YHVH's Motivation
In this weeks parashah. YHVH drowns a lot of Egyptians. In the previous week, he killed all of the "first-born" (bechorim) males, be they Egyptian or Hebrew, if they didn't spread lamb's blood on their doorposts. The other "plagues" that he sent were either annoyances or could have had the potential to be life threatening.
In short, over these past two portions, YHVH went from annoying to deadly to mass-executioner.
So what was His motivation?
When Moses happens upon the "Mountain of Elohim" and meets YHVH for the first time, YHVH chooses Moses (and Aaron) to be His messengers. He also chose them to lie on His behalf (which I wrote about in this blog).
Let's go through this for a moment.
3:7 - YHVH tells Moses that he has been hearing and seeing what has been going on with the Hebrews (for the past 210 years!) and decided that NOW was the time (instead of waiting the full 400 years that He told Abraham) to take them out.
3:18 - YHVH tells Moses to lie to Pharaoh, to tell him that he just wants to take the Hebrews on a 3-day holiday to worship YHVH. He continues by saying that it won't happen and He is going to start doing things to the Egyptians.
3:22 - YHVH admits that the Hebrew women will be looting Egypt, "borrowing" gold and silver and nice clothing, while there was no intent to return to Egypt, nor to return the items "borrowed".
At several points, YHVH "strengthens" and "hardens" the heart of Pharaoh and his servants. Whatever that means. It seems to mean that YHVH was manipulating events in order to put on a show.
And that was YHVH''s motivation.
Throughout the text, He tells how people are going to talk about this for generations, how HE will be at the foremost of their thoughts, and how everyone will know that He is YHVH.
And then the pinnacle of the story - the Jews are led out of Egypt and are told to gather at a specific spot and wait!
The people are getting anxious, and YHVH initiates another "strengthening the hearts" so that Pharaoh and his army will go after the Jews. As the army gets closer, the Jews are nervous, and YHVH puts up a supernatural barrier with an angel to stop the army from approaching further as they stand by the God of "safe passage", Baal-Zephon.
Verse 14:17, YHVH admits that he was going to strengthen the hearts so that He will be glorified through the humiliation of Pharaoh and the destruction of his entire army, through the destruction of all of his chariots and horsemen. "Egypt will know that I am YHVH, when I am glorified through Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen."
So, rather than letting the people leave, and then have the waters cover their path, forcing the Egyptians to turn back and give up, YHVH chose to leave the way open, so that the waters could cover them all, so that none of them remained, so that His name would be glorified.
"I have done these things because I am YHVH", "I have done these things so that they will know that I am YHVH", "I will do these things so that My name will be glorified through their deaths".
And after all of this, there is a long passage of a "Song of the Sea", where Moses leads the children of Israel into a song that praises YHVH again and again and again incessantly. And when he has finished, Miriam leads them into a song to glorify YHVH as well.
So it was all about being glorified, and being praised, and being feared, and being worshiped.
And as soon as He gets the praise and glory that He was desperate to get, the Hebrews begin to whine "What are we going to drink? This water sucks! Where's the food? Why'd we come here anyhow?"
YHVH learned that being glorified isn't all that He thought that it was going to be!
No comments:
Post a Comment