God makes himself known.  

Yesterday's reading had Pharaoh commenting that he doesn't know this "The LORD." Today's reading has God making himself known to Pharaoh.

Summary and Analysis

God's instructions to Moses are recapped. Then Moses goes to Pharaoh and he and Aaron do the snake staff thing. Pharaoh's magicians copy the art, but Aaron's staff / snake eats the magicians'.

After this, there are nine signs that God terrorizes Egypt with. They are done with a variation on one pattern. The "plagues" are the Nile turning to blood, lots of frogs, lots of gnats, lots of flies, livestock dying, boils on skin, terribly damagin hail, lots of locusts, and three days of darkness.

More or less, for each plague, God tells Moses what to do to make it happen. Moses follows instructions and it happens that way, and it's a huge problem for Egypt. Sometimes, but not always, Pharaoh asks Moses to stop the plague, with Moses praying and stopping it. Every time, though Pharaoh's heart is hardened and he doesn't let the Israelites go.

By the end of it all, Pharaoh's advisers are begging him to let the Israelites leave for three days, but Pharaoh won't have it. Finally Moses snaps into anger mode and declares what God told him, every firstborn son of Egypt will die, with this resulting in Egypt knowing God and seeing the difference between Israel and Egypt.

Response

In our culture, it is a popular idea that we just need faith in God, that we just need to believe him and it is nobler to believe without seeing than seeing first. That idea does keep company with a couple New Testament quotes, but at the same time, I don't think God is holding back miracles from us do to a holy coyness.

In fact, I'd say Genesis and Exodus so far would agree with me on that count. In our culture knowing God is a very personal and subjective experience. In the world of Genesis and Exodus, it is no such thing.

God objectively exists in this book and not many people can doubt it. Abraham and his descendants talked to God all the time, with him talking right back. Not only that but their neighbors always commented on how blessed they are by God. The, in Exodus, these nine plagues happen for the purpose of demonstrating who God is, his power and might.

In the opinion of the Old Testament, it's not that you have to trust God despite the lack of signs; you have to trust him for all the amazing signs he's already given us.

I wonder what our faith would be like if we thought like that: That it's not that God is a silent narrator that we have to know exists theologically, but that He has spent a lot of time throughout history making himself known by his own acts apart from human will.

Genesis/Exodus reports that God's existence and activity in the world is well-documented and clear as day, not something to conjure up out of thin air. I hope God continues to make himself known to me through these kinds of experiences.