I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 19-21.

When the Children of Israel reached Mt. Sinai, Moses went up the mountain to meditate and converse with God about what to do next.  Moses had returned to Egypt and rescued the Children of Israel from slavery there as God had instructed him to do from the burning bush.  If they were going to conquer the land which God had promised to them when he spoke to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they would need to be organized.  How should they be organized and what rules should govern their lives?  Moses did what all leaders should do in that situation.  He turned to God in prayer and meditation.

I find the way in which the following portion is phrased to be open to interpretation.  God told Moses to tell the people that if they did as He commanded He would make them His special people. The phrasing seems to suggest that God gave Moses the commands to pass on to the people at this point, but further on in the passage it tells us that God gave them the commands later.  My interpretation is that at this point God was referencing the outline of laws which were contained in the stories which had been passed down to them from Abraham, who had them from his ancestors.  Once the people had agreed to God’s conditions in principle, God came to them to communicate the specifics of what He desired from them.

When God came to them He spoke what we know as the Ten Commandments, but which Jewish tradition refer to as the Ten Words.  In many ways the latter is more accurate.  Once God had spoken these Ten Words, the people asked that God no longer speak directly to them.  They asked that God speak His commands to Moses and Moses pass them on to them.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 16-18.

The story of manna and quail gives us a perfect example of how God provides for us.  For five days the people collected enough manna each morning for their needs for the day.  Any of the manna collected on those five days which was kept overnight went bad by morning.  On the sixth day, they collected twice as much, and what they collected was still good on the morning of the seventh day, when there was no manna to collect.  This teaches us the same lesson as what happened in Egypt in Joseph’s time.  In Joseph’s time there were seven years of plenty which provided enough surplus to see the people of Egypt through seven years of famine (with enough left over to help some people from elsewhere).  God provides for our needs, when He provides us extra it is because a lean time is coming, or so that we can aid those who have fallen on hard times.  We should keep this in mind when we experience a “windfall”.

Again today I noticed a verse which I had never noticed before, Exodus 18:11.   Here Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, tells Moses that the account Moses gave of their departure from Egypt caused him to know that God was greater than all other gods.  Previously we had been told that Jethro was a priest of Midian, and later in this passage he offers sacrifices which Aaron and the elders of Israel join.  What we learn from this statement from Jethro is that previous to this, while he had honored and worshiped God, he had also honored, and perhaps worshiped, other gods.  This reminds us of the importance of sharing what God has done in our lives with others so that their faith may be strengthened.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 13-15.

The beginning of today’s passage contains an explanation of why the Israelites practice regarding child sacrifice differed from those they lived among in the land they settled.  We know from later biblical accounts and from archaeological records that the people whom the later Israelites lived among offered some of their children as sacrifices to their gods.  I am not positive on this, but I believe that they sacrificed their first born sons.  This is one of several passages which make clear that the Israelites were not to do the same.  Here Moses tells them that they are to dedicate the first born male to God, both of their children and their livestock.  They were given the option of buying back a first born donkey, but they were required to buyback their firstborn sons.   Moses mentions just once that they have the option of buying back the first born donkey, but repeats the requirement to buy back first born sons.  This is one of several places where it is made clear that God forbids the sacrifice of children.

When the Israelites left Egypt Moses did not lead them by a direct route towards the Promised Land.  In fact, he led them by a circuitous route which made it seem to anyone tracking them that they were lost.  This served two purposes.  First, the Israelites were not prepared to face the battles which they would have faced on the most direct route. Second, it enticed Pharaoh to pursue them.  A study of Egyptian history, and even the Exodus account, suggests that the Pharaoh was likely to pursue the Israelites sooner or later.  Politically, allowing the Israelites to depart made him look weak.  Economically, their departure weakened the Egyptian economy, which weakened the Pharaoh. Personally, their departure would have felt like he had been defeated.  All of these factors made Pharaoh’s pursuit of the departing Israelites inevitable. By appearing lost, the Israelites drew Pharaoh’s pursuit after them while they were in a position to deal him a devastating defeat.  And once again, God’s power was demonstrated, both to the Egyptians and to the people of Israel.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 10-12.

As I was reading today’s passage I took notice of a verse that I had never really thought much about before. In Exodus 11:3  it says that the Egyptian people looked favorably on the people of Israel and that everyone respected Moses. Perhaps this is just a “throw away” line intended to explain why the Egyptians gave so much wealth to the Israelites as they left the land of Egypt. However, to me it suggests that during the time between the plagues Moses was preaching about God, that he was telling people about the stories which had been passed down from Noah and the way God desired people to act. More importantly, it puts the actions of Pharaoh’s advisers just before the plague of locusts into a different light. The wording in Exodus 10:7 seems to reflect men who were afraid, but perhaps they were trying to use fear to convince the Pharaoh while they thought that letting the people of Israel go was just the right thing to do.

When reading the Passover instructions given here and the account of the actual event it strikes me that the author wanted to make clear that Moses had given instructions for the Passover before it happened and that some of the instructions about how Passover are celebrated are a re-enactment of events as they happened.   As an example of what I am talking about, I do not believe that Moses gave the instructions about not having any yeast in the house for the seven days of the Passover celebration as part of the preparations made to leave Egypt.  On the other hand, I think that the instructions regarding preparing the lamb were part of the instructions given before they did so.  It seems to me that the writer was torn between making sure that those who read his account kept the Passover correctly and recounting what actually happened so that people understood why those instructions were what they were.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 7-9.

When Moses and Aaron performed the first three signs from God before the Pharaoh, he refused to take them seriously because his court magicians were able to duplicate them.  As a result, Pharaoh refused to take these signs seriously.  I have always understood this to mean that since his magicians could duplicate these signs, Pharaoh rejected Moses’ requests because he did not think that God was any more powerful than his own gods.   However, it occurred to me today that Pharaoh did not believe that his magicians had any real powers, that he thought they were charlatans.  Therefore, since they could reproduce Moses’ signs through sleight of hand and trickery, Moses was also using sleight of hand and trickery.  Even when Moses performed signs which his magicians could not imagine any way to duplicate, Pharaoh was convinced that Moses was a fraud.. 

Now one might be tempted to say that by starting with signs which could be imitated by charlatans, Moses made a mistake.  But Exodus tells us that God instructed him to start this way because God had a plan.  We can even make sense of God’s plan if we pay close attention to what goes on here.  First if Moses had gone first to one of the lesser plagues which Pharaoh’s magicians could not imitate, Pharaoh would have agreed to the Israelites going for three days to sacrifice, and probably would not have agreed to allow them to take all of their possessions.  Certainly, they would not have left Egypt with all of the wealth which they did take with them when they finally left., wealth which was necessary for them to survive the journey.  On the other hand, if God had gone directly to killing the first born, people throughout history would have said that He was unnecessarily cruel.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 4-6.

In yesterday’s passage, when God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand that he let the people of Israel go, Moses asked questions that anyone should ask in such circumstances.  In today’s passage, his questions become the questions of self-doubt; “Why would people believe that God called me?”  In answer to that, God gives Moses signs to perform for those who question his calling.   Then Moses questions God’s choice in calling him; “This job calls for someone who speaks well.  I am a terrible public speaker and not much better in private.”  God answers that by pointing out since it was He who had made people’s mouths and ears He was perfectly capable of giving someone the ability to speak in front of others.  Finally, Moses outright begs God to find someone else.  God answers this by telling Moses that He will give him an assistant he can trust, his brother. 

The story given here of Moses’ calling should give all of us who struggle with doubt more confidence, even Moses, the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, suffered from self-doubt.  Further Moses thought that his self-doubts were confirmed after he returned to Egypt.  He went to the Children of Israel and then to Pharaoh as God had commanded, but things only got worse.  Moses was convinced that he had failed, but God saw thing differently.  Once again when God told him to go to Pharaoh, Moses replied that he did not have the skills necessary to the task.  He said this because he thought he had failed, despite the fact that God told him that this was all part of the plan.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 1-3.

When this passage recounts why the Pharaoh wanted to limit the growth of the Israelite population there is a phrase which is often overlooked.  The Pharaoh says, “If we do not do this, they will escape from the country.”  This implies that the Israelites were not free to leave Egypt even before the changes the Pharaoh implemented.  If they were not free to leave, they were already slaves.  So, what this Pharaoh did was try to reduce their numbers of men.  His first attempt was to instruct the midwives to abort baby boys born to Hebrew women just before their birth.  When the midwives proved unwilling to abort the boys, he ordered outright infanticide.  The passage gives us no idea how long this policy was in place, but the evidence suggests that it had been abandoned at least 20 years before the Exodus actually happened.

Another interesting thing is the reaction of Pharaoh’s daughter in discovering the baby, Moses, in the Nile.  She immediately realizes that Moses is a Hebrew child.  When Moses’ sister conveniently appears and offers to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby, Pharaoh’s daughter has to have suspected what was going on.  Technically, the Pharaoh’s order had been complied with, Moses had been thrown into the Nile River.  So, while Moses was raised as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, he was also taught that he was a Hebrew.  His mother had believed that he was a special baby from his moment of birth (of course, don’t most mothers believe that about at least one of their children.  How else to explain why they let them live to grow up?).  So, she would have certainly taught him the stories which had been passed down through the generations, the stories which had been passed down from Noah through Abraham.

When Moses became a man, he sought to relieve some of the oppression which his people were suffering.  I think that Moses was deeply hurt when his fellow Hebrew failed to immediately understand his call for fraternal loyalty when Moses intervened in the dispute.  That hurt played as much of a role in his flight to Midian as his fear of it being found out that he had killed an Egyptian.  When God finally called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, Moses wanted no parts of it.  He had tried to be a leader to them and they rejected him.  As so often happens in these cases, God’s response was, “That was before I had called you to this task.  Now will be different, because this is My time.”   There is more to it than that.  When Moses tried to exercise leadership of the Israelites before he fled to Midian, he had not yet received the training which God wanted for him.  He needed those years in the desert to learn things which God wanted him to know.  Among other things, Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianites.  Midianites were descendants of Abraham from his wife Keturah.  Perhaps, Moses learned more of the stories passed down from Noah from his father-in-law.  Whatever it was that Moses learned while in the desert, it was important to his later leadership of the Israelites.