Pharaoh's admirable stand

 Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as we discover new insights and new perspectives from a very old book.

Before I begin - before I even read this chapter, I want to comment about this character known as God. In Genesis 1, we know that God was at the beginning and called things into existence. In Genesis 2, God was referred to as the LORD, but it took several chapters to conclude that the LORD (Jehovah in Young's Literal Translation) and other names such as God Most High and God Almighty are referring to the exact same being as the God mentioned in Genesis 1. 

We might think "the LORD God" and "God" are obviously the same, but that's only because the culture has assumed it all along. It's not so obvious when reading the Bible from the beginning with no predetermined conception of "God." Imagine a book about me, and the first chapter calls me "James Leroy Wilson" and the second chapter suddenly talks about "Jim Wilson," Why would the reader know it's the same person? 

Exodus 3:14 of the NRSV says: 

14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”[a] He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 

The footnote to "I am who I am" says "Or I am what I am or I will be what I will be,"

Exodus 3:15 says: 

5 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord,[b] the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever,

and this my title for all generations.

The footnote to "The LORD" says:

The word “Lord” when spelled with capital letters stands for the divine name, YHWH, which is here connected with the verb hayah, “to be.”

(YHWH is how "Jehovah" was derived and is used in Young's Literal Translation and other older translations).

"To be" is to exist. To say "I am" is to be aware of one's own existence.

Because Genesis 1 says God was at the beginning, when I see "The LORD" mentioned in the Bible, I think   "eternal beingness",  which always exists. That's in contrast to manifestations of energy (such as our own bodies, and everything we see) that exist in temporary forms.

Anyway, on to today's chapter.

EXODUS 8

I'm reading Young's Literal Translation (YLT) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

After the frogs and gnats, the YLT mentioned Egypt being plagued by beetles, whereas the NRSV says flies were the offending creatures.

In any case, it seems like plagues of either are plausible. In some rural places I've lived, one kind of insect seemed particularly bothersome, then the next year it was another species. I wouldn't be surprised if there are cycles to the population explosions of certain kinds of insects,

Let's say I was told one winter, "Do this thing I'm requesting, or box elder bugs will overrun your house in the Spring!" I refuse to do the requested thing, and the box elder bugs come. I would have assumed, quite reasonably, that they would have come anyway.

We saw in the previous chapter that Pharaoh isn't fooled by magic, and he doesn't seem to be fooled by nature's peculiarities. To him, the frogs, gnats, and flies would have come anyway. And if not, it's just Moses and Aaron doing magic.

One could call Pharaoh a skeptic, a man of science. If "harden the heart" means stubbornness, I can understand where he's coming from. He still sees no upside in letting his Hebrew slaves go a long way off for a religious ceremony. What if they don't come back?

Pharaoh shouldn't have been oppressing the Hebrews in the first place, and he is wrong in refusing to let them go, but in a way he's admirable for refusing to play the fool.

James Leroy Wilson writes Daily Miracles, The Daily Bible Chapter, JL Cells, and The MVP Chase. Thanks for your subscriptions and support!

(Photo credit: TyshkunVictor)