Exodus The meeting with the king of Egypt
Moses Returns to Egypt
Then the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
The LORD will never take your excuses
Then I said, “Alas, Lord GOD!
Behold, I do not know how to speak,
Because I am a youth.”
7 But the LORD said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’
Because everywhere I send you, you shall go,
And all that I command you, you shall speak.
But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.”
In Egypt, the light/darkness theme is summed up in the mythology of the sun god Ra. As the chief god of Egypt, Ra’s power and thereby to the well-being of Egypt itself became linked with the symbolism of light and darkness (Allen, Genesis in Egypt, 51). Thus when the plague of darkness came over Egypt (Exod 10), it would have been interpreted as an attack on the Egyptian gods as well as on Egypt. God’s mastery of both light and darkness, followed quickly by His demonstration of sovereignty over death and life, was a decisive blow against Egyptian gods: The God of Israel was sovereign over light, darkness, life, and death. He is not simply linked to those realities in this world. Continued imagery of light and darkness in the story of the exodus (e.g., Exod 14:19–20) highlights this distinction between God and the Egyptian deities.