April 26, 2018: Day 12 – Exodus 12

And so the great plague has arrived.  Notice before the event takes place the Lord lets Moses know that this is going to be when Pharaoh lets you go, so we are going to have an event, a religious event, to celebrate this day.  He sets Moses up with a liturgy that the people of Israel are to follow for the rest of time to commemorate this event of the Passover.  Did you notice that there are many names for this festival?  Is it the Passover, or the festival of unleavened bread?  Regardless of what it is called it is one that is to be celebrated and remembered in a very specific way.

So, once the holiday is established and Moses is shown how it is to be historically celebrated, the plague strikes.  In this rendition of the passover we do not see an angel of death that passes over the people, but rather it is the Lord who strikes the firstborn of every Egyptian.  The only description that we find is seen in vs.23 where we see that the Lord, will prevent the “destroyer” from entering houses of the Israelities.  The one carrying out this task is called the “destroyer”.  There is no angel of death in Exodus as God’s plague kills the first-born of the Egyptians.  It is interesting to note that there is no differentiation between the man on the throne, Pharaoh, and the prisoner in his jail.  They all suffered the same fate.  

The escape of the Israelites is one where they travel nearly 130 miles when they are freed as they go from Rameses which is in Goshen to Succoth.  That is quite a journey when you have 600 men on foot to say nothing of the children and the women.  So you have thousands on this journey along with the livestock.  There is no mention of how the people of Israel felt about this, just that it happened.  That comes  in the following chapters.