Worship in Egypt (Exod 8:20-32)
Exod 8:20-32
An older friend of mine whose family immigrated to West Germany in the 1960s told me about the debates her parents had as they were trying to decide what to do. Communism was in full swing in Hungary then and while they were not actively harassed or persecuted, there was always the uncertainty that things may take a turn for the worse and that underlying fear was a constant companion. They thought of their children’s prospects, their education, the kind of life they would lead under a repressive regime, and the limits of their opportunities. Against this weighed the uncertainty that a future in a foreign country would bring. Will they, the parents, be able to cope, find a job, support a family? Once they made the move there would be no turning back as this kind of immigration was illegal from the Hungarian government’s perspective at the time and anyone returning home on a Hungarian passport would have been arrested. I suspect that the Israelites in Egypt may have wondered about their own future in similar ways. It was one thing to complain about hard labour, it was quite another to turn one’s life upside down and move to another country they have not known. And, as we shall see, Pharaoh is wanting to negotiate.
As we enter the second cluster of three plagues, the fourth plague (like the first in Exod 7:15-16) is preceded by the warning given to Pharaoh in the morning advising him of what is to come unless he lets Israel go to serve the Lord (Exod 8:20-21). This time, however, God reveals an additional aspect of His sovereignty, namely that the swarms of flies will not affect the Israelites (Exod 8:22-23). We should not read this as a permanent guarantee of immunity if we follow the Lord, nevertheless, God makes it emphatically clear that He looks after His people. In direct contrast to Pharaoh’s exploitation, God protects His own.
Pharaoh’s strategy is typical of oppressive powers. He offers a concession to pacify but at the same time to maintain his hold over Israel. Why not sacrifice to God in the land (Exod 8:25)? If Israel wants to serve YHWH, let them, but (by implication) they should remain and serve Pharaoh too. Moses’ words cleverly turn the reasoning around to point out to Pharaoh that such a solution will be unacceptable to the Egyptians (Exod 8:26-27).[1] The real reason why Moses cannot countenance such an outcome is, of course, that God wants to move Israel out of enslavement. Had Israel had a slave-born leader, I wonder if he had been tempted to compromise and accept the concession. Why risk everything by leaving? Will it be better someplace else? Moses, however, has lived through such a move when he had to flee from the previous Pharaoh’s household and was transplanted into a different culture in the desert (Exod 2:15-16). He probably understood in retrospect that he could not have saved his people when he was still the son of Pharaoh’s daughter because he was neither fully one thing nor fully the other. A clean break was necessary, even if it came with a high cost. So it will be in Israel’s case.
There is a principle here worth noting. When we live our lives in destructive patterns and the changes needed seem overwhelming, we sometimes hope to find a compromise that will allow us to benefit from God’s blessings without fully turning our lives over to Him. We want to worship God while enslaved to a way of life that does not honour God. Moses’ answer, as is Jesus’, is that this is impossible. We cannot serve two masters or fully worship God in ‘Egypt’.
[1] Moses’ reasoning is opaque to us though it clearly made sense to Pharaoh. We know that shepherds were loathed by the Egyptians (Gen 46:33-34), probably because they were seen as unclean, but it is hard to see how offering sacrifices to YHWH in the land would therefore be an abomination.
