THERE is little doubt that you have often read the account God gives us of His great plagues on the land of Egypt. Perhaps you have noticed that the first nine of them were more or less connected with things of nature. The tenth plague differs from the others. Jehovah acts Himself, going Himself throughout the land.
“About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt: and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.” At the beginning of God’s messages to Pharaoh He had said, “Israel is My son, even My firstborn; and I say unto thee, Let My son go, that he may serve Me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.” And now, after the lapse of perhaps a year, the time had come for the execution of the threat.
How vain it is to suppose that God’s judgment will not come, simply because in His longsuffering He lingers and waits before He smites. With Him a thousand years is as one lay.
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and at midnight, according to Jehovah’s word, the destroyer passed through the whole of Egypt. He entered the palaces and the temples—those wonderful works of man, like which there are none in the wide world—and he entered the prisons where the captives were bound. Not one dwelling was passed by.
In those days they had their feasts and parties, and dressed beautifully and spoke politely—even as in England at this present time. There is no building in England to be compared with the palaces of Egypt for grandeur, and we may, therefore, picture the scene to our minds just as if it took place among people not al together unlike ourselves.
Wherever the destroyer came he found the first born, whom neither tears nor prayers could save from the stroke. Suddenly on that awful night in every household in Egypt there was one dead. The Egyptians used to mourn and cry loudly when anyone died; they left their houses and ran into the streets, making bitter lamentation. This is still the case—friends and neighbors and weepers assembling to lament, in loud voices, with the bereaved. What must the “great cry throughout the land of Egypt” have been on that awful midnight! How the little children of Israel must have trembled when the fearful sounds rolled all around them!
It is very terrible to speak of such things. We feel as we do so how hateful to God rebellion against Him and sin must be, and the judgment on Egypt seems to speak to us of judgment yet to come on those, who in our day, rebel against God and continue in sin in spite of all His messages to them to repent.
In speaking about the tenth plague, we can hardly separate in our minds the judgment of God in bringing death into the houses of the Egyptians and His mercy in delivering the houses of the Israelites. Where death was not seen outside the house, death came inside; where the blood was sprinkled on lintel and doorposts the house was free? Do you understand this? The land of Egypt was under God’s judgment, and God’s only way of saving His people from the judgment was by the blood of the lamb—the death of a sacrifice in their stead. And this speaks to us of Jesus and His blood. The world is under the judgment of God because of its rebellion and its sin, and now God’s only way of saving us from “the wrath to come” is by the death of His obedient Son, who bore the judgment in the sinner’s stead. There is no possible way of escape for anyone of us save by the death of Jesus.
Every house was to take a lamb—the lamb was to be without blemish—and the people of the house were to keep the lamb four days before they killed it. At the end of that time, following the word of Jehovah, they would be ready to go, every piece of furniture and all the goods they purposed to carry away packed up, all the cattle and the flocks gathered together, and, above all, every child round about the parents in their homes. Their garments were not to be lying about the rooms, their clothes were to be fastened on ready for their journey, their shoes were on their feet, and even their staves were to be in their hands. If you look carefully at our picture, you will see the lamb upon the table, the lamp burning, and you will notice the basket, with the household goods in it, ready packed for the journey.
While the sun was setting in the cloudless sky, before the rich red and gold were seen above the purple horizon at sundown, “between the evenings,” all the congregation of Israel were slaying their lambs, and then the head of the house put the blood of the lamb in a basin, and taking a bunch of the little herb called hyssop, he sprinkled the sides and the heads of the doors of his house, as Jehovah had commanded. This done, every one of them, from the eldest to the youngest, went within their houses, and they shut their doors and waited in quietness as Lord had said.
This picture gives us a view of a somewhat large Egyptian house, one belonging to a person of means; those of the poor were chiefly built of mud, were only one story high, and had merely a small door facing the street; the court belonging to the house being at the rear of it.
The family is standing around the table whereon the roasted lamb is placed. The lamb was not to have one of its bones broken, it was to be roasted whole, teaching us again of the holy Lamb of God, who was the perfect sacrifice for sinners, and who bore the fire, as it were, of God’s judgment in our stead.
The people ate with the lamb bitter herbs, which probably were endive, nettles, or wild lettuce, and bread made of wheat, spelled, barley, oats or rye, but unleavened. These things again showing us, first, the spirit in which the sinner should think of Jesus who died for him, even the spirit of grief and bitterness, because of all that the suffering Lamb of God endured for him; and second, that those who by faith have made Jesus theirs, whose souls live by His dying for them, are a holy people, separate from the world of sin and disobedience, for leaven always stands for sin in the Bible.
When the head of a family had sprinkled the blood upon the outside of his door, there was nothing to be seen by those who stood around the table eating of the lamb. They had obeyed God, they had sheltered themselves under the blood, and that was all that they could do. Suppose the children naughty or good, still it made no difference, the blood was the shelter, and the only shelter of all alike. And whoever puts his trust in the blood of God’s Lamb is quite safe. The blood of His Son is God’s token that there is no judgment for us.
But did no eye see the blood? Yes, indeed, Jehovah looked for it, for He had said, “And when I see the blood I will pass over you.” He looked upon it, and the blood of the little kid or lamb slain in Egypt was to God a sign of that blood which Jesus was to shed, and which He has shed upon the cross, and trusting in which every sinner is safe; for the word is true today as it was that midnight, many hundreds of years gone by, “When I see the blood I will pass over you.”
H. F. W.