Death of the Firstborns

An even bigger problem that I have is with the tenth plague -- the death of all the firstborns in Egypt, even to the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon and the enslaved woman grinding grain. These are some of the thoughts that I've had, read or heard this past week.

Again, I don't think I realize the extent of the abuse that the Israelites suffered. They were in Egypt for 430 years. I don't think they were in slavery all that time, since Joseph was in good standing for a while, but probably a significant portion of the time. Even if it was just the last 80 years that Moses has been alive, it was 80 years of slavery, oppression, and ruthless labor. What if it were the death of the firstborns of the Nazis? Would I understand it better then?

Pharaoh had been warned. This was the tenth plague. Nine times God said, Let my people go, and either Pharaoh ignored it, or said he would let them go and then changed his mind. One commentator suggested that none of the other nine plagues affected Pharaoh personally, until the last one.

James Newsome says, "The Old Testament takes evil very seriously. God repudiates evil and seeks to destroy it root and branch." p. 44-45 We often ask why God doesn't do anything when people suffer. Do we also question God when God does something about it? And what about the Israelites' years of slavery. Should God be held responsible for letting them suffer for so long and not acting sooner?

Should the Egyptian people, who weren't making the decisions, suffer for what their leader did? Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Were they responsible for what their leader did? How much are we responsible for what our president and congress do?

James Newsome again writes, "...the Hebrews of old made little if any distinction between evil as an abstraction and persons who do evil deeds...Seen in this light, the narratives in Exodus consider the Israelites' enslavement to be the evil activity of the Egyptians, not just of Pharaoh. They further consider that an appropriate means for God to deal with this evil is to attack those persons who represent it. So the death of the Egyptian children is not as problematic an issue for those who first wrote and read Exodus 12 as it may be for you and me." p. 45 One thing we need to do when reading the Bible is to understand it from the perspective of those who wrote it, and not impose our own worldviews on it. On the other hand, questioning it from our own worldview is also part of the process.

None of these arguments solve the problem for me completely, but it does help.