Exodus 11-14
Introduction
This lesson covers from the 10th and final plague of Egypt to the crossing of the Red Sea. Again, please refer to these resources as well: this commentary, the NETS Bible, and this LXX Interlinear.
Exo. 11
Now we come to the final plague: death of all the firstborn in Egypt, from the animals to Pharaoh’s son, as payback for the order to murder all male babies born to the Hebrews. God reserves the right to avenge.
However, individual Israelites will only be spared if they put the blood of a lamb on the doorposts of their houses so the death angel passes them by. We could argue over whether this death angel is an angel or God Himself, but does it really matter? Either way, this is the origin of Passover, rich with symbolic reference to the eventual Passover Lamb, Jesus. Speaking of rich, before God begins this plague, the people of Israel are to ask the Egyptian people for silver and gold jewelery and whatever clothing they can spare, and the Egyptians give generously. At this point, Moses finally has the respect not only the Egyptian people but also Pharaoh’s court.
The section starting in verse 4 seems to backtrack a bit to add the last thing Moses says to Pharaoh, telling him of this final plague and that Pharaoh’s own servants will bow down to Moses. Yet not even the loss of his firstborn son will persuade Pharaoh to concede to the God of Israel for very long.
Exo. 12
Before the death angel arrives, God tells Moses and Aaron to mark this month as the first month of the year for Israel, roughly equivalent to late March and early April. On the tenth day of the month each household must select a flawless one-year-old male sheep and observe it till the 14th, and on that afternoon they are to slaugher all the lambs. Then they are to smear some of its blood on the top and sides of the doorframe of their house.
They must eat the meat that night after roasting it over a fire, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. And the people have to dress as if prepared to leave in a hurry, though the blood on the doorposts would keep them safe from the death angel. This all foreshadowed what Jesus would eventually fulfill, and we’ll look at a detailed outline of just exactly how Jesus did so at the end of this lesson.
The immediate context is God’s vengeance against Egypt and Pharaoh, but since this is to be a perpetual memorial, it means much more. Then God adds another requirement: For seven days the people must not eat anything with yeast in it, and they cannot even have any yeast in their houses. Later in the scriptures we’ll see that yeast is symbolic of sin that infects the whole group. The first and last days of that week will be holy days when no work except food preparation can be done. This week, to be known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, begins on the evening of the 14th and ends on the evening of the 21st, with the 15th beginning the actual Passover, since days began after sunset. The 14th would become known as Preparation Day, and this is an important detail when studying Jesus’ final week in the Gospel accounts.
When passing all of this to the elders of Israel (vs. 21), Moses adds that no one is allowed to leave their house until morning. Then he repeats that this will be a reminder for all their generations, of the night when God overpowered and humiliated all other claims of godhood. This establishment of a national calendar, whose first month was called Abib (and then Nisan after the later return from Babylonian captivity), is the first step toward making the people of Israel into the nation of Israel, but this will require a formal covenant to be given after they reach the mountain God told Moses he’d return to.
We see in verse 29 that the death angel arrives in the middle of that night, and by the time it’s over not a single house in Egypt has been spared. Finally Pharaoh lets Israel go, but he still has the gall to ask Moses and Aaron to bless him first! The rest of the Egyptian people couldn’t be more motivated to expel the Hebrews at this point, giving them anything they wanted, and in this way Egypt was plundered.
So off they went, first from the city of Rameses to Sukkoth, and this is where we’re told about the 600,000 men of fighting age. Verse 40 is another place where scripture cites 430 years as how long the Israelites lived in Egypt, but remember to balance this with all the other references as we saw in the timeline chart from Abraham to Moses. That timespan goes all the way back to when Abraham was given the Promise.
Then God adds another stipulation for the passover observance: no foreigner is allowed to participate unless the males are circumcised. The meal can’t be shared outside of the house, and none of the sheep’s bones are to be broken. These will have their final fulfillment at Jesus’ crucifixion, which had to happen in Israel (the house).
Exo. 13
Now God declares that all the firstborn males, human or animal, are to be consecrated to God. The stipulations for the festival are stated again as well, along with clarification that this all begins when they reach Canaan (the Promised Land). The reason the firstborn males belong to God is because of Pharaoh’s attempt to kill them all.
In verse 17 God decides that Israel should not go through the land of the Phillistines even though it was a shorter route, or they might turn back to Egypt if war breaks out. As Constable notes, that route was heavily fortified by the Egyptians. So he leads them instead toward the wilderness by the Red Sea. This happens in what the text calls the fifth generation, and this is where it says that Moses remembered to bring the bones of Joseph. By day God used a pillar of cloud, and by night a pillar of fire. They were likely the same object, whose fire would be less helpful during the daytime, and of course whose cloud would be useless at night.
Exo. 14
Now God sets up his final nail in Egypt’s coffin. He has Israel camp such that they are strategically trapped between the wilderness and the sea, to lure Pharaoh into seizing the opportunity to enslave them again. In spite of everything, Pharaoh and his officials can’t imagine why they let all those slaves go, but later we’ll see that it isn’t just the Egyptians who have the memory and sense of a goldfish. So off the Egyptians go with their entire army, catching up to them at the camp.
Speaking of short memory, in verse 10 we see that Israelites quickly forget all they’ve just seen God do. They whine to Moses, “Is this why you took us out here to die, because there wasn’t room for our graves in Egypt? We were better off as slaves than to die out here!” Of course, Moses has to remind them not to be such sniveling cowards, but to sit back and watch the show as God takes care of business for them.
Then (verse 15) God has Moses hold the staff over the sea so the people can cross on dry ground. According to Constable’s notes, the phrase “yam sup” is not Egyptian for “sea of reeds” meaning a shallow marsh, but Hebrew for “the sea at the end”. Besides, the entire large and sophisticated army of Egypt would not drown in a marsh! God also tells Moses that once Israel begins to cross over, the Egyptians will chase after them, but it will be their undoing. Now the pillar of cloud and fire moves between the Israelites and the Egyptian army, causing darkness and gloom to keep the two groups apart during the night.
Meanwhile, Moses does as instructed, and God brings a strong wind to make a dry path through the sea, with the water forming walls on either side. So the people of Israel go across, and by morning the Egyptians see them and commence their pursuit. But God slows them down by putting them into a panic and jamming their chariot wheels. Only when they finally realize that God Himself is fighting for Israel do they try to retreat.
But since Israel had crossed the sea by this time, God has Moses hold out the staff again to cause the waters to return. The next morning, the Israelites could see all the drowned Egyptians on the far shore, and there were no survivors, though it’s doubtful that Pharaoh himself had gone with them instead of staying on high ground to direct the assault. Either way, he had no army at all anymore, and no son to succeed him to the throne of Egypt— which for a self-proclaimed god was quite embarrassing.
So finally, at least for the time being, all the people of Israel honor and trust God and his servant Moses. We should all know by now that such a condition is always short-lived, but we’ll find out more in the next lesson.
How Jesus fulfilled the Passover
Please see this outline, especially point 5-C, for the ways in which Jesus was the reality for the Passover shadow.