Subject: (no subject)

From: Bob Stern

Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 22:21:26 -0400

To: Bob Stern

The story of the plague of Passover is a long one.  Instead of reading it, I offer the condensed version (source: the New International Version):

Exodus 7

    ¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, "See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. ² You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. ³ But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, ⁴ he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. ⁵ And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it."

Snake

    ¹⁰ . . . Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake.  ¹³ Yet Pharaoh's heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.

  Blood

   ¹⁶ "Then say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go . . . '"

   ²⁰ Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood.
    ²² . . . Pharaoh's heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said. 

  Frogs

    ²⁵ Seven days passed after the LORD struck the Nile.

Exodus 8

    ¹ . . .  "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. ² If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs." ¹⁵ But when Pharaoh saw . . . he hardened his heart . . .

  Gnats

    ¹⁶ Then the LORD said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,' and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats."

  ¹⁹ . . . But Pharaoh's heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the LORD had said.

  Flies

Moses said, ²¹ "If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you" . . . ³² But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.

Exodus 9

  Livestock

    ¹  "Let my people go, so that they may worship me. ² If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, ³ the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock . . . 

⁷ Pharaoh sent men to investigate and found that not even one of the animals of the Israelites had died. Yet his heart was unyielding and he would not let the people go.

  Boils

   ¹⁰ So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on men and animals.. ¹² But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron . . .

  Hail 

²²Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that hail will fall all over Egypt—on men and animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt."  ²⁷ Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron. "This time I have sinned . . .  ²⁸ . . . I will let you go" . . .  ³⁴ When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts. ³⁵ So Pharaoh's heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go . . .

Exodus 10

  Locusts

   ³ ". . . Let my people go, so that they may worship me. ⁴ If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow."   

    ¹⁶ Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "I have sinned against the LORD your God and against you. ¹⁷ Now forgive my sin once more and pray to the LORD your God to take this deadly plague away from me."

    ¹⁸ Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD. ¹⁹ And the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea.  Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. ²⁰ But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

  Darkness

    ²¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt . . ."

    ²⁷ But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he was not willing to let them go.

Exodus 11

The Plague on the Firstborn

    ¹ Now the LORD had said to Moses, "I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go . . .  

 ⁵ Every firstborn son in Egypt will die . . .

    ⁹ The LORD had said to Moses, "Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt." ¹⁰ Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.

Exodus 12

The Passover

     ³ . . . each man is to take a lamb  ⁶  . . .the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. ⁷ Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 

    ¹² "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. ¹³ The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt."

  ²⁹ At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. ³¹ During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! . . ."

Exodus 14

    ⁵ When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled . . . ⁸ The LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites . . .   ²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, ²² and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground . . .

  ²⁶ Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen." 

 ³⁰ That day the LORD saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. ³¹ And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.

When I saw this story in the movie "The Ten Commandments," Pharaoh  wore Yul Brynner’s scowl and was an unmitigated tyrant.  When I  was older and read the Bible, I said wait a minute: God made Pharaoh harden his heart?  Pharaoh would have let them go.  But God hardened Pharaoh's heart?  Why would God do this?  Was it not enough to free the Israelites?  Did the Egyptians need to be humiliated and destroyed?

Why could God not soften Pharaoh’s heart so that Moses could approach him and say, "Pardon me, sir, may we leave?"  And Pharaoh replied:  "Certainly.  Here, take some of my gold as well.  But first let me hold a farewell banquet for you.  All the firstborn sons of Egypt will gather the firstborn livestock of Egypt and prepare a feast.  Our harvest has been bountiful this year for there has been no locust or hay.  We will harvest the wheat.  Give us a few days so the bread can rise.  We have been blessed with an abundance of frogs this year.  Just wait until you taste frog legs sautéed in butter.  And our water has turned into a marvelous red wine.  There is so much that we need your help to drink it."  That would have been so strange that it would be an even greater miracle.

Why did God send plagues instead of blessings?  The passages say so that the power of the Lord be displayed.  To me this portrays a negative image of God.  God appears to be a cat playing with his prey.  He seems like a softball team that is leading the game 20-0, then suspends the mercy rule so that he can win 100-0.  It is like the player who must do a fantastic end-zone dance because scoring a touchdown is somehow not enough.  It is like a politician who, after winning a rigged election, makes sure his opponent gets arrested.

It is cruel to set people up for a fall.  It's as if victory is not enough.  Humiliation is necessary.  It was this cruel image of God that made it difficult to believe.  It was easier for me to believe that God did not exist than to worship a sadistic tyrant.

A possible explanation is that scripture is written after the fact.  Perhaps something happened in history.  Strange plagues arose.

A theory published in 1957 by an English lit scholar named Greta Hort speculated that the "ecological domino" effect is kicked off by a massive "red tide" of algae laced with anthrax bacteria in the Nile River:

Dead fish developed anthrax, sickening the frogs and driving them ashore. Dead frogs contaminated the soil, infecting and killing livestock animals with internal anthrax. Biting flies proliferated in the decaying plants left by the heavy flooding then carried the especially virulent skin anthrax from dead cattle to the live cattle and humans, causing the plague of "boils." The severe weather that had caused the unusual torrent then brought hail and locusts. . . . Some of the plagues may have missed the Israelites due to a natural sheltering effect of the Eastern Nile Delta valley they dwelled in, she claims. Hort suggests that the Israelites left Egypt because they had food the Egyptians wanted and would have taken from them, so if they stayed they would "die either by violence or starvation.”*

Perhaps the Israelites, after experiencing this, attributed it to God, focusing on the power of God and added hardening of Pharaoh's heart to explain why they were not let go sooner.

Whether or not there were actual miracles or a naturalistic explanation, these passages do tell us something about humanity.

If we do not like or believe in a god who is cruel and vindictive, we should hate the behavior even more when we see it in ourselves.  We all have visions of justice in the world.  We do not believe that prisoners of war should be tortured.  We do not believe that bankruptcy should no longer be an option for the poor.  But when pointing our fingers at the cruelty of our political foes, we have our own cruelties.  I have had the thoughts in my mind and have heard them from your lips.  It is not enough for us to have our ideas of love and justice to prevail.  We desire that karma be as cruel to our enemies as they have been to us.

Why is it so hard to hope for good for everyone?  Why do we hope that our opponents will be plagued?  We relish scandals that embarrass the political preachers and people with whom we disagree.  Is it a function of our perceived powerlessness that we hope for divine intervention?  Why do we hope that the powers, whatever they be, will vanquish our enemies?  Why do we feel so powerless?  Perhaps it is because we know that the religious right has out-hustled us.  They have been able to spread their message more widely than we have, with our supposed intellectual and compassionate superiority.

The fundamentalist churches are growing because of their certainty.  They preach that their enemies will be vanquished.  This feeds into the human cruelty that it is not enough to go to heaven.  Part of the joy of heaven is being able to watch people writhe in hell.  They are not afraid to speak up.  Why are we?   We have a better message.  We preach love and justice for all, a  universal Passover, where all are healed from the cruelty of life, where liberty and justice is for all, not just for some.

One thing that may impede us is our own secret wish that a plague befall their houses.  In order to preach universalism, we must first believe it ourselves.  If we do not believe in one love for all, it will be stuck in our throat as we try to say it.

But perhaps by saying it enough, we will begin to actually believe it -- and maybe actually live it.

May our love multiply and swarm over this land like locusts, a plague of peace that passes over nobody.


* “Did Anthrax Plague the Egyptians?” Brad Sparks citing Greta Hort, "The Plagues of Egypt," Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, vol. 69 (1957) pp. 84-103; vol. 70 (1958) pp. 48-59; March 14, 2002.  (This article is a summary of a longer one to be published in a future issue of Bible and Spade magazine.)  http://abr.christiananswers.net/redtides.html