I'm going to try to make posts like this each Sabbath, if I can, assuming there is enough interest and discussion. I want to make clear this is not supposed to be a sermon. My goal is to get people talking, and get some fresh perspectives, as I continue my own studies. TALK! A Parsha is a fixed portion of Torah. Tradition has many synogogues rotating these throughout the year, so that at the end of the cycle, the full Torah has been read and preached on. There are varying systems for this, but since these are written to an audience that largely does not do the weekly Parshas, I put no thought into which to use, opting to use the cycle I'm already on. This week's Parsha is from Exodus,10:1-13:16, and is a part of the story of the Exodus out of Mitzrayim (Egypt). We get the name from the opening passage, "Ad-nai said to Moshe 'GO to Pharoah..." I've been reading this since last night, and I don't know where to start. There's so much good stuff in here, so much to talk about. The beginning is always good, I suppose.... We start out between the plague of hail, and the locusts. Right off the bat we have something pretty interesting.. "Go to pharoah, for I have made him and his servants hardhearted, so that I can demonstrate these signs of mine among them, so that you can tell your son and grandson about what I did to Egypt and about my signs that I demonstrated among them, and so that you will all know that I am Ad-nai ("the L-rd")." At this point, Pharoah's free will has run it's course. No longer do we see Pharoah being hardhearted on his own. G-d made him hardhearted; turned him over to a reprobate mind; He AND his servants. Before I go skipping ahead, I do encourage everyone to read the full Parsha. After Moses and Aaron told Pharoah about the plague of locusts that will come next, we see that Pharoah (like all tyrannical rulers) is losing touch with his people and his advisors. Already their water has been turned to blood, not JUST in the river, but also the water in their cisterns and stone water jars. Frogs came and swarmed the entire country. The dust in the desert had been turned into lice. All the Egyptian's livestock have been killed, and now hail has come, hail which also made fire, so severe that it "struck every plant growing in the field and broke every tree." This last had even caused Pharoah to ADMIT his sin to Moses, ADMIT that Ad-nai "is in the right" causing these plagues, and yet STILL he made himself hardhearted against them as soon as it had stopped. Could this be the "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" Yeshua talked about? Certainly Pharoah did not get another chance to decide for himself to be hardhearted or compassionate. From here on out, G-d hardened his heart, for the reasons above. After all these things, Pharoah's servants cried out to him "How much longer must this fellow be a snare for us? Let the people go and worship Ad-nai their G-d! Don't you yet understand that Egypt is being destroyed?!" :P I'm about to fall asleep at my keyboard. More later. Shabbat Shalom everyone! :D

Post edited by: MattBob_SquarePants, at: 2007/01/27 00:07

Eh, so I said I wasn't gonna preach, and kinda did anyway.. Yeah, so anyone can read the Parsha for themselves.. let's get to the interesting conversation points. 1) Is it just me, or does it seem like Moses never actually told Pharoah that the Israelites weren't coming back? It looks like he never said they WERE either, but reading 10:10-11, it seems like up until that point, Pharoah thought they were coming back. Was this a lie by omission? And if so, being before the Torah was given, was it a sin? 2) How much time would you say passes between the plague of darkness and the death of the firstborn? We're used to hearing about how they left in a hurry, before the bread had time to rise, but in Chapter 12, it also looks like they had time to prepare "You are to keep it (sacrificial lamb) until the 14th day of the month..." And if the Parsha is in chronological order, and they waited, and already had the instruction not to have any hametz (leavened bread) or leavening during the Passover period, why didn't they just make matzah? Why do we say the bread didn't have time to rise?

[b]MattBob_SquarePants wrote:[/b] [quote]2) How much time would you say passes between the plague of darkness and the death of the firstborn? We're used to hearing about how they left in a hurry, before the bread had time to rise, but in Chapter 12, it also looks like they had time to prepare "You are to keep it (sacrificial lamb) until the 14th day of the month..."quote] elaborate on that a little... i dont understand how the time of plague/time of death relates to people leaving... didn't they leave after the plague had taken it's toll? i dunno... i definately have to read this chapter again

You're right, they left immediately after the Passover, the night that the firstborn of the Egyptians were slain. My question is how much time do you (or anyone) think passed between the plague of darkness and the plague of the death of the firstborn? I tried to read it a couple of different ways, I thought maybe we could separate the instructions G-d gave to Moses for the Exodus and the first passover from the instructions on how to celebrate the Passover in the future. But I can't find a clear dividing line. Like 12:11 up to, say, 15 seems to be giving a little advance warning of the plague about to come. But then when we look at 12:34, it looks like there WAS leavening in the dough, since it didn't have TIME to rise. With no leavening, it wouldn't rise no matter how long the dough sat. I just found this to be curious.