Wow! Through Genesis already! Can't remember the last time I read through Genesis that fast; it was like reading a favorite book - very pleasant.
-Exodus 1:16 shows an early use of population control by Pharaoh, through the use of the medical profession, nonetheless!
-Exodus 2:2 tells how Moses' parents hid him away until he was three months old. Being the mother of an eighteen-month-old and a two-month-old, let me tell you how hard it is to keep an infant under wraps... especially as he starts to "talk" and gurgle and want to play - to say nothing of crying!!
-Exodus 3 interested me because in it, God clearly outlines to Moses everything that will happen along the way to freeing the Israelites. The plan was laid out from the beginning.
-Exodus 4:10 I find extremely amusing. Moses, not wanting to be God's voice to Pharaoh, plays dumb and inarticulate by saying, "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." Dunno. Sounds fairly eloquent to me.
-Exodus 4:24-26 seems stuck in here for some reason I cannot decern. First off, Moses must have been pushing God's buttons because "it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him [Moses], and sought to kill him." It is then that Moses' wife, Zipporah, does something very odd: she circumcises her son and tosses the foreskin at Moses' feet. What is even more bewildering is the fact that "he [the Lord] let him [Moses] go."
Moses was surely circumcised himself, but would he have known to circumcise his sons as part of God's covenant with the descendants of Abraham? He was raised in the house of Pharaoh and possibly never learned a whole lot about the traditions and customs of his own people.
How would Zipporah have known circumcision was one of the things God required of His people? Her father was a priest, though the Bible never says what kind of priest he was. I believe it is fairly safe to assume he was not an Israelite.
-Exodus 6:9 gives an example of just how disheartened the children of Israel were upon receiving Pharaoh's command of less straw. When Moses once again tried to cheer them up and paint a glowing future picture, the Israelites could not listen to his words for "anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage."
-Exodus 7 marks the beginning of the plagues God sent on Egypt to punish the Egyptians for not letting Israel go. An interesting note about the plagues is that each one, in some way, mocked or defamed one of the gods of Egypt.
Blood - god of the Nile (was a water bearer)
Frogs - goddess of fertility, water, renewal (has head of a frog)
Lice - god of the earth
Flies - god of creation, movement of the Sun, rebirth (has head of a fly)
Cattle plague - goddess of love and protection (depicted with the head of a cow)
Boils - goddess of medicine and peace
Hail - goddess of the sky
Locusts - god of storms and disorder (animal head)
Darkness - the sun god
First Born - pharaoh, ultimate power of Egypt
-Exodus 8:10 shows Pharaoh asking for one more night with the frogs, asking Moses to take them away on the morrow, not immediately. Dude must have loved him some frogs! :P
-Exodus 8:25-26 states Pharaoh was on the verge of letting them leave, until Moses pointed out they needed to take everyone and everything with them, so as not to "sacrifice the abomination fo the Egyptians to the Lord... before their eyes." It is interesting to note that Egyptians held every shepherd to be an abomination as well as cows and oxen, which were held as sacred and thus considered to be sacrilegious to kill.
-Exodus 11:2 has everyone "borrowing" from their neighbor. The original Hebrew loosely translates this passage to mean that everyone asked or demanded things from their neighbors. Controversy still reigns as to whether the previous version is true or whether this verse is a very tongue-in-check command to spoil the Egyptians. Nice back wages for 400 years of slavery!
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