Sermon Tone Analysis

Commentary:

10:12- “Since in the ancient world locusts often serve as a metaphor for armies, it is possible that the bringing forth and vivid destruction of the locusts of the eighth sign foreshadows the destruction of the Egyptian hosts in the sea. . . .

The phrase ‘west wind’ actually interprets the Hebrew ‘wind of sea,’ with sea representing a westward orientation in the Hebrew worldview.

Although in Exodus 14 Yahweh will send a strong eastward wind all night to split the sea for his people to cross dry-shod (Exodus 14:21-22), yet those waters will return on the Egyptians so that ‘not one of them remained’ (Exodus 14:28), and the song of the sea will describe Yahweh as casting Egypt’s army into the ‘sea of end’ (Exodus 15:4).

Possibly, then, the manner by which Yahweh destroyed the locusts presages his victory over Egypt at the sea, his slaying of Rahab [the chaos sea dragon associated with the waters of Egypt].”

-Michael Morales, Exodus

10:13- “The Hebrew idioms were coined in the geography of Canaan, not of Egypt.

In Canaan, locusts and parching winds come from the deserts to the east.

In Egypt, such winds and blights would typically come from the Sudan, to the south.”

-Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

[I stumbled over this note in class, not explaining it very well.

I believe Morales and Alter cover it better than I did.

Ultimately the point is that behind the English terms of east, west, north, and south are Hebrew words that refer to the geography of the places that were east, west, north, and south of the land of Canaan.]

10:16- Pharaoh is carefully choosing his words so as not to admit full fault, yet we have to acknowledge that this is quite the concession.

It does appear that he is starting to crack under all the pressure.

10:17- “The mastery of dialogue so often manifested in biblical narrative is striking here.

Pharaoh’s confident, imperious, aristocratic speech has now broken down into contrite confession and short urgent pleas.

The dense layer of consuming locusts, blinding the eye of the land and penetrating every crevice, is given no name by Pharaoh except its palpable meaning for him and his people: ‘this death.’

That choice of name for it, of course, is an unwitting anticipation of the last of the plagues, which will soon come.”

-Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

10:19- “The literal meaning is ‘sea wind,’ but because of the geographical situation of ancient Israel, ‘sea’ (that is, the Mediterranean) is often used to designate the west.

Again, the wind reference reflects the geography of Canaan.”

-Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

If locusts are often a symbol of armies, consider the foreshadowing to have all the locusts drowned in the sea.

10:20- Judgment in the Bible rarely takes the form of God’s punishing punitively.

Rather, He usually allows humans simply to live out the natural results of the choices they have made.

It is His giving us what we want.

Yahweh was letting Pharoah get what he wanted.

The judgment of Pharaoh was necessary for his participation in the centuries-long persecution of Israel.

Deliverance would not have been complete without that.

10:21- More literally translated, “Let there be darkness.”

What an inversion on the created order of Genesis 1!

Now what’s really interesting is if you take the late date of the exodus, that means that the exodus occurs after the Amarna period.

You say, “Who cares about the Amarna period?”

The Amarna period was when Akhenaten was pharaoh.

And Akhenaten did away with a lot of the normal sun worship.

He worshiped not Re (the sun god); he worshiped the Aten, which was the disc of the sun.

He even changed his name to Akhenaten.

The last part of that name is Aten.

So he was a worshiper of the actual disc of the sun.

That was his main deity.

Now you have people say that he was a monotheist.

Well, yeah, he did have the names of other deities (basically wherever he could get away with it) erased from monuments and things like this, but he also thought that he himself was a deity, so he’s not… Is that really a monotheist?

People bicker about this all the time.

It’s not the same as the biblical conception for sure, but this was where he was at.

"Now when he dies, he’s anathematized by the Egyptians and they restore…This is one of the reasons why King Tut, even though he died as a boy, was such a big deal— because Tut authorized the restoration back to the old religion and he got rid of the Aten.

He got rid of Atenism, the religion of Akhenaten.

So by the time you hit the exodus later on (in the late date), you have Re back in place and as supreme.

And it’s really important to an Egyptian because Ma’at has been restored now.

We had this burp—this awful period of Akhenaten being on the throne, and it threw the whole land into chaos and all this stuff.

And he did.

He put the people in a lot of turmoil, because you don’t just change all the religion and just expect people to be happy with it.

There were lots of people who weren’t happy with it.

Everything that was bad that happened got blamed on this change.

So when he’s gone, Tut comes back and restores all the old ways and everything is wonderful, because now we have cosmic order restored and Re is in his rightful place.

Everything is the way it should be.

Until Yahweh shows up.

So if you’re a late-dater, it amps up the drama a little bit more, because now you have the God of the Hebrews showing up and basically giving a whole assortment of Egyptian deities (including Re) a beating with the plagues, and basically saying, “Guess what?

This land over here, this is mine.

In fact, I’m going to take my people out of Egypt and I’m going to take them across the desert.

And you know what?

We’re not afraid at all of Re.

We’re not afraid that he’s going to interfere with us.”

Re was just taught a lesson, along with the rest of the Egyptian pantheon.

So there’s Yahweh out there leading his people, going wherever he feels like, on the way to Sinai and then on the way to Canaan without a care in the world.

He’s not afraid of Re at all.

This is how it would have been perceived, “We thought that was the God’s-Land, because that’s where the sun rises.

That’s his turf, and shouldn’t…?” No, we’re not scared.

We’re not even giving him a second thought.

You can have that polemic if it’s before the Amarna period as well.

You don’t lose anything with the early date.

But if it is after the Amarna period, then we have something fairly significant here, where it makes the confrontation a little more dramatic and a little more traumatic for an Egyptian.

Because your country has just gone through this period that was just such a mess.

You thought everything was restored.

Everything is the way it ought to be.

And now we have this.

So they’re just thinking about these places in these sorts of ways." - Michael Heiser, Naked Bible Podcast Transcripts, https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/NB-277-Transcript.pdf

10:21- Seems to me that “a darkness that caused to grope,” is the most literal interpretation.

In other words, you had to feel your way through the dark.

10:22- Literally, darkness of darkness, one might even say “gloomy darkness.”

Some preachers have tried to take the English phrasing of “thick darkness” mixed with “even darkness which may be felt” and say that somehow this was a tangible darkness that weighed down on the people.

I believe the idea is more just that this was total pitch darkness with no hint of light.

10:23- “Abraham Ibn Ezra and Nahmanides both shrewdly infer that this total incapacity through darkness would logically have had to include the disabling of candlelight as well as sunlight—another manifestation of the miraculous character of the event.”

-Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

10:24- Back to Gen 50 again.

10:25- “Moses is at least as uncompromising as in his previous encounter with Pharaoh.

His immediate rejoinder to Pharaoh’s stipulation about the livestock is that the Egyptian monarch himself will provide the sacrifices.

This pugnacious response might nevertheless have allowed Pharaoh momentarily to infer that Moses was agreeing to the condition about leaving the livestock behind.

But in his next sentence, Moses vigorously disabuses Pharaoh of this illusion (‘not a hoof shall remain’).”

-Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

10:28-29- You can feel the tempers rising as the tension increases and threats are made.