Author: Sandra Hughes

For those of you who have read through the Bible more than once, this may be a great repetition for you. But I have to admit I have never read through the entire Scriptures. I am not a fan of reading. I need a purpose to get my nose into a book. And that purpose is never just satisfaction of reading. My Bible reading has been limited to reading passages on specific subjects about which I am trying to learn or confirm.

The first five books of the Bible, which the Jews refer to as the Torah, reveals the God of the universe to us. Those first five books when translated to English mean ‘teaching’ or ‘law’. The central message we find in just those first five books is that God is good and demands we be good. Those first five books tell us all what we need to know concerning the wisdom that is contained therein.

God’s wisdom that He shares with us far outweighs any wisdom taught in any University or any place of higher learning. It’s sad when we study the occupants of our world and learn that most people value knowledge and intelligence but not wisdom. The Bible is the greatest repository of goodness and wisdom in human history and the greatest book ever written, because it comes directly from God.

In the study of the book of Exodus we will find The Ten Commandments, which is the most important moral code in world history. Exodus is, in equal parts, narrative, laws and theology. Another unique element is the only national history ever written that begins with the creation of the world. It is the story of all mankind and not just the Jews.

Exodus opens with the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob. The total number of that family was seventy. The Israelites are referred to as the “sons of Israel”. We remember that Israel was the name given to Jacob after he wrestled with an angel. We are reminded that the name Israel means “wrestled with God”.

It’s amazing how the story of one of the smallest nations in the world holds such worldwide appeal. The Israelites gave to us the detail of two of the most important events in world history: the Israelites Exodus from Egyptian slavery and the revelation of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.

Even an atheist who believes neither event occurred would have to acknowledge that the Western world – and those parts of the non-western world influenced in the West – has been largely shaped by the belief that these events did occur.

It’s really interesting to note that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, two of the founders of the USA, neither of whom believed in a literal reading of Scripture, commissioned a design for the Great Seal of the United States of America which depicted the Israelites leaving Egypt and was surrounded by the words, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God”. They also believed the founding of our land was a second Exodus in as much as people were leaving Europe and establishing the United States.

Our country truly had great beginnings when you consider that America (outside of Israel) was the most Bible based country ever founded. At one time the Bible was the best-selling book in our country. When I tried to confirm that it still is, I queried google, asking “what was the number one best-selling book in the USA in 2020” and found it was “A promised Land” by Barack Obama. So I refined my search to how many homes own one or more Bibles. Nine out of ten homes have a Bible BUT they don’t read it!

I don’t think my answers surprised me. The results by a Christian organization were 16% of the Population never read the Bible, and only 14% read it every day. They reference or read portions of the Bible three to four times a week.

Another fact about the creation of our own Nation is: Truth and Liberty are the two pillars of the Bible, as seen especially in the first five books of the Bible, and Truth and Liberty are the two main pillars our Nation was founded on. Our founding fathers gave us a great heritage because they read and believed the Bible. We can see all around us the degeneration of our Nation because the majority of our leaders do not depend on God and so do not read or believe Scripture.

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Anyone, anywhere, or even everywhere, people who call themselves believers in God, know the story of the manna. It was a miracle way to feed the wandering Israelites.

I’ve always imagined or heard it was a bland tasting food that was not very interesting and was boring to eat.

But that is not what Scripture says. Scripture actually says, “It was like coriander seed, white, and it tasted like wafers in honey.”

God told them the protocol of the manna, which is about three point seventh of a quart, or one tenth of an ephah, or about thirty five liters.

The instructions were quote, “let one omer be kept throughout the ages, in order that they may see the bread that I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out from the land of Egypt.”

We all know they gathered manna for six days but had leftovers to eat on the seventh.

But just like today many of those believers didn’t believe. Remember, you didn’t work on the Sabbath. This was God’s orders.

The Sabbath was the Lord’s Day, set aside for only Him.

Moses of course, told them what God’s orders were, and he told them more than once! They should not and would not collect the manna on the seventh day.

But what did they do? Some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather their daily manna – but they found nothing.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Remember, it only took one month for the Israelites to disregard the fact that God had planned and accomplished their complete escape from the Egyptians.

You remember, God annihilated the entire Egyptian army for them.

Humans sure tend to have very short memories.

We certainly know that none of this took God by surprise. But for man’s sake God asked the question, “How long will you men refuse to obey My commandments”?

To this point God has given the Israelites very few commandments. They were to circumcise all males, remember and keep the Passover, and now to observe the Sabbath.

Yet, even after all God has done for them, they keep forgetting to do what God asks.

It’s interesting because, after all this time and all that God’s Word teaches us, man still does not do it God’s way. Humans tend to think they are smarter than God.

But, finally the Israelites learned their lesson on gathering food on the Sabbath. They then remained inactive on the Sabbath.

The Israelites ate manna for forty years
until they came to a settled land,
they ate the manna until they came
to the border of the land of Canaan.

Think about it, God had to be patient and teach the Israelites the lesson of His complete care of them for forty years until they came to the borders of Canaan.

But while they were still wandering they had their third crisis.

They had just left the wilderness of Sin, they encamped at Rephidem, where once again there was no water.

Those Israelites, with their short memory were mad again. They forgot that God gave them water for all their kin. And now they are as mad as a hen. Now they were mad at Moses again. He of course was the one to blame cause once again they forgot God’s name. But let’s not be proud, let us not be smug or we’ll bury ourselves in that hole we dug.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 44
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Exodus to this point has been all about God extricating the Israelites from under the cruel hand of Pharaoh.

God performed the greatest miracle when he parted the sea for the Israelites to walk between walls of water and then destroy the entire Egyptian army.

And only three days later when the Israelites hit a glitch in the road they forgot all about God’s miraculous works.

We would love to say how dumb they were and that we certainly would have never turned our backs on God but sad to say not many of us have a good enough memory to just believe God. We get led astray just as easily as the Israelites but our turning way doesn’t normally have critical physical life or death concerns.

While weeping and moaning they said, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread.

Wow!  Their memories are enhanced, and their exaggerations are enormous.

It may overwhelm us at times but liberty does come with a price. It’s the price of self–reliance, not the free handouts that eventually enslave us.

But because they encountered a few days of discomfort they stated, You have brought us out into the wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death.

But God has an answer.  He told Moses He would rain down bread to you from the sky and the people should go out each day and gather that day’s portion. We of course know that bread is Manna.

God explained to Moses that this test was to see whether they will follow my instructions or not.

There two different thoughts as to why God chose to gift them with their sustenance.

One thought is God was testing to see if the people’s faith will trust God to provide them with enough food for every day or God may be testing them to see if they will believe in Him when they are doing well.

It’s sad to say but some people only seem to need God when their life is on the downturn and not when they are doing well.

In this age of Grace our test is whether we believe our salvation is strictly tied to our faith in Christ’s ability to save us by His death on the cross.  But there are those people who only turn to God when they are down on their luck.

The instruction for the manna were they would collect it for only six days but when they gather the days portion on the sixth day they will find they actually got double portions for that day and they will not have to collect on the seventh day, the Sabbath.

And the Moses reminds the Israelites that even though they are directing their grumbling to Moses and Aaron they are actually grumbling against the Lord.

And now, once again, the Lord is taking responsibility for all the miracles that have happened to the Israelites.

And now, once again He has heard their grumbling and He is going to take care of the Israelites so they may know His is the Lord.

The Lord told them in the morning you will have your bread and in the evening you will eat flesh.

Here we thought they were just getting bread and  we probably would quote them and say, “man cannot live by bread alone, we need jelly for that bread”.

But God did not wait for then to say they could not just eat bread. He was now supplying them with meat.

Every evening quail would appear for their evening meal.

In the morning there was a fall of dew in the camp and when the dew lifted there was a substance, a fine and flaky substance, and this was the bread which the Lord had given.

They were commanded to gather as much of it as each required to eat.

When the Israelites gathered the manna they were not consistent. Some gathered a little, some gathered a lot.

But when it was measured the person who gathered much ended up with no excess and he who gathered a little ended up with no deficiency.

Moses told them they could not save any of it until morning.

I suppose some wanted to gather a weeks worth and store it up so they didn’t have to go get it each day.

And of course, even though they heard Moses instructions, they disobeyed them.

When it was left until morning it became infested with maggots and stank.

And Moses got angry with them.

They finally got the point, and only gathered enough that they would eat.

But on the sixth day they were told to gather a double portion so they would not work on the Sabbath.

And low and behold it did not turn rancid, it did not get maggots and it did not stink.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 43
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God parted the sea and allowed the Israelites passage on dry land to escape the Egyptian army. Only three days later, the Israelites couldn’t find water and began to doubt Moses and the Lord. They found a water source, but its waters were bitter and undrinkable. For this reason they called that place Marah. Immediately, the people began to grumble against Moses. They had just walked through walls of water, on dry land through the sea yet they doubted God. He did not provide good drinking water for them.  “Oh, woe is us!” But did they ask for God’s help? Oh no, they cried and whined and blamed Moses. Moses cried out to the Lord, and God told him to find a certain piece of wood and throw it into the water. He obeyed, and the waters of Marah became good. It’s easy for us to be critical of the Israeli’s choice to turn from God because they were disappointed.

But did you ever stop to consider how short our own attention span is. Sometimes it’s easy to complain about a situation when we’ve only had problems for three hours or less! Do we ever stop to think what could be written about us if we were in Scriptures? When we stop trusting in the goodness of God and see only our own limited resources, we can become bitter and even blame God.

We are no different than the Israelites except in our own minds.

What does God say? “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”.  It’s pompous when we think we are better than others.

After finding the wood that made the bitter water sweet they continued their journey.

They came to Elin, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and there they camped beside the water.

Next they came to the wilderness of sin. This is between Elin and Sinai. This was the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt.

This means that it was only a little over a month since they sang that song of gratitude at God’s triumph over the Egyptians. And what are they doing? Well, they are loud and vocal complaining that they would rather be back in Egypt.

I guess it was easy to forget what captivity and making bricks was really like!

And it wasn’t just a few people who complained, it was the entire group!

We all like to think if we saw a miracle it would bring us closer to God.

Remember, we are just as bad as the Jews and miracles don’t necessarily convert to faith in God.

Think about it:  We live with miracles everyday. The birth of a baby, love, music, a body that heals itself! What isn’t a miracle? And yet these don’t bring people closer to God. They just call it nature and expect it! Quoting the Israelites, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread.”​

It’s obvious by these statements that the human mind can make up its own stories.

This wasn’t the situation in which the Israelites were living.

The problem is their short memories and the fact that they did not have to provide for themselves in Egypt, no matter how meager the rations.

It seems most people prefer to be taken care of – even at the price of losing their freedom.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 42
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God’s victory over the Egyptians in the Red Sea provoked men and angels to sing a song of God’s victory in protecting His chosen people.

The verse that follows the song then talks about Moses’s sister Miriam.

It tells us Miriam took a timbrel in her hand.

But it does not just describe what she did, it describes who she was. This is the first time in Scripture that Miriam was described as a prophetess.

A prophet or a prophetess is actually a spokesperson for God.

All we knew about Miriam previously is the fact that she was the sister who watched over baby Moses when he was placed in a basket in the Nile River.

Actually, Miriam is the only woman who is described as a prophetess in the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible.

So this prophetess took that timbrel in hand to dance and then others went out to dance with her, with their timbrels.

Think about it, the Israelites were leaving Egypt to follow Moses and Aaron and they took their musical instruments, supposedly for such an occasion.

They were confident they would have a reason to celebrate victory – and they did!

If you wondered, as I did what a timbrel is, it is nothing more than a tambourine. I imagined this was what it was, but I had to check because I just could not imagine a woman older than Moses dancing with a tambourine.

But Scripture goes on to say Miriam chanted for them:

She chanted the words “Sing to the Lord, for He was triumphed gloriously”.

It was after this that Moses instructed the Israelites to leave that area. Out they went into the wilderness of Shur.

They traveled for three days and found no water.

That’s when the complaining began.

What short memories human beings have. They were given a gigantic miracle with their enemy destroyed and now they lost all faith in God’s desire to take care of them and make them His people.

This was only three days away from the most inspiring miracle they had ever seen in their lives and now they are complaining about an inconvenience.

In fact, on this short journey to Mt Sinai they complained four different times for four different situations.

Human nature is amazing, and sorry to say, we are not exempt.

They get a miracle and the next day they forget about what has been done and they cry concerning their next inconvenience.

They are, and we do, basically forget what God had done and say, “none of that is impressive, what are you going to do for me now.”

Their next stop was at Marah, where there was water, but they couldn’t drink it.

Marah is actually the word for bitter and that word described that oasis to a ’T’.

Because of all the complaining and frustration Moses cried out to the Lord and once again the Lord provided a miracle.

The Lord showed Moses a piece of wood and when Moses threw it into the water, the water became sweet.

This is miracle number two during the freeing of the Israelites from slavery.

It was at this site where Moses built a statute and a law.

It was there that God told the people, “If you will heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, Giving ear to His commandments, and keeping, all  His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the Lord are your healer.”

It is important to take note here. God did not say the Jews would have no diseases. He said He would not bring upon them any of the diseases He brought upon the Israelites.

And as much as people want to read what they would like into that verse, We cannot hold God to what he did not say.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 41
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If we could read and understand  the Hebrew language we would read and understand and probably really enjoy the first 19 verses in Chapter 15 of Genesis. These verses were written in beautiful Hebrew language.

In fact, this is one section from the Bible sung in Hebrew. This, according to verse one states, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord.”

In the Talmud, there is a passage that says, “The angels too, broke out in song when the Egyptians were drowning in the sea.

But then the Talmud says God rebuked them for singing songs while the Egyptians died.

Do we or should we rejoice in the destruction of our enemy? The Jews check the Talmud to know the answer to that question.

God does not rebuke Moses and the Israelites for singing, He only rebukes the angels for singing. God evidently does not hold people to the same high standards the angels are to possess.

But the Talmud is not direct revelation from God  as our Scriptures are.

The Talmud is a collection of writings that covers the full gamut of  Jewish law and tradition.  It was not compiled and edited until between the third and sixth centuries.

The main text of the Talmud is the Mishnah, a collection of terse teachings written in Hebrew, redacted by Rabbi Yehudah the Prince, in the years following the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Over the next several hundred years, the rabbis continued to teach and expound on these teachings. 

Many of those teachings were collected into the Jerusalem Talmud, which contained the teachings of the rabbis in the Land of Israel.

The Talmud was therefore, not direct revelation from God as the Holy Scriptures are. It is a compiled list of what is appropriate for the general population of the Jews.

The Jews believe there is the Torah, which is the first five books of the Old  Testament, and also the Oral Torah that helps us understand the Torah.

They believe that just before the giving of the Torah God tells Moses that He will give him “the stone tablets, the Torah and the commandments.”

This leads us to wonder, what is the difference between them?

On Mount Sinai, Moses received both the law of God and a precise set of instructions for the sacrificial system. These were to form the basis of the religious ceremonies of the Israelites.

Both sets of instructions were called the law, but they were different in that the law of Ten Commandments defined what sin was, whereas the ceremonial law contained the solution to the sin problem. God wrote the Ten Commandments, and Moses wrote the ceremonial law, or book of the law.

Exodus 31:18 says, “And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”

Then Exodus 32:16 says,“And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.”

Then in Deuteronomy 10:1-2 we read: When Moses returned from meeting with God on Sinai he found that the Israelites had made for themselves a golden calf to worship. Moses was so angry that he broke the tablets of stone. Then God said to him, “Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark.”

Moses commanded the Levites to take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee

The Ceremonial Law of types and ceremonies was written by Moses in the book of the law, and was placed beside the table of stone in the Ark.

These two sets of laws, the one moral and the other ceremonial, were thus entirely different and served different purposes.

And then there is The Oral Torah. It is like an owner’s manual and or a companion guide to the Torah.

With it we can understand what the Torah mean, and determine the details of the various commandments.

They are convinced that just before the giving of the Torah on Mt Sinai, God tells Moses that He will give him “the stone tablets and the Torah”.

By adding the word “commandments” in addition to the Torah, God implies that there are commandments not included in the Torah.

These are the oral commandments that were passed down from generation to generation, from Moses to Joshua and then down to the leaders and sages of each generation until eventually, after the destruction of the Second Temple, they were written down in what is known  as the Mishnah.

How much easier life is in this “age of Grace”. We have Paul’s writing telling us what God will do for us and what we are encouraged to do for Him.

For by Grace are we saved…
We don’t have to study all the books telling us what to read or how to live.

Praise to God for accepting our simple faith.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 40
⇛ return to Exodus

I was surprised when I saw in Scripture that God made the east winds to blow all night long to divide the river.

I had always been exposed to the movie version that had Moses hold up his arm to separate the waters.

When I learned it was the wind through the night it didn’t seem so much of a miracle from God as it would have been if it parted on Moses’s command.

We can’t blame the movie producer for the misrepresentation because verse 21 in chapter 14 of Genesis says, “Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and the Lord drove back the sea with a strong wind all that night, and turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split.”

God was capable of splitting the sea at any time in any way. He did not need winds to do it.

But God chose to send the strong winds to part the waters.

Like most of God’s miracles He chose to use the manipulation of nature to do this miracle.

It seems likely that God chose to manipulate nature to prove that He was in charge of nature. He was God.  Nature was not a God.

And we all know just how important Mother Nature is today. She actually gets more credit in the world than God does.

On the other hand by using nature God allowed and allowed skeptics to not believe God but to believe nature is in charge.

When we study God’s miracle it is easy to see that God is allowing free will.

God is allowing people to either believe Him or find reasons why they don’t want to believe Him.

By using nature to do His miracles He is allowing people to have free will, the freedom to accept or reject  the God of the universe.

It’s interesting to think of those who  would reject the God of creation when you consider this east wind dried the ground to walk on but also built a wall of water for them, both on their right and their left side’s.

And it worked, after the Israelites passed through the sea, the Egyptians confidently entered on that dry ground to follow the Israelites just as God had previously  predicted the event to Moses.

We are then told it was at the morning watch, which lasted from about 2:00am until to about 6:00 am.

Then we remember that pillar of fire and the cloud, which then threw the Egyptian army into a panic.

God locked the wheels of their chariots. This is when the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt”.

Obviously the Egyptians are beginning to believe the Israelites really did have a God who cared for and protected them.

And though they believed, they believed too late. Alas, it was too late they drowned with that knowledge.

Then once again the Lord told Moses, “Hold out your arm over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians, and upon their chariots and upon their horsemen.”

Moses did what the Lord instructed, and at daybreak the sea returned to its normal status.

At that time any Egyptians who thought they had a chance to escape the sea, were hurled into the sea by God.

All this is done in a three hour period and daylight breaks at the perfect time for the Israelites’ to see the Egyptians drown.

Pharaoh’s entire army were all swallowed up in the sea. Not one remained.

The Israelites were delivered from the Egyptians. They could be certain of that because Israel saw the dead Egyptians  on the shore of the sea.

And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptian army, the people feared the Lord. They now had complete faith in God and in His servant Moses.

Well at least in this moment they had complete faith.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 39
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EXODUS 37

The Israelites are on the run, the Egyptians are on their heal ready to capture and enslave them again. The Israelites have the mindset that it is better to be a slave than to fight for their freedom with the risk of being captured or killed.

It was then that Moses said to the people, “Have no fear. Stand by and witness the deliverance which the Lord will work for you today: for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.  The Lord will battle for you, and you hold your peace.”

Then Moses was instructed to hold up his rod and hold his arm over the sea so the waters would split and the Israelites would cross over on dry ground.

Then to add insult to injury to the Egyptians, God told Moses He, God was going “to stiffen” the hearts of the Egyptians so they would follow the Israelites into the river bed.

God was going to gain glory through Pharaoh and all his warriors, his chariots and his horsemen. This was to let the Egyptians know that I God am the Lord.

The angel of God had been going ahead of the Israelite army, but now moved and followed them instead.  The pillar of cloud also went behind them rather than in its front position.

But what or who is the Angel of the Lord? We learn from Scripture that “an Angel” would lead the Israelites into the Promised Land and would keep them safe throughout their travels.

That very same angel of the Lord is mentioned throughout Scripture and usually had the role of leading God’s chosen people.

In fact we remember that Jacob struggled with that very angel. That angel also spoke to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai.

“In Hebrew, the word for ‘angel’ is ‘malak’ or ‘malech,’ which is derived from the Hebrew, ‘l’k, meaning, ‘to deliver a message’.

The ‘angel’ or ‘messenger’ who appeared to Moses and Jacob was Jesus Christ. It was Christ who dealt directly with ancient Israel and Judah.  The Angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and the LORD saw him and God talked to him. That personage told Moses to remove his shoes because he was in a holy place. Joshua had a similar experience.

When created angels have come and talked to people in the Bible removing one’s shoes was never required. Also, we note that when God sent an angel to John and he fell down to worship the angel, theangel quickly told him not to do such things.

From this it follows that Moses and Joshua were in fact communicating with Jesus Christ, “the ‘Angel’ of the LORD”.   It was indeed Jesus Christ who is being identified in these passages as the “Angel” of the LORD, or the Angel of God the Father’s Presence, because Christ said later that those who have seen Him, have seen the Father.

When the LORD said “My Presence” would go with the people, this could imply that it was Jesus Christ’s “Presence” leading the people.   Isaiah’s reference to the “Presence of the Angel” saving the people would then apply to the “Presence” of God the Father, who would have been present through His “Messenger,” Jesus Christ.

And stated once again is the fact the angel of the Lord who had been going ahead of the Israelites now moved and followed behind, and it came between the army of the Egyptians and the army of Israel.

Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side, so neither went near the other all night long. Then the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind all that night. And that turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split.

That is not quite the way it is portrayed on the big screen in the movie theatre, but we have Scripture that tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

⇛ continue reading Exodus – Part 38
⇛ return to Exodus

The Jewish father not only had to redeem his first born child if it were a male child, but he also had to give to the Lord, the firstborn of cattle, or more clearly said, to the priesthood.

This included every animal except a donkey. The lowly donkey was the only Israelite animal that was non-kosher.

Kosher is Hebrew for “fit” or “appropriate” and describes the food that is suitable for a Jew to eat, and therefore was unfit for the sacrifice.

Donkey’s and Pigs are very non-Kosher. Bringing a donkey to sacrifice would be like bringing a pig for sacrifice.

Even though the donkey was unfit for the sacrifice don’t think that they got away without paying any dues.

Actually, if a male colt of a Donkey is the firstborn it must be redeemed with a sheep.

Now if that owner of the colt does not give the priest a sheep, it is ordered that the colt’s neck must be broken to kill that male baby donkey.

Then Scripture turns the subject back to God’s people, the Israelites.

Yes, God is all knowing and He is all wise. He is aware that when these people, who were so happy to be freed from their slavery, could very easily change their minds about freedom when they were faced with war.

Men who have been enslaved for generations are not usually willing to fight for a freedom they never knew.

For this reason God led the people roundabout into the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds.

Moses had taken with him the bones of Joseph. That had been Joseph’s instructions and Moses was assured God would take notice.

They set out from Succoth, and camped at Ethan that was at the edge of the wilderness.

And then we are told that God did not leave them to their own devices.

The Lord led them by way of a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. That way they could travel both in daylight and also at night.

With the Israelites in pursuit the Lord changed the direction of the Israelites so the Pharaoh will think they have lost their way.

He wants the Israelites to camp facing the sea. He then plans to stiffen Pharaoh’s heart so he, Pharaoh, and his army will pursue the Israelites.

God’s plan is to gain glory through Pharaoh and his host. When God inflicts just revenge on evildoers His name is glorified.

Or said another way, God gains glory by rewarding good and punishing evil. And then and only then will the Egyptians come to know that the Israelites God is the Lord.

God’s plan of turning the Israelites back gave the King of Egypt confidence to pursue the Israelites and put them back into slavery.

Pharaoh was so excited about the prospect that he hitched his own chariot rather than wait for anyone to do it for him.

At this time a chariot was regarded as the most advanced military weapon. This gave Pharaoh an extreme advantage over the Israelites, or so he thought.

He took six hundred of his picked chariots and also the rest of the chariots of Egypt, with officers in every one of them,

The Israelites caught sight of the Egyptians advancing upon them and they were greatly frightened. Their freight make them cry out to the Lord.

Think about the situation of the Israelites. They had been in captivity for 400 years, 200 of which they spent as subjective slaves.

Having been slaves for so long  they did not have the mentality that they were capable of freeing themselves.

This could be why God allowed, or planed, for them to be in the wilderness long enough for them all to die leaving a completely new generation to take over and be in charge.

Freedom requires responsibility and they had not learned or understood the responsibility to be free. Or even learned how to be responsible or self-reliant. They did not have the attitude to defend themselves.

Their fear caused them to question Moses intention for taking them out of Egypt.

They reminded Moses that they never really wanted to leave Egypt but instead were willing to be slaves all along. They would much rather do that than die in the wilderness.

We have heard similar complaints in our own country.

Patrick Henry buoyed the spirits during the American War of Independence when his hue and cry was, “Give me liberty or Give me death”. In contrast we have all heard the term “Better Red than dead”. Thankfully that was countered with “Better Dead than Red”.

The Israelites statement made it clear to Moses that they would put up with anything, including the death of their first born sons,in order to be taken care of.

We, in our country should understand this attitude because we have people who will allow their lives to be dictated by unethical politicians for the advantage of being taken care of from the cradle to the grave.

We know when Scripture talks about freedom it is to be free from the law that enslaves us.

But the apostle Paul does tell us, “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath mad us free, and be not entangle again with the yoke of bondage.”

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EXODUS 33

In Exodus chapter thirteen, verse 2, the final plague in Egypt was the death of the firstborn of all households. God revealed to Israel the one and only way they would be spared was to sacrifice an unblemished lamb and brush its blood on the lintel and doorposts of their homes.

Only then would the Angel of Death pass over their homes and spare their firstborn. After the Passover the Lord switched to new instructions concerning the first born child in each Jewish family.

These rules preceded the Levites, when a sub group within the Levites, carried out all the rituals involving animal sacrifice that were designated.  In other words, these menwere set aside for temple service. The Lord’s rule was  Sanctify unto me all the first-born.  To “sanctify” means to “consecrate,” to “set apart” from a common to a sacred use.

The foundation of this duty rested on the fact that the Israelites, having had their first-born preserved by a distinguishing act of grace, from the general destruction that overtook the families of the Egyptians, were bound in token of gratitude to consider them as the Lord’s peculiar property.

At that time in Jewish history a mother’s first child was supposed to be dedicated to the priests. They were consecrated to service for God.

Later in the Torah there was a law that designated that 31 days after the child is born the father could pay a priest five silver shekels to “redeem” or free the child from temple work.

A shekel is 14 grams of silver.

A U.S. silver dollar contains 9.83 grams of silver. And we know that the price of the silver in any coin today sells at a very inflated rate, but at this time in history, and even today, the price was never intended to be a large sum of money. It was not to be a burden for poor people to redeem their first born son.

It may seem extreme to have to give your first born to the temple.   But to sanctify unto God all the firstborn was a reasonable demand when you stop to realize that the existing firstborn of Israel, were spared by God when the Egyptian firstborn were destroyed. 

The firstborn should be regarded as God’s and set apart for His service. But the command is limited, when it says “whatsoever openeth the womb”.
To be clear, in that command we learn it says that every child which is the firstborn of his mother.

So if a man had many wives, either together or successively, his first child by every one of these was a firstborn, and, if a male, he was claimed by the Lord. But if a female came first, and afterward a male, that male was not devoted to God, because it was not the firstborn.

Thus the parents were not to look upon themselves as having an interest in their firstborn, if males, till they had first solemnly presented them to God, and received them back from him again, by special right and title, as being by singular favor preserved from the common destruction.

The firstborn of man, if males, were claimed for the sacred ministrations of the priestly office and the firstborn were to be redeemed at a certain rate, which was part of the priest’s maintenance. But after the Jewish commonwealth was formed, the Levites were chosen to officiate in their stead.

The extension of the demand to existing beasts was also reasonable, since they too had been spared. God’s further requirement, that henceforth all the future firstborn should also be His, was intended to perpetuate the memory of the recent deliverance, and to help to fix it in the mind of the nation.

The substitution of a redemption in the case of unclean beasts was necessitated by the circumstances of the case, since they could not be sacrificed; and the redemption of the firstborn sons naturally followed when the Levitical priesthood was established, and their services were no longer necessary.

Can you imagine giving away your firstborn son to be raised by a priest and committed to temple service for God. It wasn’t meant as a punishment, it was meant as a privilege. And it even carried down in our lifetimes when you think about the fact that in many Old Catholic Families it was a privilege to have your first born son become a priest.

First born sons seem to come equipped for special service or position in most families even today.

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