October 10, 2024

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

Everyone has skeletons in the closet. No matter where you come from, where you’ve been, how right you are with God now, all of us have a past that we can’t outrun. Israel had a past too—one that was inextricably linked to that of Egypt. This past ran deep, before even Joseph’s time as famine