Beginning of the signs to Egypt
(1) Then the Lord* said to Moses, “Pay close attention to this. I will make you seem like God** to Pharaoh, and your brother, Aaron, will be your prophet.
*Lord: Yahweh. The focus of Exodus is Yahweh. He is now poised to do a great thing for the children of Israel (Jacob). He promised the patriarchs he would. His goal is to show to Egypt and Israel that He is Yahweh and that there is no other god beside him.
**God: Elohim. Remember that Pharaoh is considered by the Egyptians to be a god; so, this struggle is between the god Pharaoh and the man representing the real God. We too are called to represent God before the world and those held in bondage to Satan.
(2) Tell Aaron everything I command you, and Aaron must command Pharaoh to let the people of Israel leave his country.
(3) But I will make Pharaoh’s heart stubborn so I can multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.
(4) Even then Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you. So I will bring down my fist on Egypt. Then I will rescue my forces—my people, the Israelites—from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment.
(5) When I raise my powerful hand and bring out the Israelites, the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.”
(6) So Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded them.
(7) Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron was eighty-three when they made their demands to Pharaoh.
(8) Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron,
(9) “Pharaoh will demand, ‘Show me a miracle.’ When he does this, say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down in front of Pharaoh, and it will become a serpent*.’”
*serpent: Hebrew tannin, which elsewhere refers to a sea monster. Greek version translates it “dragon.” Can also mean "crocodile". See the notes in Exodus 4:3. Here, most likely, a cobra because it was one of the symbols of pharaoh. Pharaoh was portrayed as a god, always the son of Amon-Ra, ruling not merely by divine right but by divine birth, as a deity tolerating the earth as his home. On his head was the falcon, symbol of Horus; from his forehead rose the serpent, symbol of wisdom and life, and communicating magic virtues to the crown.The Egyptians believed in the sacred snake as a symbol of protection, often on Pharaoh’s brow leading him to victory in battle. But to Israel the snake represented the traditional enemy of God (Genesis 3). Here it would be demonstrated that the one represented by the snake had been mastered by God. Satan is the real power behind the throne. And so Exodus is much about the battle between God and Satan.
(10) So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did what the Lord had commanded them. Aaron threw down his staff* before Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a serpent**!
staff*: It's Aaron's staff that's thrown down, not Moses'.
**serpent: Hebrew tannin, which elsewhere refers to a sea monster. Greek version translates it “dragon.” Can also mean "crocodile".
(11) Then Pharaoh called in his own wise men and sorcerers, and these Egyptian magicians did the same thing with their magic.
Two of these are named in 2 Timothy 3:8 - Jannes and Jambros.
(12) They threw down their staffs, which also became serpents! But then Aaron’s staff swallowed* up their staffs.
*swallowed: Hebrew bala, used only here and in Exodus 15:12 where the sea swallows up the Egyptian army. Satan can imitate some parts of God's work and lead people astray.
(13) Pharaoh’s heart, however, remained hard. He still refused to listen, just as the Lord had predicted.
Why doesn't Pharaoh just simply have Moses and Aaron executed? Or, why doesn't God simply
(14) Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is stubborn*, and he still refuses to let the people go.
*stubborn: Hebrew heavy.
(15) So go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes down to the river. Stand on the bank of the Nile and meet him there. Be sure to take along the staff that turned into a snake*.
*snake: nachash - Satan in Genesis 3:1.
(16) Then announce to him, ‘The Lord*, the God** of the Hebrews, has sent me to tell you, “Let my people go, so they can worship me in the wilderness.” Until now, you have refused to listen to him.
*Lord: Yahweh
**God: Elohim
(17) So this is what the Lord* says: “I will show you that I am the Lord*.” Look! I will strike the water of the Nile with this staff in my hand, and the river will turn to blood**.
*Lord: Yahweh
**blood: Pharaoh, in effect, turned the Nile into blood when he had the Hebrew baby boys tossed into the river. Later, the Nile will turned into blood when the sea swallows up the Egyptian army. God is here attacking the very "life blood" of Egypt - no Nile, no Egypt! The Nile was represented by the Egyptian god "Hapi".
(18) The fish in it will die, and the river will stink. The Egyptians will not be able to drink any water from the Nile.’”
(19) Then the Lord said to Moses: “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and raise your hand over the waters of Egypt—all its rivers, canals, ponds, and all the reservoirs. Turn all the water to blood. Everywhere in Egypt the water will turn to blood, even the water stored in wooden bowls and stone pots.’”
Did the water really turn to blood, or was it the result of some natural disaster, as mentioned in the History Channel's Exodus Decoded: theexodusdecoded.com/index1.jsp. How could an earthquake or any other natural phenomenon cause water in bowls pots to turn to blood or appear to be blood?
(20) So Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them. As Pharaoh and all of his officials watched, Aaron raised his staff and struck the water of the Nile*. Suddenly, the whole river turned to blood!
*Nile: The first plague was directed at the god of the Nile. Most Egyptians then and now lived along the 3,000 mile long river.
(21) The fish in the river died, and the water became so foul that the Egyptians couldn't drink it. There was blood everywhere throughout the land of Egypt.
(22) But again the magicians of Egypt used their magic, and they, too, turned water into blood. So Pharaoh’s heart remained hard. He refused to listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had predicted.
(23) Pharaoh returned to his palace and put the whole thing out of his mind.
(24) Then all the Egyptians dug along the riverbank to find drinking water, for they couldn't drink the water from the Nile.
(25) Seven days passed from the time the Lord struck the Nile.
There is an excellent 15 page article entitled "Against All the Gods of Egypt" by David Padfield at www.padfield.com. Since Mr. Padfield expressly prohibits the publishing of his article on any other web site, I cannot duplicate it here, but the address for the article, which is excellent is at www.padfield.com/acrobat/history/gods_of_egypt.pdf
Evidence for the Exodus - http://www.konig.org/wc52.htm
Many people do not believe the Exodus took place. They often claim that there is no historical evidence, other than that found in the Bible. But there is evidence of the Exodus as stated by Grant Jeffrey in his book "Unveiling Mysteries of the Bible". An important Egyptian historical manuscript was discovered in Egypt more than a century ago.
Remarkably, this ancient papyrus parallels the history of the Exodus account as found in the Scriptures. This manuscript recorded the writings of an ancient Egyptian named Ipuwer. The papyrus manuscript, now called the Ipuwer Papyrus, was discovered by someone named Anastasi in the area of Memphis, near the pyramids of Saqqara in Egypt.
The museum of Leiden in the Netherlands acquired the papyrus in 1828. It was translated and published in English for the first time in 1909 by Professor Alan H. Gardiner. Gardiner wrote that the manuscript was one that recorded a genuine historical catastrophe when the whole country of Egypt was in distress and violence. "It is no merely local disturbance that is here described, but a great and overwhelming national disaster."
Gardiner suggests that Ipuwer was an Egyptian sage who directed his writing to the king as a complaint that the national catastrophe was in part caused by the king’s failure to act and deal with the crisis.
A comparison of several key passages from the Biblical Book of Exodus with the ancient Egyptian papyrus reveals remarkable correspondences and parallels that point to a real historical catastrophe.
In light of the ample evidence accumulated from ancient Jewish and Greek historians, together with the Ipuwer Papyrus that parallels several of the 10 Biblical plagues, it is clear that there is compelling non-Biblical evidence to confirm the scriptural account about the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Further proof of the Exodus is the fact; the Jews have annually celebrated three great festivals in commemoration of their Exodus (Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles) for 3500 years. Therefore, logically, the public observance of the Exodus Passover festival can only be explained if the Jewish people actually participated in these historical events as recorded in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.
By George Konig
March 14, 2004
www.konig.org
The table below is from ohr.edu/yhiy/article.php/838 - The Ten Plagues - Live From Egypt by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
| IPUWER PAPYRUS - LEIDEN 344 | TORAH - EXODUS |
| 2:5-6 Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere. 2:10 The river is blood. 2:10 Men shrink from tasting - human beings, and thirst after water 3:10-13 That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? | 7:20 …all the waters of the river were turned to blood. 7:21 ...there was 7:24 And all the Egyptians dug around the river for water to drink; for they could not |
| 2:10 Forsooth, gates, columns and walls are consumed by fire. 10:3-6 Lower Egypt 6:3 Forsooth, grain has perished on every side. 5:12 Forsooth, that has perished which was yesterday seen. The land is left over to its | 9:23-24 ...and the fire ran along the ground... there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous. 9:25 ...and the hail smote every herb of the field, and broke 9:31-32 ...and the flax and the barley was smitten; for the barley was in season, and But the wheat and the rye were not smitten; for they were not grown up. 10:15 ...there remained no green things in the trees, or in the herbs of the fields, |
| 5:5 All animals, their hearts weep. Cattle moan... 9:2-3 Behold, cattle are left to | 9:3 ...the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field... and there shall be a very grievous sickness. 9:19 ...gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in 9:21 And he that did not fear the word of the Lord left his servants and cattle in the |
| 9:11 The land is without light | 10:22 And there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt. |
| 4:3 (5:6) Forsooth, the children of princes are dashed against the walls. 6:12 6:3 The prison is ruined. 2:13 He who places his brother in the ground is everywhere. 3:14 It is groaning throughout the land, mingled with lamentations | 12:29 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 to the firstborn of the captive that was in the prison. 12:30 ...there was not a house where there was not 12:30 ...there was a great cry in Egypt. |
| 7:1 Behold, the fire has mounted up on high. Its burning goes forth against the enemies of the land. | 13:21 ... by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. |
| 3:2 Gold and lapis lazuli, silver and malachite, carnelian and bronze... are fastened on the neck of female slaves. | 12:35-36 ...and they requested from the Egyptians, silver and gold articles and clothing. And God made the Egyptians favour them and they granted their request. [The Israelites] thus drained Egypt of its wealth. |
'Decoding' the Bible
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Gershom Gale, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 12, 2006
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There is a saying that when it comes to the Bible, "for those who believe, no explanation is necessary, while for those who don't believe, no explanation is possible."
But what of the many people who fall somewhere between these two certainties?
Such people owe it to themselves to see The Exodus Decoded, a 90-minute documentary by Canadians James Cameron (the director of Titanic, Aliens and The Terminator) and investigative journalist and producer Simcha Jacobovici. The film will be screened at 6 p.m. this evening as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.
The Exodus Decoded claims to present proof of the biblical account of Jacob's descent into Egypt, his son's rise to power there, his people's enslavement, and their eventual liberation under the leadership of Moses after a series of miracles.
It's all a matter of knowing where - or rather when - to look. Those scientists who believe the Exodus happened at all (and most don't) date it at between 1213 and 1279 BCE, and remain unable to explain the apparent absence of any supporting evidence.
But, say the filmmakers, start from a stele long suppressed by the Egyptian authorities - these same authorities did nothing to help and much to hinder Jacobovici's inquiries - that describes something very much like the Exodus from the Egyptian point of view but about 200 years earlier, and everything starts to fall into place.
For example, the Egyptian capital during that era was a wonderfully advanced, recently uncovered "island" city of temples named Avaris (with an intriguing resemblance to Plato's Atlantis, by the way) whose ruler in 1500 BCE was a pharaoh named Ahmose, or "Brother of Moses." Ahmose's first-born son, like the biblical pharaoh's son, died young, and the city contains a mass grave composed almost entirely of males - a detail that would appear to support the Torah's description of the 10th plague. Further, wonderfully preserved wall paintings depict the arrival some centuries earlier of a group of Semitic shepherds, and royal signet rings have been unearthed in Avaris bearing the name "Jacob" in ancient Hebrew.
As provocative as all this is - and these are only among the lesser of the film's purported revelations - for this viewer, the most touching (and somehow the most powerful) piece of "evidence" was a slave's plea, written in the same proto-Hebrew on the walls of an ancient turquoise mine: "God, save me."
So the argument is that the Jews' ancestors (then known as the Hyksos) indeed arrived in Egypt and rose to prominence before being enslaved there.
But what of the Exodus? What of the 10 Plagues, and the parting of the sea?
Well, it's again a question of knowing when to look - this time combined with a basic understanding of geology and chemistry and a willingness to concede that miracles, rather than being violations of nature, may be evidence of a God's manipulation of nature for divine purposes.
For this, say the filmmakers, was the time of the Santorini cataclysm, a massive volcanic eruption just north of Avaris in the Mediterranean, and Jacobovici makes a scientific argument for how the trigger of this eruption, the eruption itself and its aftermath could have caused all 10 biblical plagues, as well as the parting of the Sea of Reeds (now a dry freshwater lake), all within a six-month period.
From there, the documentary only becomes more astonishing. After constructing a compelling case for the true location of Mount Sinai, and still using archeological artifacts "hidden in plain view," Jacobovici makes what for many will be the fantastic claim that trade between Santorini (home of the Minoan civilization) and Avaris had been well established by 1500 BCE, and that at least some of those who left Egypt during the Exodus went "home" to the Greek island while their brethren wandered in the desert, taking with them the Egyptians' gold and the Danites' intimate knowledge of the Ark of the Covenant, the appearance of which, Jacobovici concludes, is depicted in a long-overlooked "Egyptian brooch."
Given the pedigree of its makers, it shouldn't be surprising that this $3.5 million documentary is extraordinarily well-done, with state-of-the-art graphics, high production values and excellent commentary from both scientific naysayers and open-minded religious experts.
As the saying goes, some people will remain unmoved no matter how challenging the evidence. But for many, this film will provide welcome assurance that a belief in the Bible need not come at the expense of scientific truth or common sense.
On-Line Sources:
- Against All the Gods of Egypt: www.padfield.com/acrobat/history/gods_of_egypt.pdf
- Back to the Bible 101: "Jesus Christ our Redeemer, our Passover Lamb": http://www.geocities.com/genebrooks/exodus.html
- BibleGateway - An Introduction to the Book of Exodus: www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=41m
- BibleGateway - Exodus 1: www.bible.org/netbible/exo1.htm
- Bible.org: "The Purpose of Prophecy": http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=127
- Chuck Missler - Exodus: www.blueletterbible.org/audio_video/missler_chuck/Exd/Exodus-Expositional_template.html
- Crosswalk: http://bible.crosswalk.com
- Commentary on Exodus (part 1): www.geocities.com/genesiscommentary/exodus1.html
- Decoding the Bible: www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885976924&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
- Evidence for the Exodus: http://www.konig.org/wc52.htm
- Exodus Audio Bible Study Lesson: http://www.soniclight.com/study_cd/audio_bible_study_lessons/exodus.htm
- Exodus Decoded: theexodusdecoded.com/index1.jsp
- Exodus - From Egypt to the Sanctuary: www.bibleexplained.com/moses/Exod/Exo.htm
- Gleanings in Exodus: www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Gleanings_Exodus/exodus.htm
- Hebrew for Christians: www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/scripture.html
- Jesus Plus Nothing: Exodus – Chapter One Israel’s Bondage & the workings of the invisible God: www.jesusplusnothing.com/studies/online/exodus1.htm
- Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary Exodus: www.ccel.org/h/henry/mhc2/MHC02000.HTM
- Net Bible: http://www.bible.org/netbible/index.htm
- Scripture Studies - Exodus 1:1-14 - The Children of Israel Face Affliction: www.scripturestudies.com/Vol9/I8/ot.html
- Scripture Studies - Exodus 1:15-22 - The Heroic Midwives: www.scripturestudies.com/Vol9/I9/ot.html
- Studies in the Life of Moses (Peninsula Bible Church): www.pbc.org/library/series/14732
- The Plagues of Egypt: www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/thera/plagues.html
- The Ten Plagues - Live From Egypt: ohr.edu/yhiy/article.php/838 - by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
- Wikipedia - Exodus: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus
Off-Line Sources:
- "Cruden's Complete Concordance" - Zondervan Publishing House
- "Breath of the Holies: Secrets of Moses' Tabernacle" - DVD by Perry Stone
- "In Search of the Mountain of God" by Robert Cornuke and David Halbrook - Broadman & Holman Publishers
- "Symbols of Judaism" by Marc-Alai Ouaknin - Barnes & Noble Books, publisher
- "The Exodus Revealed: Searching for the Red Sea Crossing" - (2001), DVD, Studio: Questar, ASIN: B00005AUE2, available from Amazon.com
- "The Defender's Study Bible" -World Bible Publishers
- "The Miracle of Passover" - DVD by Zola Levitt
- "The NIV Application Commentary - Exodus" – Peter Enns – Zondervan™
- "The Ten Commandments" (1956 film) from Paramount Pictures, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Charlton Heston as Moses
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