In two verses, an entire generation of Egyptians are wiped out.
For me, this is the hardest part of the Exodus story to read. It’s always been difficult, but seeing as how I’ve moved at a literal snail’s pace through Exodus to get to this point, it’s even harder. Why didn’t Pharaoh listen? Why didn’t he just let the people go?
In short, why did it have to come to this?
There’s no shortage of emotion, and that’s on purpose. When God says He’s going to kill the firstborn of every family—slave, freeman, and animal—that’s exactly what He means.
The screams coming from the homes that night must have been deafening. Just as Pharaoh arose that night to find his own firstborn dead, thousands of other families arose in the night to find the same. As Exodus 12:30 puts it, there was “no home where there was not someone dead.”
Can you imagine if something like this happened today? I live near Dallas, a city that boasts over one million people—roughly the same amount of people that lived in Egypt during the time of Moses. If someone from every household in Dallas died on the same night, the event would be commemorated for hundreds of years.
Even though God was the One that distributed the punishment, the blame lies firmly with Pharaoh. He’s the one who brought it to this point by refusing to allow the Israelites to leave on peaceful terms. He’s the one that is saddled with the guilt of tens of thousands of deaths.
There’s a sense in which this death is also considered justice on behalf of the thousands of Israelite boys who were drowned in the Nile River eighty years ago. Since that practice was designed with population control in mind (no record exists in Scripture of the practice ever stopping), there’s a good chance that even more died through the years than in the night of the tenth plague.
None of this takes away from the fact that what happened the night of the Passover was a galvanizing event. It would be responsible for finally driving the Israelites out of Egypt, and arguably driving Pharaoh right into the Nile on account of his rage.
