Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Tenth Plague – Death of the Firstborn

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Tenth Plague – Death of the Firstborn

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 034

Dictation Name: RR171S34

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jesus said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee that we know thee and thy love through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who gave his life that we might be redeemed from our sins and made a new creation. Make us zealous, oh Lord in bringing all things into captivity to Christ, and making a new creation out of every area of life and thought to the end that the kingdoms of this world might become thine. Might serve and praise thee as they ought. Strengthen us by thy word and by thy spirit for this our calling. In Christ’s name, amen.

It’s Exodus 12:29-30. Exodus 12:29-30, the Tenth Plague, our sixth and final study of the tenth plague, Death of the Firstborn. “And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.”

There are two things in this text which are very offensive to modern man. First, all the firstborn are killed and second, God did it. An era which commonly sees God only as love will not view the death of the firstborn with anything but disbelief that God could do it, or that it even occurred. For example, Royale Honeycutt wrote, and I quote, “One should face realistically the moral problem raised by the assertion that the Lord smote all the firstborn. The total witness of the biblical revelation concerning the nature and character of God suggests that, while God may utilize fatal epidemics or other catastrophes in nature, He hardly goes about slaying children. Thus, either the nature and character of God has changed, or man’s comprehension of that nature has enlarged with a fuller appropriation of God’s self-revelation.”

Well, of course, when he talks about God’s revelation of Himself, he is apparently getting a private revelation, because the Bible is God’s self-revelation, and the Bible tells us God smote the firstborn. Only by playing god over God and picking and choosing from the Bible to fashion our own idolatrous image of God can we escape the fact that this is God’s handiwork. To say that God may utilize fatal epidemics or other catastrophes in nature does not exonerate God. It is like absolving a man of killing because he hired a professional killer to do it. They can’t get away from the fact that God did it. The moral problem referred to by Honeycutt and by others is not in God nor in the Bible, but in themselves.

One of the things that has delighted me on my recent trips is to find that one of Otto’s sentences has become public property from coast to coast, and I heard it in Tampa as one person was saying to another, “Well, you know, God is no buttercup, as Otto Scott says,” and I think that sums it up and it’s a good answer to these liberals. There is more to this matter.

For example, it was held in the past that the Messiah was he who smote Egypt’s firstborn, and we read, and I quote, “The caldie{?} paraphrase on the passage has and the word of the Lord slew all the firstborn. Many orthodox writers hold this opinion. He was the same being who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and indeed, as the whole of those special proceedings were pursued by him for vindication of the divine character, and for advancing the scheme of grace there is no more incongruity with his personal attributes in inflicting the previous plagues than the terrible catastrophe which closed the series.” The words are very clear in this passage. God ordained the death of the firstborn. He accomplished it at midnight. The supernatural character of this judgment is emphasized by the fact that it occurred simultaneously in every house at the same time. It is an evasion to say that nature accomplishes God’s purposes under His control. It’s trying to remove this one step from God.

The death of the firstborn meant the firstborn of any age; grandfathers, fathers, sons. The firstborn in much of history has had governmental responsibilities in the family and represented the family’s future; someone who could assume major tasks before younger sons grew up. When Jacob cut off Reuben from headship, he still tells him what a firstborn means, even though Reuben forfeited that position. We read in Genesis 49:3, “Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power.”

The firstborn of animals were also killed. Since the Egyptians had been driven to buying horses and cattle from other countries to replace those that had been killed earlier, this was a further loss. All classes were affected. All classes, high and low, lost men and animals. Prisoners in the pit house, we are told, were no less stricken than Pharaoh, death came to every house.

This is the tenth and last judgment on Egypt, and also a type of the last judgment at the end of history. It is a merciless reckoning because a time of repentance is past. The terror, therefore, was nationwide, throughout all of Egypt. We are told that there was a great cry in Egypt, and many cultures, to this day, weeping, wailing, or keening{?} are commonplace at times of death. Many people regard it as a ritual, and it is in a sense, but it also has an emotional outlet and it is a way of expressing grief and trying to overcome, and in this case, it was clearly far more than ritual mourning. There was terror everywhere.

Both God’s judgments and His grace are irresistible, because of the routines of time and work men assume that all things continue as they always have. In 2 Peter 3:4, Peter says that this is the way judgment will come. Men will say, “It isn’t coming, people have been predicting trouble for a long time but all things continue as from the beginning.” So, the judgments of history come as a surprise to men who should have known their inevitability. This plague echoes the death of the Hebrew babies in the Nile. Men may forget, but God never forgets. His judgment overtakes Egypt and destroys it. But today, people won’t face up to this. There is scarcely a commentary written in this century that will do anything but try to skip over this passage or dismiss it, and every other passage that clearly points to the supernatural or to a God of justice, a God of wrath. They do want a God who is a buttercup. Men will say, as did Herbert C. Allman {?} and {?} Almary Flack that this judgment was something other than the plain words of scripture, and they wrote, and I quote, “It was undoubtedly a sudden visitation of an epidemic disease.” So if it happened, that’s what it was, they say. It would have been better if they had actually totally and unequocally denied the historicity of the event. It is easier for people to cope with open unbelief from the pulpit, but when men who are biblical scholars that one and the same time affirm something biblical to be historical, and claim to believe the Bible from cover to cover, and then deny its obvious supernatural meaning, they undermine men’s faith in the power of God in history. No honest reading of the text can give us the conclusion that this event was undoubtedly a sudden visitation of an epidemic disease. The world of biblical scholars has, for some generations, had a visitation of unbelief.

Another example of this was S.L. Brown, writing in the last century. One of the ostensibly great scholars in the Church of England in his day, belonging to Bishop Gore’s {?} school of true churchmen, high church Anglicans. According to Brown, and I quote, “The tenth plague, like the other nine, is connected with the natural conditions of the country. Epidemics being common in the spring, and often accompanied by a great loss of life. But in course of time, it was invested with a supernatural character, and a plague which was the immediate occasion of the exodus and perhaps particularly fatal to children became under the influence of the Israelitish custom of dedicating the firstborn, one which spared the firstborn of Egypt and destroyed all the first, spare the firstborn of Israel and destroyed the firstborn of Israel.” Now, this is the kind of nonsense that has prevailed for more than a century, so is it any wonder that the church has been made impotent? That you can have the majority of the people in a country professing adherence to a church, and the church incapable of having any effect on society.

Bishop Gore, very prominent in the last century, his name you’ll find in histories of England, believed strongly as did all those in his school of thought, that the Church of England could only be saved by their Anglo-Catholic views. They had a passionate devotion to high church views, but at the same time they had a low view of the Bible, of its authenticity, or historicity. So, what they were saying, is “We churchmen will save you if you follow the church,” so they were guilty of idolatry. They substituted themselves for Christ, their word for the word of God. I could go on and discuss Canon George Herferd, who held views similar to Brown’s. Somehow it was true, and you were supposed to believe in it, but it didn’t happen supernaturally, and it wasn’t God that did it.

Moreover, they invent all kinds of reasons why it had to be that spring was a time of ailment for children. Well, perhaps in Britain where Gore and Herford, and Brown and others wrote, it was true, although I don’t know. It does not follow that this was so unEgypt,{?} and it clearly is not what scripture declares. The issue, however, is not the death of the firstborn of Egypt as much as it is God Himself. These men, several generations of biblical scholars now, will not accept the God of scripture. God declares Himself to be a consuming fire. He declares Himself to be the judge of all the earth. He says at one point when He will not tolerate any deviation from faithfulness to Him. “I, the Lord, am a jealous God and my name is jealous.” He demands an exclusive devotion. But they have one passage alone from the Bible for a definition of God, “God is love.” True. But love is jealous. Love shows anger when that love is violated. They insist on remaking God in their own image, a scholarly God who abstracts Himself from the world and who contents Himself with grading our examination papers at the end of history. They wind up with a God, these churchmen do, who is a wimp, like themselves. We can be grateful that God is not such a one as these professors are.

We can rejoice that, given the evils of this world and its many Egypts over the centuries, that our God is a consuming fire. So, this passage has been a very good barometer with regard to the church. Over the generations and over the centuries, again and again the church has declined, and it is declined when it has created an idolatrous god, when it has looked as passages, this and several others throughout scriptures that are comparable, and has said, “It doesn’t mean what it says, of course we believe it, but you have to understand its meaning,” and they take away the element of judgment and reduce it to a coincidence. It wasn’t that God did it, it somehow just happened that way, and this is the way the Hebrews interpreted it. Whenever you’ve have that kind of interpretation of scripture, and you’ve had it from the early centuries in some areas of the church, all the way to the present, periodically you’ve had a decline in the power of the church. It has separated itself from God. It has denied His power, and His judgment. It has waded {?} a God, to use the title of a book from the 1920’s, “God Without Thunder,” and that’s what people want. So, they prefer instead a God who is only love, and what do they get, when they resort to such a view of God? They get the God who is a consuming fire. And judgment falls upon those ages which refuse to believe in the living God and create an idolatrous god, an image of themselves. And this is one reason why I’ve cited a number of times Otto’s remark, because I’m so glad it’s catching on, and people are using it whenever they confront anything that is idolatrous, and declare God is no buttercup. I think it’s a hopeful sign that, within the circle of the church, this remark is catching hold and it is being thrown in the teeth of all those who have an idolatrous image of a wimpy god, an image of themselves. Our God is no buttercup. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, we thank thee that thy word is truth, and thy judgment upon evil is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and thy judgments are true and righteous altogether. We rejoice, oh Lord, that there is deliverance. That the ungodly shall not prevail, and that the kingdoms of this world shall indeed become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. Make us joyful in these things, our Father, confident in thy government and in thy deliverance. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Audience] You’d think the diminishment of the wrath of God, in man’s eyes, would tend to make you think he wouldn’t have to stand in judgment for his actions.

[Rushdoony] Well, what it is leading to in our culture is that we are eliminating, and have for sometime in many schools, grading. It was on my trip to New York that on the place I sat next to a man who went into teaching and science, eighth grade, in a large school, and he left, for two reasons. One, he found that he was in a lower class neighborhood, half white, half black. That almost every child in his class was looking forward to one thing, going on welfare, that was the only ambition they had, and that the school did not want to flunk any of the students, whether they could read or write, or not. They were going to be passed, and the principal sat down with the teachers to insist on that. Now, this reflects a doctrine about things ultimate, and if people believe in a god who is only love, or who believe that life should be that way if they don’t believe in God, are going to create every area in their own image and ultimately, they’ll do it in the political sphere. Yes?

[Audience] These men that you speak of that interpret the tenth plague as being an accident situation, is this, has anybody said this within the last couple hundred years?

[Rushdoony] This began by the middle of the last century. Yes, it began in the 1800’s, it has, oh there were people who said so, but now it was the church scholars, whether they were Catholic, or Anglican, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or what have you, Methodists and so on. They began to say it.

[Audience] I wonder how it could escape their notice that microbes are not particularly selective about who they attack in the family, whether it’s firstborn or anybody else.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They deal with it in a general way. One man telephoned me recently, he took part in a conference where all the scholars were ostensibly evangelicals, and they insisted on holding to biblical principles as necessary for the church, but biblical principles for them meant some abstract ideas, platonic ideas out here, and Christ, they insisted, should be our model, and the two great models of a Christ life in this century were Mahatma Ghandi and Che Guevara. So, when this man, whom most of you know, called attention to the fact and said, “How do you relate the Old and New Testaments to our time, unto these principles you affirm?” the men immediately launched into an attack, and this man had not identified himself and was not known by them to be anything related to us. An attack on Chalcedon and me, by name, and went into a regular tantrum and tirade over it, which is very interesting and revealing, but these were all from denominations that were supposed to be ultra-Bible believing. Yes?

[Audience] Well, you often run into judgments by people against God. If God does what they don’t like, at the same time that they resent judgments of God upon people.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good point. They’re so free to judge God while refusing to believe in judgment, and you do see this too because they’ll often attack us as being unloving and go on spitting hate, while they accuse us of lacking love. It’s ironic. In fact, at one school I had a professor who got up and said that our perspective was without compassion. So I said, “Now, do you want to tell me how many things you have done in your lifetime that manifested compassion?” I said, “I’m ready to tell you about the compassion I’ve shown in a very practical way, in helping people.” And I said, “I don’t talk about it normally because the scripture says, ‘Let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing,’ but since you raised the issue, let’s see what compassion means in your life, and I’ll match mine.” He sat down and he apologized afterwards because the president of the college, he’d been so ugly about it, let him know that it would be better if he came up and apologized and let people know he had. Not that the president disagreed much with him. That was a public relations ploy.

[Audience] Sounds like the person who buys a box of chocolates, eats the soft ones, and offers the tough ones to his friends.

[Rushdoony] (laughs) Yes, are there any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our lord and our God, it is good for us to be here, to rejoice in thy word and commit ourselves unto thee. Thou hast redeemed us for thy purpose. Thou hast made us heir of all things, and summoned us to take possession. Give us joy in our calling, make us strong therein, and grant, oh Lord, that the number of thy saints increase, that throughout the world thy people confront the powers of darkness as more than conquerors. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.