The Terrible Tenth Plague

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Exodus 12:29-32

29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”

 
 

From the very beginning, Pharaoh’s actions have been all leading to this moment: the death he caused by ordering the Hebrew boys to be murdered in the Nile was always going to bring back death onto himself. This is the logic of sin—it ultimately and always leads to death.

To take a contemporary example, the very moment Adolf Hitler took power in Germany on January 30, 1933 was the moment that Germany’s defeat and destruction was assured. This is because evil always ends up leading to death and destruction on those who perpetuate it. Now, sometimes the time between the act and its consequences seem long, but always the consequences will come. In the specific case of the Nazis, it was 12 years between Hitler’s assumption of power and his suicide in a Berlin bunker.

The Lord, however, desires that no man should perish. (2 Peter 3:9) And so, with each of the nine previous plagues, the Lord has given Pharaoh the opportunity to repent. However, in the deeply mysterious interplay between the Lord’s foreknowledge and our freedom, the Lord has also known that Pharaoh would never repent and has therefor given Pharaoh over to his own rebellious and stubborn desires.

Leadership matters. The leader’s actions affect the lives of others. (This is why leadership is such a weighty responsibility.) Here the leadership of Pharaoh has brought destruction on his own people. (The same thing happened with Adolf Hitler, whose murderous evil brought back evil on the German people as a whole, particularly as the Red Army made its terrible advance into Berlin in 1945.)

The best way to understand the tenth plague is to see that human rebellion always leads to death. But, the biblical story doesn’t end with the Passover; in fact, the story of Israel continues and then culminates with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So, whenever you think of the death of the firstborn and the tenth plague, you should also think about the mystery that God gave up His only Son for a sinful world.

 

Description Of Future Passover Feasts

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Exodus 12:14-28

14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. 15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. 17 And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. 18 In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. 20 You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.”

21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.

28 Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

 
 

In 12:14, the Lord’s instructions change from telling the Israelites what to do on the actual first Passover night to telling them how to commemorate the Passover for all future generations. For the Lord, it is so important that Israel keeps the Passover memory alive that anyone who refuses to celebrate Passover will be cut off from Israel! (See vv. 15 and 19.)

Remember, the exodus is about the formation of God’s people, and central to their identity will be their acknowledgement that they were slaves in Egypt, but that the Lord brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. As the account plays out, we will see that this memory works in two ways:

  1. It means that Israel ought to be bold and grateful, because the Lord fights for them and has freed them for a purpose;

  2. But it also means that Israel ought to be humble and merciful, because they know what it’s like to be oppressed.

Here, as the tenth plague is about to strike, the experience of the previous nine plagues seems to have worked—the Lord’s demonstration of His power has changed Israel:

27And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. 28 Then the people of Israel went and did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. [12:27-28]

 

Time Begins With The Passover

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TONIGHT is our last All-Church Bible Study before Easter. 6:30-8:00 PM. Livestream available.

 
 

Exodus 12:1-13

12 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

7 “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

 
 

Since Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh in chapter 5, the account moves along and the plagues have fallen thick and fast. But without warning in chapter 12 the action is paused for as the Lord gives detailed instructions about the Passover. Why? Why are these details important?

Remember, the Lord’s objective is not merely to get His people out of Egypt, but also to get Egypt out of His people. That is, the purpose of their liberation is for the Lord to commission the Israelites to be His covenant people—His representatives to the nations—and the vehicle by which blessing would come to the entire world.

The first step is for Israel to learn to mark time by the Lord’s calendar and not their own. Note that the Lord tells Moses and Aaron that from then on, the Passover would mark the beginning of each new year.

As Christians, we believe that the exodus from Egypt was a sign of the greater exodus that Jesus would accomplish through His death and resurrection. Just as the lamb’s blood protects the people in Egypt, so the blood of the Lamb protects God’s people from the eternal consequences of sin.

I always imagine, therefore, that the Israelites marked their doorways with the sign of the cross.

P.S. Verse 12 makes explicit what has been implicit up to this point: this is a spiritual battle between the Lord and the so-called gods of Egypt. “I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord” [12:12].