Women of the Word

Exodus 10:21 – 12:51

The Plague of Locusts (watercolor circa 1896–1902 by James Tissot)

            After the plague of locusts, when Pharaoh still refused to let the Israelites leave, the Lord ordered Moses to stretch his hand toward the sky to create darkness throughout the land, “darkness that can be felt.”  For three days all of Egypt was plunged into total pitch blackness, so that no one was able to move or to see, except in those areas where the Israelites lived.  (Here the J writer is emphasizing that it was believed that it took three days after death for the spirit to leave the body, for one to be truly dead.  In the New Testament, both Jesus and Lazarus were in the tomb for three days.)  This time Pharaoh tried some horse-trading with Moses; he agreed to the release of the Israelites but wanted to keep all their livestock.  Moses refused; Pharaoh refused; and they parted once again on bad terms.  Unspoken, but clearly overlaying the darkness in the land was the darkness in Pharaoh’s heart; power is a tough thing to give up.

            By now it was obvious that Pharaoh was not going to acquiesce to any of Moses and Aaron’s requests, so the Lord told them that He would send one last plague upon Egypt: the killing of each first-born child.  Moses told Pharaoh what was to befall his people with this tenth and final plague: “All Egypt will send up a great cry of anguish, a cry the like of which has never been heard before, nor ever will be again” (11:6).  In preparation for this, the Lord had the Israelites ask their Egyptian neighbors for gifts of gold and silver jewelry, which they received because the Lord had “made the Egyptians well-disposed towards them . . . and Moses a very great man in Egypt” (11:3).  As before, Yahweh promised that the coming plague would not harm any Hebrew family.

            The Priestly writer takes over in Chapter 12 and interjects in the first twenty verses detailed instructions on the keeping of the Passover, one of the most important feasts in the Jewish year.  (Again, we are reminded that this is being transcribed from oral tradition during the Babylonian exile, so that the Jewish community might keep its traditions intact.)

            At verse 21, the actual story of the night of the Passover starts, with Moses instructing the Israelites to slaughter a sheep, dip marjoram in the blood, and smear it on the lintel and the two doorposts of each house.  No one was to leave their home that night when the angel of the Lord would go through Egypt and strike the first-born of each house, except those dwellings with the blood on the doors.  Again, in verses 24-27, there is a reminder that “when you enter the land which the Lord will give you as He promised, you shall observe this rite.”

            By midnight, every first-born in Egypt:  man, woman, beast, freeman, slave—“not a house in Egypt was without its dead.”  Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron to the palace in the middle of the night and told them to get out and take their households, their livestock, and go “or else . . . we shall all be dead.”  So the Israelites quickly packed up, grabbed their baking dough before it had risen, and, taking the gold and silver they had gotten from their Egyptian neighbors, they set out.

            With this description of the Israelites’ hasty leave-taking, the J writer interjects with a count of the number of men and their households who left Egypt on the night of the first Passover and points out that, on their first stop, they were forced to bake their dough into unleavened cakes (a reiteration of part of the Passover ritual detailed by the Priestly writer in ch. 12:15).  He also claims that the Hebrews had been settled in Egypt, as immigrant guests and, later, slaves, for 430 years.

            In verses 43-51, the Priestly writer returns with further rules for the treatment of foreigners and non-Hebrew hired persons regarding the Passover meals.  Here he impresses on the reader that the rite of circumcision is a necessary first step, setting the participant apart from the general population of the country; this may refer back to Zipporah’s saving Moses’ life in the wilderness when they returned to Egypt from Midian (cf. ch. 4:24-26).

Submitted by Karilyn Jaap