Pharoah’s Hard Heart

One message of the Ten Plagues is how willing the LORD is to offer repentance.  Pharoah got ten chances.  And at any time the LORD could have kept the plague going until the children of Israel were actually out of the country, instead of ending it and then seeing whether Pharoah would go back on his promises or not.

Sin is always trying to bargain.  Sin is always saying, ‘well, I promised, but at the time this bad thing was happening so I had no choice, it doesn’t really count’ even though the bad thing was because of the sin.  Sin is always saying, ‘well, that bad thing happened but its over now, its a price I can pay,’ not admitting to itself that the price is going to be demanded over and over and over again, worlds without end, the ceaseless fires of hell.

There’s a lot of what appears to be dishonesty here–Moses and Pharoah keep  negotiating the terms of ‘going out into the wilderness for a few days to serve God’, the Israelites are told to ‘borrow’ treasures from their neighbors.   There is some context or symbolism that I am missing.

I have a lot of trouble seeing any particular symbolic freight in a lot of the plagues–maybe Zen will tell us why there were 10–but the three days of darkness and the death of the firstborn both have a lot of meaning.

Fiercely secular scholars identity the LORD alternately as a storm god or a plague god and the ten plagues of Egypt are part of their narrative.  But what He really is is a God outside context disruptions.  Whether its storms or plagues or enemies from over the horizon appearing at the gate–or a shepherd boy become king, or a carpenter become KING–he is the god who disrupts our stagnant mortal likelihoods.  Kings shall see that which they had not considered.  Whether eucatastrophes or catastrophes.  Or, in the Second Coming, both.