Sunday Sermonette: Days of Future Past

Exodus 12 is very long, so we'll just take part of it today. It's a mashup of describing what is about to happen and what the Hebrews should do in the next two weeks; and what they will be required to do every year in the future to commemorate it. Note that God gives time for a lengthy buildup to the 10th plague and the exodus, apparently so that future commemorations can also be of substantial duration.

 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ² “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. ³ Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb^[a] for his family, one for each household. ⁴ If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. ⁵ The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. ⁶ Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of 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. ⁸ That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. ⁹ Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. ¹⁰ Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. ¹¹ This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

These instructions are weirdly specific. It isn't clear whether everyone, including the children and women, needs to be holding a staff. Do they have to eat the eyeballs, the brains, the intestines? And why? Note also the obvious contrivance that  the implication later on is that they have to eat unleavened bread because they are forced to leave in haste  and don't have time to let the bread rise. But in fact they have two weeks warning. They have to go out of their way to make unleavened bread. (Probably the people who wrote this used a sourdough method. KJV has "leaven" rather than "yeast," which had not been isolated or identified in the 6th century BC, let alone the 20th.)

¹² “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord.

Sorry to keep harping on this but it is just so effing stupid. All of the animals are already dead. They were killed in the sixth plague. Then they were killed again in the hailstorm. Then their firstborn, who were already dead twice, were killed for the third time. Now they're going to be killed a fourth time. Anyhow verse 12 shows very clearly that this is about throwing shade on the gods of Egypt, not about getting the Hebrews out of captivity. That could have happened long ago but YHWH hardened Pharaoh's heart to make this show possible.

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.

Right. God wouldn't know that Hebrews were in the house if they didn't put lamb's blood on the door. Note that no such sign was  necessary for the prior plagues, but apparently the old guy is slipping.

¹⁴ “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. ¹⁵ For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do.
¹⁷ “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. ¹⁸ In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. ¹⁹ For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And anyone, whether foreigner or native-born, who eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel. ²⁰ Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”

This repeated emphasis on unleavened bread and the extreme importance given to it hard to understand as symbolism. Again, it obviously isn't really about haste since the requirement is to go without leavening for a week. (Again, the word "yeast" is presumably a mistranslation as the authors of this had no idea of the existence of yeast.  KJV more properly has "leaven".)

²¹ Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. ²² Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning. ²³ 

This hyssop is apparently not the modern culinary herb, but a wild plant of uncertain identity used in Hebrew rites of purification.

When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.
²⁴ “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. ²⁵ When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. ²⁶ And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ ²⁷ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. ²⁸ The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.

 I have already said enough, I think, about God's moral character. Murdering all the firstborn of Egypt is not really the right thing to do. Also, too, God really can't tell which houses the Hebrews live in without spotting the blood on the doorframe? If you take a moment to think about it, this whole thing is really weird.

1. Exodus 12:3 The Hebrew word can mean lamb or kid; also in verse 4.