 It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover,
who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote
the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the Lord spake
unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying....In the tenth day of
this month they shall take to them every man a lamb... a lamb for an house...And
they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on
the upper door post of the houses...For I will pass through the land of Egypt
this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man
and beast...And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where
ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over
you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the
land of Egypt.
(Exodus
12:1-13)
Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said
unto them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill
the passover.And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood
that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the
blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his
house until the morning. For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians;
and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the
LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer
the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you...And it came to pass,
that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from
the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the
captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.
(Exodus
12:21-29)
Thus, according to Moses' story, the lamb's blood on the houses showed God
which houses were Jewish so the Lord and his deadly plague could pass over
those houses. Before we get to the real point of this essay, we might as
well take the story of Moses and the Pharaoh to its happy conclusion:
The Hebrews fled, and Pharaoh's armies pursued them
to the shores of the Red Sea where God parted the waters to allow the Hebrews
to cross in safety. When the soldiers attempted to cross, the waters surged
back and the soldiers were drowned. The Hebrews wandered in exile for forty
years before they found the promised land of Canaan. This flight from Egypt,
of course, is referred to as the Exodus.
Why Did An All-Seeing God Need Help ?
The God of the Bible was all-mighty and all-seeing,
wasn't he? The Bible seems to say so:
And when Abram was ninety
years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the
Almighty God"
(Genesis
17:1).)...And God said unto him, I am God Almighty...."
(Genesis
35:11)....Thine, O LORD is the greatness, and the power...in thine hand
is power and might..."
(1
Chronicles 29:11-12)....For with God nothing shall be impossible.
(Luke
1:37).
The
eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good."
(Proverbs
15:3).)...For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from
my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes."
(Jeremiah
16:17)...Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see
him?"....Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.
(Jeremiah
23:24-25)...Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his
sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom
we have to do.
(Hebrew
4:13)
According to the Bible, it should not have been too hard for an
all-mighty, all-seeing God to figure out which houses had Mose's children.
The Egyptian first-born evidently could not have been hidden from him who
can see in all "secret places", so God would have been able to see into the
houses and known which houses were Jewish--without having to look for lamb's
blood. This is not the only thing about Moses' passover story which does
not make sense, as we shall see below.
Moses tells us that the Lord needed a blood sign
on each Jewish house, evidently so that he would know that he shouldn't kill
the first-born in that house. Well, wouldn't a god who needed a blood sign
to flag the Jewish houses also have to be shown who the oldest child was
in each Egyptian house, and whether that child was the first-born? How come
no sign was needed to give God this very important information?
Apologist argue that, of course, God didn't need any help figuring out which
were the Jewish homes and that he required the blood sign only because he
wanted his people to become more active in their relationship to the Lord.
The blood was just a token of their commitment, an act which would deepen
their faith in God. God had the same attitude toward Noah and the Ark; God
could have just waved his hand to kill everything on earth, save for Noah
and his family. But, they say, he made Noah go through all trouble of building
an ark, gathering aboard two of every kind of animal, and weathering a long
storm, only to deepen Noah's faith and dependence on the Lord. However, an
omnipotent God could easily have just waved his hand to instantly create
in any person he wished an infinite faith and dedication to him, so why didn't
he do that?
We believe that the odds are great that that Moses
was telling a story that was not exactly literally true. Sure, there may
have been lamb's blood, and it even may have been put on somebody's house
to ward away evil, but the notion that some all-knowing god needed to
see lamb's blood on the porch before it could know which children
to kill seems too far-fetched to believe. Of course, from the inerrantists'
point of view, it may have been "God's way" to inspire Moses to tell us a
story which is so improbable that it only would be believed by extreme,
twentieth-century, American fundamentalists. The alternative explanation
that the lambs' blood was just a method God used to increase the faith of
his people doesn't make sense either, since he could have accomplished the
same thing with a snap of his fingers, and the resulting faith of his people
would have been no less powerful.
|