact same thing to him again when He returned. He spent half of his life worrying about that last thing that he heard and the very same words were waiting for him when he got back to Egypt.
But the man said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and said, “Certainly this incident is known.”
Exodus 2:14 AMP
According to Stephen there was a second exchange of this same phrase but I don't find any account of it in Exodus.
# My misunderstanding= I saw the reiteration of the same phrase. My bad. #
So I'm reading along and linger on how those midwives cleverly got out of committing murder. They gotta have slowly responded to the call of birth. 💆
Moses was badass too. Kicking those measly shepherd's buts and being all popular with the ladies. 💪
Then we got Pharoah's voice done right by Yul Brynner :
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord , nor will I let Israel go.”
Exodus 5:2 AMP
I'm paying attention to how lighthearted the Pharoah is about all of this at first. And how easily Moses is devastated. I take heart in the fact that half his life he has been a shepherd and half of his life he was a refugee son of Pharoah's daughter. The Lord explains the whole plot to him. He really sticks to the "I-can't-speak" plan. Til the Lord gets angry.
I somehow didn't pay any attention to the fact that Moses got sick and almost died. It said it was because one of his sons was not circumsized. It said the Lord sought to kill him. Unbelievable. I dont really understand the circumcision thing but it made God almost kill him with sickness and we don't even see a resolution to that by him. Zipporah did it. Don't even know how old the kid was.
We have a tendency as American Christians to think that God revolves around us like all this is happening to teach me a lesson all of this is happening for my benefit and for my good. I feel like this piece is here just to remind me that God is God and has his own agenda which has absolutely nothing to do with me. He is Holy. He is righteous. The end.
Then this jumps out at me:
"Get out of here and don't let me ever see you again," Pharaoh shouted at Moses. "The day you do, you shall die."
"Very well," Moses replied. "I will never see you again." Exodus 10:28-29
😖 that took some serious courage! I mean look at the character development! Gradually as the plagues kept going on and on, Moses's voice came up. At the beginning he wasn't doing the talking. We hear from God to Moses first, and then we hear from Moses to Aaron, and then we hear from Aaron to the Pharaoh what God says so we hear the Almighty's message repeated over and over again. But I noticed that as the plagues progressed, scripture made Aaron less present. We see more of Moses talking directly and less focus even on what God tells Moses to say. But by this last plague, huh! Moses is not even afraid to smart mouth at the threat of his life?! ?!
What happens next blew my mind. The Lord said to Moses to tell all the men and women of Israel to prepare to ask their Egyptian neighbors for costly gold and silver jewelry. Is this just another aspect of God's holiness that makes no sense to me? Maybe it's because I'm raised in a "respect others" culture and I'm so engrossed in that culture that I cannot get my brain around asking my neighbors for their valuables. He predicted it. He spoke about it before Moses even left the desert. It's just a God's glory thing? he says to take things that are rightfully theirs so I'm guessing that the gold and silver items after 430 years actually belonged to the Israelites in the first place... it is possible that they were buying grain and selling their possessions in order to get it. This would have had to have gone on for several Generations so they wouldn't even have known that the stuff belonged to them.
This last plague becomes a ceremony before it even happens. What popped into my head is how making it a ceremony before it even happens might have caused hope. It might have heightened the Israelites awareness that they were succeeding and that they were the pioneers of what was soon to be known as a victorious holiday.
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I longed for an anointed spokesman for these last days that we are living under, in 2021. Actually thanking God that we no longer need a spokesperson and that God can speak to us directly in our hearts. I long to be spoken to that directly and clearly.
God cares about numbers. Here it says in Exodus 12:40-41 The sons of Jacob and their descendants had lived in Egypt 430 years and it was on the last day of the four hundred and 30th year that all of Jehovah's people left the land. This night was selected by the Lord to bring his people out from the land of Egypt so the same night was selected as the date of the annual celebration of God's Deliverance. Jacob's entry into Egypt is one of my favorite stories in the Bible it cracked me up how he just rolls up there to talk to the pharoah not really listening to a word that Joseph told him in warning about how he needed to behave. And you can tell by the way the pharoah responded to him that the Pharaoh liked him that the Pharaoh enjoyed talking to this limping old Shepard man who probably stink like his flock. 430 years is a long time. A huge chunk of this part of Exodus is listing just the genealogy of Jacob's 12 sons and their families.but they were living 135 years old average. Levi was one of Jacobs twelve sons but Jochebed was a daughter of Jacob and was the mother of Moses. Amram was Levi's son and also Moses' dad. So Moses's parents were auntie and nephew as well as husband and wife. 430 years to us would be like six Generations. In Moses' time 430 years was only two or three generations
The children's version Bible that I am reading points out that it has been three days since they had left Egypt. When the Pharaoh and Moses were working out the details of the Israelites departure, the three days was mentioned usually by Pharoah, and Moses the whole time was not asking for them to be freed but was asking for them to be able to go out into the desert and make sacrifices to their God. Towards the very end Pharoah even conceded to allow the children and the families to go but not the herds in the flocks and of course Moses rejected that idea. He said not even God knows what we're going to sacrifice until we get there. So the part that I had never noticed before is that it had been three days when they reached the Jordan River and we're fixing to cross it. Just camped there and the reason actually why Pharaoh sent out his army is because the three days were up and they weren't coming back he actually thought they were going to come back?
We don't hear from God first. The first thing we see is that the Israelites cried out to the Lord and then turned against Moses with whining (and everybody knows what they said, "did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness?") But then our man of the hour Moses answers them with so much faith we dont even don't hear from God first. It's come to this! We now hear from Moses! Moses says, "don't be afraid to stand where you are and watch and you will see the wonderful way the Lord will rescue you today. The Egyptians you are looking at you will never see them again. The Lord will fight for you and you won't need to lift a finger." Exodus 14:13-14
This in another version says that you just need to remain silent. I've been holding on to that verse this whole time I've been going through what I am currently going through holding on to that verse so tight claiming it and praying that God move and do his battling because I was scared. I do not like to fight. I've actually held onto this concept for decades. God fights my battles. Because Vengeance belongs to him, not me.
It says the angel of God who is leading the people of Israel moved. ☁⚡
It says that the light from the fire gave light to the people of Israel and to the Egyptians it gave darkness so they couldn't find them.
It mentions the chariot wheels locking up it mentions that Jehovah looked down at them and started to harass them in this way. it mentions the dry ground but this is what popped out at me
When Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, they feared the Lord [with reverence and awe-filled respect], and they believed in the Lord , and in His servant Moses.
Exodus 14:31 AMP
Pharoah already believed. The Lord hardened his heart several times but he believed! ALL of Egypt believed. All of pharaohs servants believed and respected the god of the Israelites. It is absolutely inconceivable to me did the Israelites in all that God was doing for them did not believe or respect God until now. g forbid I should be so slow. God forbid I should be so sick at heart. 🎶💙😭
I'm brought to Tears by this right now. I'm thinking about how God loves me my whole life. I only now look in the mirror and see that there's a beautiful person that is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I think about how my whole life I believed the lie that I was ugly unlovable gross hideous, and rejected every single attempt for anyone to love me. How for years I worshipped one or another person of the opposite sex who is only administering one attribute of the God that made me in love with him. God recently revealed himself to me. He showed me that every characteristic of every guy that I had ever fallen in love with, was actually just a small portion of who God is, and he was using that person to administer love to me at that time in my life. God was desperate for a chance to love me and "settled" for these inadequate substitutes. But they all fell out of my heart in one glorious night like a bouquet of dried petals from dead flowers. I don't know why it takes us so long to see it. I don't know why the bitterness in me was so thick I couldn't believe it. Even now it haunts me. I want to say "seal your love inside my heart" but no, that's not the nature of love! That's not how it works! It overflows! It overcomes! To Jesus: just take me over don't let me ever fall into disbelief again!
