October 2024

All of us need God. Every last one of us. But sometimes, there come moments in our life where we feel invincible. Whether that’s when you’re seventeen and speeding on a motorcycle through traffic, or you’re approaching fifty and about to get that promotion you’ve been angling for, those times come in various ways for […]

Once Pharaoh had had enough of the frogs hopping all over their food and furniture, he called in Moses to have him remove the plague from their midst. That by itself is noteworthy. As you can see in Exodus 8:7, the Egyptian magicians were able to “duplicate” this miracle by bringing frogs of their own

Quick, make a mental list of all the Egyptian plagues you can think of (without cheating). Got it? Good. Which ones did you think of? If you’re anything like me, your list probably consists of some of the “big” ones, such as boils, darkness, locusts, and death of the firstborn. Maybe hail even made an

One of the major responsibilities of leaders, no matter the size of the organization, is to care for their people. That’s literally the number one job; the whole reason someone is in power is to serve the people. Pharaoh apparently didn’t get that memo. In the midst of the first plague, which was so devastating

In just about every list of the ten plagues, the water turning to blood comes first. It’s a little confusing, because one might casually think that Moses’ staff turning into a serpent would be first, but that’s “only” a miracle. The water turning into blood was a plague because it affected everyone. The point of

A new section (unofficially) begins in the Narrative starting in Exodus 7:8. Whereas the first several chapters are marked by suffering by God’s people and excuses by Moses, a nearly equal part (seven chapters) will be devoted to God’s liberation of the Israelites. It all starts here, with a simple showdown between Moses and Pharaoh.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that the Pharaoh of Exodus is far different than the Pharaoh of Genesis.  In Genesis, the few times we run into Pharaoh, he is seen as a man of honor (Genesis 12:18), a man of deep religious conviction (Genesis 41:38-40), and a man of respect for foreigners (Genesis

For a man (Pharaoh) who fancied himself a god, talking with humans is most likely beneath him. They’re regular, everyday people who are going about their regular, everyday lives. Not someone like him, he believes, who acts as a conduit for the power of the gods. In order to talk to him on his level,

It’s not unusual, especially in the Old Testament, to stumble upon a random genealogy. Unfortunately, that’s usually the point where a lot of people take a sharp detour, scanning with their eyes past the Text until they come to a place where the narrative picks back up again. You do it, I do it, we

I’m not sure if Moses ever knew the concept of deja vu, but even if he didn’t, he absolutely knew the feeling. Think about what Moses has tried to do for these people. Forty years before Exodus 6, Moses had tried to inspire an uprising by killing an Egyptian taskmaster. They didn’t listen to him