Welcome back to Reading with Ben! Today April 30, 2022, and Episode #06!
Exodus Chapters 11 & 12.
Chapter 11
Prepare for the Final Plague
- God lets Moses know that something big is coming. God instructs Moses that the Israelites should all ask their neighbors for silver and gold.
- Moses tells Pharaoh that God will claim every Egyptian firstborn (the prince, the slaves' first sons, the animals' firstborn—everyone) at midnight. That means they'll die.
- Yikes.
- And guess what? Pharaoh refuses to let the people go after God hardens his heart again.
Chapter 12
Everybody Out!
- This is it. The big one. God and the destroyer kill every firstborn Egyptian, from the prince right on down to the firstborn calves. Exodus tells us in 12:30 that, "There was not a house without someone dead." Grisly.
- The Egyptians, including Pharaoh, have had enough and tell the Israelites to get lost ASAP.
- The Israelites leave so quickly that their bread doesn't rise in the oven, but they do save enough time to "plunder" the Egyptians of all their gold and silver (12:36).
- Exodus tells us that 600,000 men, plus some unmentioned number of women and children, left Egypt at the end of 430 years in that land. Time out: 600,000?! The world population at the time was less than 50 million people, so we're talking at least 2% of the entire planet's population. That's a lot of people.
