The deliverance

The great judgments announced to Moses (Exodus 6:6) are accomplished in chapters 7 to 15 of Exodus: God strikes Egypt with ten plagues, institutes the Passover, brings his people out in the night and opens the sea before them. At the end, the question Pharaoh had thrown out, “Who is the Lord?”, has received its answer, and Israel sings it on the far shore.

The serpent and the hardening

Moses and Aaron came again before Pharaoh, and God had given them the sign to produce: Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh, and the staff became a serpent. Pharaoh called his wise men and his magicians, who did the same by their enchantments: each threw down his staff, and the staffs became serpents; “but Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs” Exodus 7:12 “Pharaoh’s heart hardened, and he listened neither to Moses nor to Aaron, as the Lord had announced” Exodus 7:13

The first sign already contains the outcome of the whole battle. The magicians produced the same wonder by their enchantments: the powers of Egypt know how to counterfeit the works of God, and they will counterfeit the blood and the frogs as well. But Aaron’s serpent devoured theirs: set face to face with the work of God, the counterfeit is destroyed, and the sign announces in small what will be accomplished in full, plague after plague, all the way to the sea. Pharaoh sees it and hardens himself; the trial of strength is open.

The ten plagues

God then struck Egypt with ten blows. The water of the Nile was changed into blood, and the fish died; frogs covered the land; these first two plagues the magicians reproduced again by their enchantments. At the third, the gnats drawn from the dust, their power stopped: they could not produce any, and they said to Pharaoh: “The finger of God is here” Exodus 8:15 Then came the swarms of beetles, from which God preserved the land of Goshen where his people dwelt, “so that you may know that I, the Lord, am present in the heart of the land” Exodus 8:18; the pestilence on the livestock of Egypt, without one beast of Israel perishing; the boils, which covered the magicians themselves so that they could not stand before Moses; the hail; the locusts, which devoured what the hail had left; and the darkness, three days in which the Egyptians could no longer see one another, “while the sons of Israel had light, each in his dwelling” Exodus 10:23

The plagues are a judgment, and the text names the accused: “I will execute justice on all the gods of Egypt” Exodus 12:12 Egypt worshipped the powers of nature: the nourishing Nile, the sun, the beasts of the herds counted among its gods. Each plague strikes the domain of one of them and shows it powerless: the deified river becomes blood, the sacred herds die of the pestilence, the worshipped sun disappears for three days behind the darkness. The plagues prove, before all Egypt, that its gods are nothing and that the Lord is in the midst of the land (Numbers 33:4).

As for Pharaoh’s heart, the account distinguishes two stages. During the first plagues, it is Pharaoh who hardens his own heart: each time the plague ceases and relief returns, he takes back his given word and refuses to let the people go (Exodus 8:11). From the sixth plague onwards, the text says that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 9:12), and this word has a precise meaning: God ceases to seek to bend that heart. The very order of the plagues shows that he had sought it: they go from the mildest to the most terrible, from the water changed into blood to the death of the firstborn, each leaving Pharaoh an appeal and a delay in which to yield. After so many repeated refusals, God leaves him to his choice, and the king’s obstinacy now serves the design of God, who unfolds his signs to the very end.

As the plagues went on, Pharaoh tried four times to bargain over the departure: sacrifice to your God, but within the land; go into the desert, but do not go too far; go, but the men only; go all of you, but leave your flocks. Moses refused every compromise, down to the last: “not a hoof shall be left behind” Exodus 10:26: the Lord claims his people whole, and a service that leaves nothing in pledge to Egypt. Pharaoh even knew confessions without a morrow: under the hail he admitted: “This time I have sinned; the Lord is just, and I and my people are guilty” Exodus 9:27, and as soon as relief returned, he took up his refusal again. Around him, Egypt was yielding: servants of Pharaoh sheltered their people and their beasts for fear of the word of the Lord, and his own court pressed him: let these people go; do you not yet see that Egypt is lost?

The Passover and the blood of the lamb

Before the last blow, God announced it through Moses: in the middle of the night, every firstborn in the land of Egypt would die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh seated on his throne to the firstborn of the servant girl; and among the sons of Israel, not even a dog would move its tongue, “so that you may know that the Lord separates Egypt from Israel” Exodus 11:7 And God instituted the Passover, refounding the calendar first: this month would be for Israel the beginning of months, the first of the year; the people’s time would henceforth be counted from its deliverance. On the tenth day of the month, each family took a lamb without blemish, a male, a year old; on the fourteenth day it was slain, and some of its blood was put on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses; its flesh was eaten roasted over the fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, in travelling dress: the tunic drawn up and belted for the march, sandals on the feet, staff in hand, in haste: “it is the Passover of the Lord” Exodus 12:11 The Hebrew word rendered “Passover”, pésah (פֶּסַח), comes from the verb that means “to pass over, to spare”: “I will see the blood, I will pass over you, and the deadly scourge shall not touch you” Exodus 12:13 That day became a memorial, a feast to be celebrated from generation to generation, and fathers would hand down its meaning to their children: it is the sacrifice of the Passover in honour of the Lord, who passed over the houses of Israel. One prescription governed even the body of the lamb: “you shall not break any of its bones” Exodus 12:46

Death does not distinguish the houses by the merit of their inhabitants: it stops at the blood of the lamb. Israel’s salvation hangs on a sacrifice, and that sacrifice reaches beyond this night. John sees the prescription of the lamb fulfilled in the body of Christ on the cross, none of whose bones was broken: “Not one of his bones shall be broken” John 19:36; and Paul names the reality the lamb prefigured: “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed” 1 Corinthians 5:7 The slain lamb whose blood protects from death is the figure of the Lamb of God, and the Passover of Egypt the figure of the Redemption.

The night of the departure

In the middle of the night, the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. Pharaoh rose in the night, he, his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry, “for there was not a house without one dead” Exodus 12:30 That very night, Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron: “Rise, leave my people, you and the sons of Israel; go, serve the Lord” Exodus 12:31, and he added a request: bless me. The Egyptians pressed the people to leave as fast as possible, for they said: we are all dead men. The bread of that night had been commanded by God from the institution of the Passover, before the event: the lamb would be eaten with unleavened bread (Exodus 12:8), and for seven days all leaven would disappear from the houses (Exodus 12:15). God, who was preparing that night of departure, had prescribed in advance the bread that would correspond to it, a bread kneaded without waiting for the slow rising of the dough. The event joined the commandment: driven out of Egypt without being able to delay, the people carried off their dough before it had risen, the kneading troughs bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders, and on the way they baked unleavened cakes from it. Moses would later say what this bread preserves: “the bread of affliction, for in haste you came out of the land of Egypt, so that you may remember all your life the day you came out of Egypt” Deuteronomy 16:3 God had also commanded the people, before the departure, to ask the Egyptians for objects of silver, objects of gold and clothing (Exodus 11:2), and he made them find favour in their eyes: they despoiled the Egyptians, as God had told Abraham, that they would come out with great possessions (Genesis 15:14). About six hundred thousand men on foot set out, not counting the children, and a great multitude of people of every sort went up with them, with large flocks. “That very day, at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, all the armies of the Lord went out of Egypt” Exodus 12:41 “It was a night of vigil for the Lord” Exodus 12:42: God kept watch that night to bring his people out, and in return, every year, in the night of the Passover, Israel would keep vigil in his honour, from generation to generation.

To this night God attached one more memorial, inscribed in the families themselves: “Consecrate to me every firstborn among the sons of Israel, of men as of beasts: it belongs to me” Exodus 13:2 And he fixed the answer every father would one day give his son asking about this rite: Pharaoh refused to let us go, and the Lord put to death all the firstborn of the land of Egypt; that is why the firstborn of the beasts are offered to the Lord, and the firstborn of the sons are redeemed by an offering. This law would cross the centuries to the Temple of Jerusalem: it is the law Mary and Joseph will fulfil in presenting Jesus to the Lord, “as it is written in the law of the Lord: Every firstborn male shall be consecrated to the Lord” Luke 2:23

The tyrant who asked “Who is the Lord?” dismisses the people in the middle of the night and asks for a blessing. And the date tells God’s faithfulness to the very day: the word given to Abraham centuries before is fulfilled “that very day”, with the great possessions promised.

The desert road and the pillar of fire

God did not lead the people by the road of the land of the Philistines, though it was the shortest, “lest at the sight of war the people should change their mind and return to Egypt” Exodus 13:17; he turned them by the desert road, towards the Red Sea. Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear: “God will visit you; then you shall carry my bones away from here” Genesis 50:25 And God made himself visible at the head of the people: a pillar stood before the camp, a mass of cloud by day, ablaze by night, going before Israel: “the Lord went before them, by day in a pillar of cloud to open the way for them, by night in a pillar of fire to give them light” Exodus 13:21, and it did not withdraw from before the people.

God measures the road to the strength of his people: slaves of yesterday could not sustain a war, and he spares them the trial that would drive them back to Egypt. The bones of Joseph tell that this departure had been awaited since the patriarchs. Joseph, dying, knew that Egypt would not be the people’s lasting home: God would visit them and bring them up to the land sworn to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob (Genesis 50:24); that is why he made them swear to carry away his bones. Centuries later, the oath is kept, and Joseph’s faith goes out of Egypt with the people. As for the pillar of cloud and fire, it is the visible presence of God walking before his own, by day and by night, to the very end of the march.

Pharaoh’s pursuit

God told Moses to have the people camp facing the sea, and he announced to him what would follow: Pharaoh would say that Israel had gone astray, that the desert had shut them in, he would set out in pursuit, and God would draw his glory from it: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them; I will win glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord” Exodus 14:4 It was indeed reported to the king of Egypt that the people had fled, and his heart changed, his and his servants’: “What have we done, letting Israel go and losing their service?” Exodus 14:5 Pharaoh harnessed his chariot, took six hundred chosen chariots and all the chariots of Egypt, and pursued the sons of Israel, overtaking them encamped by the sea. The people lifted up their eyes, saw the Egyptians marching behind them and were seized with great fear; they cried out to the Lord, and turned against Moses: were there not enough graves in Egypt, that you brought us out to die in the desert? Moses answered: “Do not be afraid. Stand firm, and see the salvation the Lord works for you today; these Egyptians you now see, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you have only to keep still” Exodus 14:13-14

Israel is caught between the army and the sea, with no human way out, and the account has just shown that this situation is the work of God: it is he who placed his people there. The people will have nothing to do but watch: the salvation will be entirely the work of the Lord, and the deliverance begun by his arm will be finished by his arm.

The crossing of the sea

God said to Moses: “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the sons of Israel to set out” Exodus 14:15 The word sounds like a reproach, and it is one, but it bears on a precise point. God had announced everything in advance: it was he who had made Israel camp in that place, he who had foretold Pharaoh’s pursuit, he who had promised to draw his glory from it (Exodus 14:4), and Moses had just proclaimed that salvation to the people. In the anguish of the moment, Moses was still imploring what was already granted. The reproach sets the given word before his eyes again: prayer has its place as long as God has not answered; once his word is received, it becomes obedience, and faith has only to walk.

The pillar of cloud left the head of the people and placed itself behind them, between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, dark for the ones, lighting the night for the others. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by an east wind that blew all night; the waters divided, “and the sons of Israel went forward on dry ground through the midst of the sea, the waters standing as a wall on their right and on their left” Exodus 14:22 The Egyptians went in after them; God made the wheels fall from their chariots, and they said: “Let us flee from Israel, for it is the Lord who fights for them against Egypt” Exodus 14:25 Moses stretched out his hand, the waters came back over the chariots, the horsemen and all the army of Pharaoh, and not one of them was left. “Israel saw the mighty hand of the Lord against Egypt; the people feared the Lord, and they put their faith in the Lord and in Moses, his servant” Exodus 14:31

Egypt itself pronounces the answer to its king’s question, “Who is the Lord?”: the Lord is he who fights for Israel. And the same water accomplishes two works: it saves the people it lets through and judges the army it covers. Paul reads in this crossing the figure of baptism: “our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” 1 Corinthians 10:1-2 Israel enters the water a people of slaves and comes out a free people; the baptized enters the water a slave of sin and comes out a child of God, the old servitude swallowed up behind him.

The song of victory

On the far shore, Moses and the sons of Israel sang to the Lord: “I sing to the Lord, for he has covered himself with glory: horse and rider he has cast into the sea” Exodus 15:1 The song confesses what the night has shown: “The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I praise him; the God of my father, and I exalt him” Exodus 15:2 And it carries Israel’s answer to the question Pharaoh had thrown out on the first day, “Who is the Lord?” (Exodus 5:2): “Who is like you among the gods, Lord? Who is like you, magnificent in holiness, fearful in deeds, working wonders?” Exodus 15:11 The song already looks beyond the sea: “You lead them and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance, in the place you have made your dwelling, Lord, in the sanctuary your hands have founded” Exodus 15:17 Miriam, the prophetess, sister of Aaron and of Moses, she who had watched over the child’s basket, took a tambourine; all the women followed her with tambourines and dances, and she answered the sons of Israel: sing to the Lord, for he has covered himself with glory.

The deliverance ends in praise, and the praise tells the goal of the march: God does not draw his people out of Egypt for wandering, he leads them towards his dwelling, to live with them. John hears this song even in glory, where the redeemed sing “the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb” Revelation 15:3: the song of the sea has become the song of the Redemption accomplished.