Alrighty, I'm currently a ways into Leviticus, but I still have yet to blog on Exodus. I really enjoyed Exodus (well, the first part anyway. I mean who can really say that they ENJOY reading about how many cubits in length the tabernacle was?). Anyways, at my church we’re currently working on Exodus. Pastor Brian pointed out something that I found interesting: all of the plagues are plagues of nature, which makes sense. If God wants to show man that he is all-powerful, so that we "may know that there is no one like [him] in all the earth" (Ex 9:14), so that we "may know that the earth is the Lord's" (Ex 9:29), what better way than by controlling all the elements of the earth. The first two (bloody water and frogs) are plagues of the water. Four more are plagues of land (gnats, flies, diseased livestock, and boils). And the last four are of the heavens or sky (hail and fire, locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn). God could have affected the Egyptians as he did when he instructed the Israelites to march around the walls of Jericho to knock them down in the book of Joshua; this, an act not of nature, one that only God could accomplish. Or, as we’ve already read in Genesis, God confuses the language of men to make a point in the story of the tower of Babel, also an act that can’t be explained but by God’s power. What most intrigued me is how he decided to illustrate his power. Perhaps God’s greatest act is the creation of the heavens and the earth. And here he proves his control over that which he alone created.
In Ex8:16 God instructs Moses to “strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats,” not unlike when “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground” Gen2:7. A connection is made between God’s authority over both the earth and mankind. Maybe this is what should be most frightening in the story of the ten plagues. If he can control the earth in this manner, what can he do to mankind, weak and helpless as we are? He further expresses his power in Ex9:5 when “the Lord set[s] a time” for the fifth plague.
So, despite all this, what is with the losers who do not heed Moses’ warnings? So they don’t believe in God or whatever, that’s fine. But, by the sixth plague, when God threatens to “cause the heaviest hail to fall that has ever fallen in Egypt [so that] every human or animal that is in the open field and is not brought under shelter will die when the hail comes down upon them” (Ex9:18-19), you think they’d at least bring in their livestock just in case. But what do they do? They screw themselves over. “Those who did not regard the word of the Lord left their slaves and livestock in the open field” (Ex9:21).
Genesis 22: Where are the Lacuna?
I think the significance of this story is that Abraham so willingly obeys God to sacrifice his son Isaac. But I think that the story would be more powerful if we were able to see more of a reaction from both father and son. What sorrow Abraham must have felt to sacrifice his son. And how Isaac must have been torn. I can hardly fathom the faith and trust it would take to make such a sacrifice and to accept being such a sacrifice to God. I guess to fill in the lacuna, I'd like to see more of J's presence. Like in her story of Joseph and his brothers, J describes him as weeping on several different occasions. She's not afraid of a little emotion, one thing that I think this story could greatly benefit from.
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