Exodus 9

Today the plagues on Egypt go from bad to worse. The ones recounted in the last two chapters were quite annoying, I'm sure - but not overly destructive or deadly; the ones in this passage are quite the opposite.

The Israelite slaves must have really been a key component of the Egyptian economic structure for Pharaoh to have stood up to all of this in order to keep them. I would say that I wonder what it will take to get him to budge, but we will see soon enough.

On an interesting side note, the last plague (hail) seems strange to me. Obviously hail can be quite damaging by itself, if in a large quantity and good-size chunks, but the storms God used must have been something really special. In addition to the hail itself, there was rain and thunder - which are quite reasonable - and fire (Ex 9:24). The mere fact that fire rained down is remarkable enough, but the fact that it accompanied hail and rain seems quite miraculous. Of course God can do that, but I wonder if it might actually be a reference to something like lightning. If they didn't have a word for such phenomenon at the time (perhaps it was not common in their climate?) it would seem feasible to call that fire.

Exodus 8

Frogs, gnats, and flies - oh my! More plagues for the land of Egypt, because Pharaoh does not learn his lesson. What I find interesting here is that the magicians of Pharaoh's court manage to mimic the first plague (as they had with previous miracles that Moses and Aaron had done), but not the second. On the third, we don't even get told that they tried; perhaps they finally realized how out-classed they were :) After all, they did admit to Pharaoh that "this is the finger of God." (Ex 8:18b, NIV)

Exodus 7

Ah, today we start to see some real action in the struggle between Moses/Aaron and Pharaoh! How amazing must it have been to see a staff turned into a snake - and then to see it take on other snake/staffs and 'swallow them up'? Or how terrifying to see all the water in a river turned to blood? Such miracles are not seen anymore, though as we'll see in a couple of years their like and worse will happen again someday.

In spite of these things, Pharaoh's heart was hard against the request to let the Israelites go. We know from previous chapters that this was actually God's doing, so that He could demonstrate His power and sovereignty in freeing His people, but I wonder what the Egyptians thought of all of it? At what point did the average Egyptian wish that Pharaoh would just let them go - or in that day did the main populous even know of what was going on? Surely they all were affected by the changing of the river Nile into blood, but I wonder if they actually knew the whole story of how it happened and why.

Exodus 6

Today's chapter is a little odd, in that it splits right in the middle of a narrative and drops into a family tree for most of the rest of the passage. The story picks up again in the last couple verses, but it doesn't really go anywhere. I suspect the next chapter should be interesting, though, as the last thing we read today is Moses once again calling into question his ability to go before Pharaoh. It is a good thing that God is patient, as I imagine that all of Moses' whining was getting old.

Exodus 5

Moses and Aaron finally make their case for the Israelites leaving to Pharaoh, and of course he rejects it. What I find interesting is two things:

1) Moses asks only to let the Israelites take a 3-day journey to worship God, not to leave Egypt forever. That is of course the eventual goal, but God had instructed them to ask for this first. It seems to me like it nearly borders on lying - but we'll have to see how it turns out when Pharaoh eventually grants this request.

2) As a punishment of sorts, Pharaoh demands that the Israelites must continue to meet their work quotas - but now must do so without the aid of straw to make bricks. This tells me that either the making of bricks itself or the building of things with them was a primary task of the Israelites in captivity, and we get some confirmation of that in earlier chapters when it was mentioned that they built two cities in Egypt. I am curious about this method of brick production as well: making them with straw hardly seems to me like it would a strong, effective 'brick', but such manufacturing is not a strong point of my knowledge.

Exodus 4

Today we see the conclusion of the burning bush story, and God's gift to Moses of three signs by which the Israelites will know that he was indeed sent by the I Am. I've got to admit, those were pretty cool too - especially the snake one. We also are told that Aaron, Moses' brother, would go with him to speak on his behalf. Apparently Moses wasn't confident in his public speaking ability, and there wasn't time to send him to Speech 101 ;) It looks like he may have even had a speech impediment, but I couldn't tell for sure if that was the case.

The later half of the chapter covers a very odd story about something that happened while Moses and company were traveling to Egypt. "Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the LORD met him [Moses] and sought to put him to death." (Ex 4:24, NASB) How is that for a conundrum - God sent Moses on an important journey, and then on the way nearly kills him. Apparently Moses had not followed the covenant of Abraham by having his son circumcised, which I imagine he knew full well needed to be done. I guess it just seems like odd timing to me: why wait till he was already en route? Why not deal with it before, at the burning bush? Oh well, another one of those questions to ask someday...

Exodus 3

Todays reading was the first half of the burning bush story. God speaks to Moses out of a fire that is burning in the midst of a bush, but which does not consume it. That gets Moses' attention, and Gid then sends him on a mission to free the Israelites in Egypt. Most folks know the story, and it has been featured in many movie and TV accounts of the story of Moses, but still I wonder a few things:

What does God sound like? The voice here was clearly an audible thing, not just God speaking to Moses in his heart, and so I wonder what He sounds like.

Would the fire have burned Moses if he put his hand into it? I mean, was it just the appearance of a fire that God was using to get Moses' attention, or was it a real fire and God was miraculously keeping the bush from being burned up?

What would have happened if Moses just kept walking. The text says that Moses saw the bush and turned aside to investigate, and at that point God used the opportunity to speak to him. Had Moses been like 'eh, whatever' and kept on going, what other miraculous sign might God have used to get his attention?