GOD IS ABOVE THE "GODS"

By the middle of the second millennium BC, the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, the greatest economic and military power of the time. Thus, according to the records of the book of Exodus, God appeared to Moses and ordained him to attend before the Pharaoh to mediate the liberation of the people. What argument would be so compelling for the Egyptian leader to give up valuable slave labor?

Moses told Pharaoh what God had told him: "Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness" (Exodus5.1). Then he clarified that it was to allow the people to walk three days in the wilderness to offer a sacrifice to the LORD. It must have seemed to Pharaoh a mockery what Moses had told him, for he replied, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go "(Exodus 5.2).

We come to the heart of the matter: God's revelation to mankind. Until then people had no knowledge of God, the Creator of all things. There were many gods in the world, fruit of the imagination and human desire for him. Then the LORD used the deliverance of Israel from the Egyptian captivity to introduce themselves to men. He said: "…I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD…" (Exodus7.4,5)

God revealed himself through His judgments, the plagues, showing that the Egyptian gods were nothing. The Nile River, worshiped as the god Hapi had its waters turned to blood; The frogs, worshiped as the goddess Hect who, according to them, aided the parturients became repugnant due to their infestation over all Egypt. The bulls, worshiped as the gods Apis and Mnevis, were all killed. The sun, worshiped as the god Ra was outraged, for it did not shine for three days, due to dense darkness that came upon Egypt.

The Egyptians saw that their gods could do nothing before the LORD. But the hardest blow was the death of all the first-born Egyptians, including the eldest son of Pharaoh. This, considered divine, can not stop the power of the words uttered by Moses. Egypt was devastated by the hand of the LORD, and after this judgment Israel was set free. How to understand this divine action on Egypt? And what about the death of the firstborn? Had God been evil? This is a subject for a new post, which may be the next one.

Antônio Maia – M.Div.

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