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Thoughts from Exodus 14: Only to be silent
By daniel | August 5, 2007
Exodus 14 returns back to the narrative that involves Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Once Israel had departed, they seem to come to grips with their total loss of slaves and slave-labor. Seriously, we've got to imagine the scene.
You're a rich person. In Egypt, that pretty much meant you weren't a slave. You wake up. It's been a week or so since those Hebrew slaves left, and a week or so since Egypt has stopped being pelted by terrible curses. You walk out your front door and see all the fields and livestock that had been destroyed. Someone is going to have to clean all this up and replant crops. Someone is going to have to do some work around here. Where'd all those slaves go? What happened to them and their god? I wonder if that really was a god or not, now. Probably just some run of really bad and bizarre luck, right? Well that run of bad luck seems to have stopped now. I don't even know how to plant those crops, and those slaves were much better at keeping the livestock together than I would ever be. We were stupid to let those people go. If we've got any wits left, we'd better go catch those rebellious slaves before they get too far away, or before we'd have to do this crap work ourselves.
The Israelites, on the other hand, seem to have forgotten that God is with them. That sounds so terrible to say, like they're such bad people. Personally, maybe God hasn't completely smitten my enemies with wrath and vengeance, and also probably I haven't been forced into soul-sucking human slave traffic either. Still, somehow, I forget God is with me. Every day. I guess it's more common than I thought, and still probably as bad a tendency as I thought — just I've got fingers pointing back to me too.
Key points from this chapter:
v10: they saw the Egyptians, and feared greatly
v14: the Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent
v25: the Egyptians said, Let us flee from before Israel, for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians.
Topics: The Word |
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