Bible Summary:

God tells Moses he is sending his last punishment on Egypt and to tell the people of Israel to ask their Egyptian neighbors for gold and silver jewelry. Moses warns the king of Egypt that at midnight every first-born son in Egypt will die, from the heir to the throne down to the animals. But, the king still refuses to let the Israelites leave his country.

My Thoughts:

Negotiator: The idea that Moses existed and negotiated the release of the Israelites must be true. Why else would the Egyptians, who had kept the Hebrews as slaves for 430 years, allow them to leave, even if there had been a volcano-induced plague (see last bible study post)? If anything, the Egyptians would have forced the slaves to clean up all the dead animals and get back to work.

The plague must have impacted the Egyptians who lived along the Nile more than the Israelites who lived on the eastern part of the delta in Goshen. Moses could have taken this opportunity to free his people.

The story of Moses growing up as part of the royal family must be true as well, since he had the nerve to negotiate the release. As a slave, he would have never had the courage stand up to the royal family. Any way you look at it, the events in Egypt were truly miracles how they played out exactly as it needed to free the Israelites.

Stubborn King: Why in the world would the king sacrifice the first-born sons of Egypt, including his own, after Moses proved God could make it happen with all of the other plagues, darkness, and hail? By this time in Egypt’s history, the king had come from a long line of powerful Pharaohs who believed they were gods. So, either the king was arrogant enough to challenge the first-born warning or this is an embellished story of a plague that wiped out many people, especially the young, including the important first-born sons.

Okay, even after all my scientific theory about the events around the release of the Israelite, I still like the bible miracle story better.