Pharaoh asked for it.

"I looked for about 30 minutes for an interesting Pharaoh-related quote to put here, but I came up empty handed. Big suprise." -Benjamin Folse


Reading through all these blogs and remembering the discussions from Tuesday I noticed that a good majority of people don't understand why the plagues were even necessary. I do agree that it would have been way easier if God had just softened Pharaoh's heart to begin with and liberated the Hebrews without causing suffering to an entire country, but Pharaoh had it coming. In Exodus 5 we find this dialogue between Moses and Pharaoh

 ^[1 After this presentation to Israel’s leaders, Moses and Aaron went and spoke to Pharaoh. They told him, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go so they may hold a festival in my honor in the wilderness.” ² “Is that so?” retorted Pharaoh. “And who is the Lord? Why should I listen to him and let Israel go? I don’t know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.”] (NLT)

First of all I'd like to say that a festival in the wilderness does not sound appealing at all, but I guess anything is preferable to slave labor. Now on a more serious note, I don't know how you guys interpret verse two, but that sounds like a challenge if I've ever heard one. The plagues were the perfect response to Pharaoh's challenge. They showed the power of God, wreaked havoc on the Egyptian forces, freed the Israelites and ultimately killed Pharaoh.  Because of Pharaoh's arrogance and pride many innocent people died. Hm, arrogance and pride? Sounds like someone we all know. Agamemnon was too arrogant and prideful to apologize to Achilles which resulted in tons of unnecessary bloodshed. The two have their differences, but I believe that Pharaoh and Agamemnon were very similar people.

So, what can we learn from this? Don't test God? Arrogance and pride are deadly? The wilderness is a bad place for a festival? All good answers. Tune in next week, we're probably going to be discussing incest. Yay.

Until next time,
Benjamin

P.S. I commented on Lucas' blog AND Frostedmidnight's blog. I know I'm an over-achiever.