BibleProject - The Plague of the Firstborn – Firstborn E5

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

How does the plague of the firstborn from Exodus fit into the biblical theme of the firstborn? And what does it mean when Yahweh calls Israel his firstborn son? In this episode, Tim and Jon explore the theme of the firstborn in the Exodus scroll.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (00:00-19:23)Part two (19:23-37:19)Part three (37:19-52:07)Part four (52:07-1:11:44)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience the literary themes and movements we’re tracing on the podcast in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS"Mitigating the Distance" by Xihcsr"Enclosed by You" by Liz Vice"Fallen Angel" by Tyler BaileyShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder. Lead Editor Dan Gummel. Edited by Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

We're talking through the theme of the first board. It's a theme about who gets to be in charge. And in the storyline of the Bible, God creates a reputation for selecting the least likely candidates. We saw this theme begin with God choosing humanity to be his image to rule the world. The choice that some angels aren't that thrilled about.

And this theme continues with God showing his favor to Abel, the second born shepherd boy, over the sacrifice of Cain, the first born city boy. This theme continues and is very poignant in the moment that God chooses Jacob, the second born, even though he's a devious snake of a man. As we begin the scroll of Exodus, we see this theme come to life in a new way. The family of Abraham has now grown to become an entire ethnic group and their slaves to the real power in charge, Egypt. Yet it's this small, inconsequential, oppressed people who God calls his firstborn son.

God is so closely identified with them that Yahweh's own power and name authority is invested in these people. Firstborn becomes essentially a way of saying, this is my image, this is my representative. To call someone the firstborn is not necessarily a statement of their actual origins. This family would never be the firstborn in any of the generations, but what's being referred to by calling them a firstborn is a status, a role. Israel's designation as God's firstborn is a title that gets picked up in the New Testament and applied to Jesus.

Jesus comes as Father God's representative and royal heir, but his whole kingdom is upside down, arriving first for the last people we would expect to be chosen by God. The sick, the poor, the beggars, the paralyzed, people with disabilities, women, these are people that Jesus intentionally included into this kingdom of God communities and said to them, you are the blessed ones. The kingdom of God begins now with you.

That's the fruition in Jesus' story of this theme of the inversion of the firstborn, which is really about God's surprising way of challenging our conceptions of who should be in charge and who should get the good life. Today Tim McEnie talk about enslaved Israel as God's firstborn son, and we talk about the relational dynamic between Moses and his brother Aaron. I'm John Collins, you're listening to Bible Project Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. K-10. Hey John. Hello. We're talking about the firstborn, the theme of the firstborn.

Yes, yes we are. And we've covered a lot of ground, and I want to hear maybe your summarization of where we've been. Is that okay? Yep, yeah, totally. Well, we're tracing a theme throughout the scriptures about this desire. Fundamentally, it comes out of the core plotline of the biblical story, which is God's desire to share existence and responsibility and authority. Enjoy with a partner. That's really it.

God's desire to share responsibility power. Existence. To share his own infinite existence with the created finite being that he enlists as a partner to share in the joy of responsibility over good things. That's how this story begins. Yeah. And that's how this theme begins. And that's how this theme begins in as much as God, in all the diversity of creation, there

is a crown jewel in the first narrative, which is the Seven Day Creation narrative, where God takes the late comer, the last being to be created, which is human, the image of God, and God exalts and appoints that one to a place of responsibility and rule over everything that's come before. And that's how God rolls. He loves to elevate distorted desire of said creatures that he wants to share with, and that's what the Eden narrative gets into. And there we find a snake-flash spiritual being that doesn't apparently want to subvert the rule and honor given to the humans in subway. And so we explored that at length.

Why? Well, the motives are not stated. But as you read on into the rest of the story, what you see is God consistently engaging in a pattern where there's this cultural background of who ought to be running the world. And that is both in the background of the biblical story, widespread and human history in the ancient erys, which is the first born male descendant of a patriarch is the one who rightfully deserves the responsibility and authority. Maybe I should have started there. Yeah, I was thinking that that is a great question to start with.

Who should be in charge? Yeah, but that's essentially the question. That's the question. Who should be in charge? Who gets to be in charge? Who gets to be in charge? And if you've got, if the biblical story begins with the creator of everything, beginning to share responsibility and power, who gets to have that power and

Who gets to be the ones in charge of that power? Yeah, I suppose you could say why can't it just be complete? Totally flat. Yeah structure. Why could it be a flat structure where like everyone's peers and no ones in charge? Yeah, yeah, but God chooses out of all the creatures out of the host of heaven above the angels out of all the animals. He chooses humans. And they happen to be created last. Yeah. In the Genesis one creation story. Yeah. And so the ones created last are then elevated to be the ones in charge of ruling the creatures of the sky and the land and the sea. And this choice that God makes to share His power to a creature that doesn't seem worthy

of it, that sets in motion a plot, that we see happen when the snake in Genesis three shows up Genesis Yeah, three. Yeah, yeah, and says oh Can you really trust this God like? Somehow this snake wants to disrupt the rule and authority in relationship that the humans have with God That's right and what you were was, as you meditate on this passage, you see what the latter prophets were doing, you see what happens in the second temple literature. It seems pretty clear that this snake is connected to the spiritual beings who think they should

be first. They should be the ones. And they were first in the order of the days within Genesis 1. Yeah. They were first in the order of the days within Genesis 1. Yeah. They were first. And the way you get there is because the language and the pattern and themes of those first few pages start just getting recycled over and over and over with every generation that follows from that story.

So you have the sibling rivals of Cain and Abel. But the reason the rivals is because God chose to show favor, not to the elder, first born brother, but to the second. And so we talked about that. God consistently repeats that pattern by choosing the middle son of Noah's three sons, Shem, to receive the blessing, and the promise of a future human who will come through him and doesn't elevate the firstborn, J.F.F., or the lastborn, Ham. And then that lastborn, Ham, introduced another tweak

in the cycle, which is the last born son grabs that in a violent and abusive way to trying attain to the role of the alpha male or the first born. So then we talked about that. And then once you have all those variations, you basically have three ways to become the first born. You can be born into it as a first born. You can get there by God elevating somebody who's not the firstborn into that place. Or you have a late-comer trying to achieve the role of the firstborn by their own power wisdom or strength. Yeah, or devious schemes. Or devious schemes. And so basically those three possibilities just get developed and creatively

tweaked and inverted as you go through the stories of Abraham and Lot. And then the next generation of Jacob and Esau. And the next generation of Joseph and Judah and the other sons of Jacob and so on. But really, it's all about this, who gets to be in charge? And what happens when God elevates somebody who nobody else think should be in charge? To be the person in charge. And why does someone need to be in charge? Ha ha ha ha ha.

That's a great question. God gave Adam and Eve the title of Image of God, male and female. Yeah, let them rule. Let them rule. So there and Eve the title of image of God, male and female. Let them rule. Let them rule. So there already was the sense of, hey, the man's not gonna be a charge, woman's not gonna be a charge, let them rule.

Let them rule together. So there was kind of like, let's set the table for, what's the word? Not a democracy, but like a. Yeah, mutuality. Mutuality. Yeah, mutual responsibility. Neither of them, you get the sense of neither of them

were in charge, but together they were in charge. And you can imagine then if they represent humanity, you know, Adam is human, Eve is life, then all of humanity is meant to be the image of God, ruling in a collaborative mutuality. You get that sense, but then as we've been tracing this theme, it's all about who gets to be in charge and God choosing people to be in charge. I think I have an idea of why that is, but...

You're saying, why does anybody need to be in charge? Yeah, why does God start to say, okay, you're going to be the one that elect. Well, remember, the concept of the first born is tied to the Eden blessing. And as you go out from Eden, there's two ways it gets expressed. One is just the continual blessing of God's gift of life and multiplication and abundance, which is about Eden's all about abundance. But then the other is about the promise of a future descendant who will come and undo what the snake has done and crush the head of the snake while being struck by it. And that's a part of this promise, too.

Okay, so that's fascinating. Are we saying that the original sharing of power wasn't about choosing a first born among the humans? It was all of humanity being the first born. Mm-hmm. Definitely. It's a collective calling. A collective calling. All humanity in Genesis 1. Adam and Eve don't appear in the seven-day creation narrative.

You just have male and female and humanity as one species, as made to reflect the image of God or made in the M2. So while the theme begins there of God choosing a firstborn, the firstborn is the collective humanity. But then when we get to outside of the garden where now God has to deal with, I need to take evil out at its source, and I'm going to do it through a lineage, a human lineage. Now you've introduced the idea of a narrowing down, a narrowing down, it's selecting, an electing or choosing of a specific family that God's going to use. And since that gets merged with who gets the right of the firstborn, now this theme becomes like, it feels like you're asking who gets to be in charge. But you're really saying who's God going to use to defeat evil so that all humans can be the image of God.

That's right. And what God often does is give that surprise chosen one some level of honor and authority, but usually see some process of them suffering or having to trust God or go through a test. Here we are at again, at that point where the complex plotline of the Bible is just a bundle, like a tapestry. And when we make a theme video, we're literally taking out or pulling out of the tapestry, one color thread. You're saying the bundle is the image of God as a theme, the idea of a Messiah that needs

to crush evil, that's a theme. The idea of a test. The gun puts his elect through as a theme. Yep, the idea of a chosen one who is chosen and then enters into their role as the image of God, but through suffering and test. That's the key part of this. So we're trying to pull out just the specific strain of God elevating someone who doesn't isn't supposed to be in charge and putting them in charge. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and by putting them in charge, it may just be selecting them to be the one who at the moment has God's favor because they're chosen to become

the lineage of the future snake crusher. Yeah, by in charge, it's not necessarily to be king. Those ideas start to get merged with David and we'll get there, but like. But it is a place of honor to be chosen within, I'm thinking within the biblical story for these characters, it's an honor that they get chosen to become the vehicle of the Eden blessing and the seed for others. But also it often puts them in harm's way

because it ignites jealousy or rivalry from other people who think that that ought to be theirs. And what's interesting is, I feel like in our last conversation or two, oh yeah, our last one, we talked about how these bundled concepts of the promise of the future ruler, a future image of God ruler, and the Eden blessing of abundance. Those can be separated. So for example, in the cycle of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham has a firstborn, Ishmael, and God says, he's not the one for the chosen lineage, but I will bless him too, and he'll be fruitful and multiply. So he gets the Eden blessing of abundance.

But the lineage can only come through one of the two sons, and God chooses the second born for this night-crushing lineage, and he gets the blessing and the promise of the future line. And at the very end of Genesis, when Jacob's 12 sons, Yeah. We learn about all of them. The blessing gets dispersed between two of them. Two sons. Yeah. Judah and Joseph. Yeah. At the end in Genesis 49, Joseph, the first born of his second wife, no third wife, but most beloved wife, Rachel, gets loads of blessing. You read the poem that Jacob speaks to him on his deathbed, and it's like the word blessing occurs like half a dozen times, blessing, blessing, blessing.

But then it's to the fourth born son of his first wife that he didn't like very much. Leah, that's the son that's given the promise that through his lineage will come a future ruler over the brothers and over the nations. So that blessing of firstborn gives kind of split between two sons who become rivals throughout the rest of the Torah and prophets Joseph and Judah and their descendants. Yeah. So God is working to restore the Eden blessing to all corners of the human family, but He's doing it through the lineage of one, because the lineage of a promised future deliverer has to be through one.

And part of the Eden blessing is that all humanity is the image you got. Correct. Yes. So all humanity gets to rule, have power on God's behalf. Yeah. And what you see is God's consistent strategy is to subvert human expectations about who gets to be that honored, chosen lineage for the promised snake crusher and the Eden blessing. And it is always some second

born or late-comer or unlikely one or the one of low social status that God elevates, which once you read through all the iterations of that cycle in the Hebrew Bible, then you come back to those early chapters of Genesis, and you can see it's the same patterns right there with the humans and the sky rulers and the snake. So you're reading the early Genesis narratives in light of where this pattern of the surprise first born is going. And that's how the Hebrew Bible works. So that's where we've been going.

And over the last four conversations, we just work through the Genesis scroll. So what we're going to do for the rest of the conversation is range a little broader, we're going to camp out still in the Torah for this one, and just focus in on the dynamics of this first born sibling rivalry between Israel and Egypt. It appears right at the beginning of Exodus. And then God chooses a deliverer, the deliverer Israel from their oppressive sibling Egypt, and God chooses a guy named Moshe, and his brother Aaron, and there's a little rivalry going on between them. That's interesting. And then that gets repeated with Aaron's sons who were chosen for the high priesthood, their dynamics of the surprise first born in version, there too. And they all kind of implicate each other in really fascinating ways.

Then we'll go into the prophets and then into the gospels and then into the letters of the apostles after that. But today Exodus. Today let's think about the first born with Xs. Real time right now. I'm prepping for a series of Bible project classroom classes, going through Exodus and the heart of the Torah. It'll be through Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

The next many classroom classes that we're filming, I'm so excited. It's so rad. Anyhow, here's the first paragraph of Exodus. And these are the names of the sons of Israel, the ones who went to Egypt with Yakuv. Jacob. Jacob, yeah, sir.

I'm trying to use Hebrew pronunciation and my translation. Yeah, it's great. Just because it's cool. Each one and his household went. Ruvan, Shimon, Levi, or Levi, and Hebrew. Yehuda, Judah, Yisakar, Zevolun, Ben Yamin, Levi, or Levi, Yehuda, Judah, Yisakar, Zevilun, Benyamin, Dan, Naftali, God, or Gad, and Asher. What's Yisakar? Oh, Yisakar. Yisakar. Yeah. Yeah. Every person who came out of the loin of Jacob, The loin of Jacob, 70 people, and Joseph was in Egypt. Now, Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation, and the sons of Israel

were fruitful and they swarmed. And they multiplied and became strong, very, very much, and the land was filled with them. It's first paragraph? I'm going to tell me what you see. very, very much, and the land was filled with them. It's first paragraph. I'm gonna tell me what you see. Well, so we start with a list of the 12 sons. Reminding us, this is how Genesis ended.

These 12 sons went down to Egypt. But we learned that actually 70 people with the sons came down to Egypt. 70's an important number. Totally. It's like the number of a whole, like, what does that number mean? Well, it's just seven. It's spelled with the same letters as the word complete, or satisfied or brought to fulfillment

in Hebrew, Sava. And so that becomes a design pattern theme throughout Genesis. And so 70 is just turning up the volume on the concept. So Devon. A complete amount of people. A list of 70 is super complete. Yeah. So all of them came.

And then we're fast forwarding, just have died. And the author here wants us to think of what happened to this family in Egypt, like what the humans were to experience in the garden, that they were fruitful and multiplied. And then you chuckled at the word swarmed. Oh yeah, toy. Well, this is Exodus 1, verse 7. The sons of Israel were fruitful and Swarmed. They multiplied and became strong and they filled the land and filled. Yeah. So three of those are right from Genesis 1 the blessing on the image of God be fruitful and multiply and fill the land. Yeah, it's the same exact words, but swarmed is the verb used of the fish in the sea

from day five of Genesis one. They're called the swimmers. And they are given a blessing to be fruitful and multiply too, and but they're called the swimmers. So you're kind of like, they're multiplying like fish. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Yeah, it's the verb used to describe the blessing of abundance given to fish. Yeah. And now it's here describing this really fascinating. Yeah. And they're going to do their own version of swimming a couple of times in the story in different ways. And also becoming strong. Yeah.

Very, very strong. Very, very much. Very strong. So clearly this is the family that is being given the Eden blessing right out of the gate. And we're just, you know, you turn back the previous Genesis scroll and Joseph and Judah in particular were given an even hyper-focused version of this blessing, of not just abundance, but also a future ruler coming from the line of Judah. Okay.

So that's that action. Ferros response. Now a new king arose over Egypt who didn't know Joseph. Yeah. Joseph has died. Yeah. Do we know how much time it's supposed to have passed? Oh man, it's rabbit hole. Rabbit hole. Yeah. Four generations are 400 years. And though they're not the same amount of time. Not true. But the narrative says both. But either way, Joseph and the Pharaoh of his day were like tight. I mean, it was like first and second in command.

Yeah. And a new Pharaoh arose who says to his people, look, the people of the sons of Israel are more multiplied and they're stronger than us. Is the first time they're starting to be called Israel? The sons of Israel? No, that starts happening at the end of Genesis. But this is the first time that they are now can be called one whole group, the whole nation. I mean, the group of small clans has become a nation. And now they're being looked at as a large ethnic entity. But notice what he sees, he says they're more fruitful and multiplied and stronger than us.

So come, let us act with Khukma, wisdom, skill. We've got to play cards really carefully here. We've got to be crafty here. Yeah, or else they'll multiply more yeah And it will come about that when war happens to us That they might even add themselves to those who hate us and they will make war against us And they'll go up out of our land that's a very

like a stuute and careful way to think about the situation he's in. You've got a group of people that are different nationality living in your land. Migrants. Immigrants. Immigrants. Yeah. And they're like getting large. Yeah. There's a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. And they're powerful. They seem really powerful. And it feels threatening to the Pharaoh. Yeah. It's this portrait of a governing leader who views a extremely productive, abundant immigrant population. But here's what's fascinating is the Pharaoh of Joseph's day welcomed the whole crew of 70 down.

And what's 70 gonna do to you? Sure. But there are like the siblings of this guy who's working in your court who has a lot of influence, Joseph. But what he sees when he sees the abundance and the wisdom given to Joseph and the abundance that's attached to this family, the Pharaoh Joseph's day sees the opportunity.

He sees it as a win-win. For partnership. And so this becomes a contrast, for a portrait of a governing leader who looks at an immigrant group. And all they see is liability fear. Yeah. What ignites in them and as of potential conflict.

And so what's the tragic irony is that his fear of conflict is actually what he goes on to create through his actions. There wasn't a conflict, but it's his fear of the conflict that creates the conflict. Yeah. And also his choice to enslave them Which is what he does next? But I just want to pay attention here to you have a governing leader who sees the blessing on this group And it ignites a kind of fear or jealousy in them Yeah, I think what we're seeing here is where this is Kane. This is E thaw

Well, this is the serpent. This is the snake. Come in. Yes, exactly. Well, I mean, I'm wondering. It's exactly right. You can snake it. Let us act with wisdom and skill.

With wisdom and skill. Yeah. So what we learn about, the one thing we learn about the snake is that he's crafty, which is a wisdom word. Yeah. It's not a bad word. That's exactly right. It's not like

prudence. Yeah, like it's used often to just describe someone who's like really strategic. Yeah, that's right While I think we often think oh, that must be a word to describe something sinister And so are we hyperlinking to that idea? Most definitely. Yeah. Yeah, most definitely hyper-linking to that idea? Most definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Most definitely. Also, you know that remember in Genesis 1 to 11, the cycles went from the snake, replayed by Cain, that led to his descendants to Lemek to the building of the city. Yeah. Then we reboot with Noah, and then it starts with Ham, and then it goes down from ham to Nimrod, who builds... By King, where? By King builds a city of Babylon.

Look what the next thing Pharaoh does is they placed over them, captains of forced labor, to oppress them with their burdens, and they built cities of supply storage for Pharaoh, Pithome, and Ramzays. And then you read down a little further, they enslaved them. They made them their slaves with brutality. They made their lives bitter with enslavement, with mortar, and with brick. So they're building cities of brick and mortar. These are all the key words of their use. The tower bell. Only elsewhere. In the Torah of the their use. The tower battle. Only elsewhere. In the Torah of the building of the city of Babylon.

Yeah. And of Babylon, which is Babylon. That's right. Same word, right? Exactly. Babylon is just saying how you pronounce it in Hebrew. Okay. Yeah.

That's funny. The point here is that the narrator here in Exodus is describing what Pharaoh is doing to the Israelites. He's using the language that was last used in just this combination of words to describe Nimrod and the people of Babylon's desire to build a city that reaches up to the skies. Nimrod came from the line of of ham of ham. Yep. That's right. And Nimrod's descendant is Egypt. Okay.

Both Egypt and Nimrod come from ham, the third son of Noah. So once again, we have really what this is, this is a son of ham against a son of shem. The son of shem is getting the blessing and the son of ham here is acting the snake. Yeah, wow. And it's hyperlinking to the serpent, which is about someone who is powerful in a place of power looking like, why is God blessing these people that shouldn't be powerful? And then how, and the sort of can enable, can is described as like embodying the serpent. Yeah, that's right. Evil. Yes. Yeah. When he decides

as a first born, this is unfair that God's giving favor to a second born. So all of these themes like are coming together in a really wonderful way. Yes, that's exactly right. That's cool. Just as a little note here, all throughout the Psalms, there are many Psalms that retail different parts of the biblical story. And there are three Psalms that when they retell the story of the Exodus, they refer to Egypt as ham. Oh wow. Not as Egypt, it kind of sticks out.

So like in Psalm 78, verse 51, God struck the firstborn of Egypt, the first fruits of their manhood of the tents of ham. Psalm 105, verse 23, Israel came in to Egypt, Jacob sojourned in the tents of ham. Psalm 105 or 23, Israel came in to Egypt, Jacob, sojourned in the land of ham. So these are later biblical authors. That's why the genealogy is really matter in the Hebrew Bible, because you're really meant

to see later generations as replaying the incidents that happened among their ancestors in the earlier parts of the biblical story. And this is a good one. All of the cycles of Genesis 1 through 11 are being replayed here in the descendant of ham and the descendant of shem. Okay, so the theme of the first born is really loud here. We are seeing that the king of Egypt, the one in power, the one who, even though ham wasn't the first born, it comes from that lineage,

ham, his whole purpose was to take that power. And here we have, the Pharaoh has the power, in a way like ham succeeded, the release, the line of ham succeeded in taking that power. We're now the world empire. We're the ones in charge. And we've got a smaller growing immigrant population that no way should be. Yeah, threat to us. And no way should be in charge. Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But feel like a threat because they're like, they seem to be good, have gots favor. And so what we know of this theme is that the first born, the one in charge is going to get jealous. And it's going to murder or do something. Yeah, thank you somehow the way that you just summarize that kind of help in

motivated me to even even wanna clarify more. So what's happening? Often, the one that God actually chooses or favors or blesses, the way to indicate their lower status was either that they're a later born sibling. Sometimes like in Genesis, in the rival wives, it was that one was more loved than another and so God favors the unloved

Leia. In this case, what is it within the narrative that marks someone of being a lower social status? And before the Israelites are enslaved, it's just the sheer fact that they're immigrants and an ethnic minority within a dominant culture. And that's what makes them the vulnerable ones. And so let's just pause and meditate. This is a crucial message of the Exodus story that when God looks upon the human scene, what God notices and pays attention to and focuses his blessing and elevates

our vulnerable immigrant families in a foreign land. And that is the character of God. That's the same character of God that looked upon Leia, the unloved wife of Jacob, and gave her the gift of abundance, and not the love her sister, you know, whom Jacob left more. And there are moments where that may, like maybe the wives that kind of strikes us or it was Cain and Abel,

we're kind of like, man, what's up? What's up with that, you know? But I think in a moment like this, I've kind of feel it and I'm like, that seems beautiful to me. Well, I think that's also because my imagination has been shaped by the Christian story. Because normally in human history,

what's happening in Exodus is exactly how things go. And it's exactly how things go still today. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Let those who have ears let them hear. Like this is not an ancient issue for the human family. Like this is a clear and present cycle of human behavior on a large scale. So what you're saying is you can draw a direct line between God's desire to share his power with all of humanity, which who are we? What are these creatures? To God's desire to like look upon an unloved wife. God's desire to elevate a secondborn son to his desire to look at a minority immigrant population

who's being mistreated and want to protect and elevate them. Like there's... God identifies God's own self with them. Just to kind of go meta in Scripture here. This is for me personally, what was so at first compelling, I remember when I was a young man, and it's first being drawn to Jesus,

when I would hear stories about him, is exactly this theme right here, like the people that Jesus noticed and paid attention to are the equivalents in his day. And fought for. And yeah to are the equivalents in his day and fought for. And yeah, are the equivalents in his day of where the Israel out sit in this story. The sick, the poor, the beggars, the paralyzed, people with disabilities, women.

These are the people that Jesus intentionally included into his kingdom of God communities and said to them, you are the blessed ones. The kingdom of God begins now with you. That's the fruition in Jesus' story of this theme of the inversion of the first born, which is really about God's surprising way of challenging our conceptions of who should be in charge and who should get the good life.

And I just have always loved that part of the biblical story and this is of such a beautiful kind of poignant moment of that in Exodus. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, So what happens next is that Pharaoh first gives an order that every son of this family should be murdered, like the moment they come out of the womb, that plan is foiled by some counter deceivers, the Hebrew midwives, it's really fascinating. Then he just says, throw all the boys into the river, and then that plan is foiled when a mom actually kind of does it by putting her firstborn son into a river, but in an ark, a little mini ark. And like Noah, that son is delivered through the waters right into the household of Pharaoh. And he actually, by the end of chapter 2, becomes adopted as a son into the house of Pharaoh. He becomes a son

to the daughter of Pharaoh. So now it's fascinating, Moses, well actually sorry, I said he's the first born son. The narrative doesn't say that. And it's actually not the case. That was a mistake. But the narrative doesn't clarify. It's just that his mom gave birth to a son. You're like, okay. And that son becomes a son both to an Israelite woman, but then he becomes a son to an Egyptian woman. Who raises them?

Who raises them? So it's this fascinating question of the identity of Moses now. Is Israelite or is the Egyptian? Is he neither? Is he both? He has a conflicted identity. So that's the dynamic. And then of course, you know, he's going to lose his temper, murder an Egyptian in an

attempt to rescue some Israelites and that backfires, and his adopted father, Pharaoh, ends up wanting to kill him. And so he flees. So Moses is an exile for 40 years, ends up meeting God in a burning tree bush. Who commissions him to say the whole generation of people that wanted to kill you have passed away and go back and confront Pharaoh and tell him on my behalf, let my people go. So that's what starts happening. And then the theme of the first born really gets prominent here and a little group of stories

near the end of chapter four. This is super fascinating. Somosus is cruising back on a donkey with his family to Egypt. We're in chapter four. Okay, so he's his ex-house over. Yep, he's going back to Egypt. Yeah, yep. And chapter four, verse 21, the Lord said to Moses, when you return to Egypt, see that all the signs and wonders

I've put into your hand perform them before Pharaoh. This is the staff that turns into a snake and the turning of water into blood. And he's going to think, do them before Pharaoh. I will make his heart strong and he won't send out the people. And so you will say to Pharaoh, this is what Yahweh says, Israel is my son, my first born son. And I'm telling you, send out my son so that he can serve me. But you have refused to send him out. So look, I'm going to slay your son, your first born son. Which is foreshadowing tenth plague.

The tenth plague, which is the night of Passover. We'll talk about that a little bit more. So notice here, this is the appointment. This is the first time that this language is used after the family of Israel. My son, my first born son. So the word first born son hasn't been used since the Genesis scroll to talk about Jacob's actual first born son, Ruben, who lost the first born right. And then this was a word used a lot in the Jacob and he saw stories because the first born,

the first born right was what Jacob was, you know, swindling his way into. But here Israel gets the title. And what does that mean that they have that title? Well, so the first born son is essentially, this is my chosen heir and representative. So for a god, for a deity, for a deity, yeah, to say that of a people group is to essentially say, hmm, these are the people that should be ruling the world. Um, well, at least this is my crew. God is so closely identified with them. That Yahweh's own power and name authority is invested in these people.

is invested in these people. First born becomes essentially a way of saying, this is my image, this is my representative. In Exodus 19, it'll get put that Israel is called to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. But here it's using the language and imagery of the first of monk siblings to be the representative of the father. So narratively, in no sense, are they... Well, okay, well this is interesting. Narratively, in terms of the genealogy, they come from Seth, who's not the first born. Third born, Adam and Eve. Then from the line of Shem. Shem, who's the second born of Noah and his wife. And okay, so nowhere in their lineage are they actually first born?

No, no, Isaac, then after that of Abraham, who seems to be the middle child of his brothers, then of Isaac, second born, then of Jacob, second born, and so on. So none of the generations is Israel come from the first born. Yeah. And they're not in a position of power by any means here. So God is not identifying with like,

hey, my crew is the powerful crew. He's identifying with a crew that looks pretty weak. Yeah, in this moment, that's right. This is Yahweh. What do you say? Confirming a title of not quite royalty, but definitely a first born status. That was a category of family clan authority and honor.

And Yahweh is conferring that title and position upon a family that has never held that position throughout history and any of the family that belong to. That's what's remarkable. This is about the elevating. This is the same moment of Genesis 1. God elevating the late comer or the dirt creature to a place of honor. That's what's happening here. So calling Israel a firstborn is clearly saying God is choosing what is not first and saying it'll be first. That's right. And that poses a challenge for all those around the blessed quote-unquote firstborn. Yeah. The one that got a point.

How are you going to deal with that? To the status of firstborn. Actually, okay, but actually this is relevant for when we talk later about Jesus to call someone the first born then is not necessarily a statement of their actual origins. This family was never the first born in any of the generations. But what's being referred to by calling them a first born is a status, a role. And that's relevant for how the title gets applied to Jesus. Is it because to jump there real quick, because Jesus called the firstborn of all creation? And unlike Israel, he... how should we say this? It's just hard, I guess the categories get weird because...

I guess what I want to say is unlike Israel, he wasn't elevated from a lower status. Like he was the image of the invisible God. Correct. From the beginning. Yeah, yeah. He always existed. So he actually is in a real sense the first born. That's right. I remember how biblical patterns work.

It's never identical. It's always a twist. But I think the point is that to call someone a first born son here is a role status as opposed to describing the actual physical processes or origins of how they came to that role. They are being identified or publicly recognizes that. I mean, you could say, actually, this is great. This is actually really helpful analogy, because this family has always,

through all the generations, been holding this special place within God's purpose. This is not the first time that this family has been given this role through the cycle of the stories. What's new is that a new generation of people need to have declared to them that this family is my first born. And since you clearly, Pharaoh have either forgotten that or don't want to acknowledge that, that's what's going on right here.

So this declaration of my first born is more for Pharaoh than it is about giving Israel a status they didn't have before. Because they have had that all along. In the sense that God has been choosing that family lineage all along. Yeah, yeah. And so you're bringing up Jesus to say, by calling Jesus the first born isn't saying what order was he born in creation? Correct. It's about status. It's about revealing of Jesus' status. It's about a revealing of Jesus' status. So yeah, whether it's Paul and Romans 1,

he's declared to be the Son of God in power through the Spirit by his resurrection from the dead. So he's not saying Jesus became the Son of God by the resurrection, but rather the resurrection revealed to everybody else what the declared it was always true of him that of the eternal son. And I think that's how this first born language function. So sorry, that's a little detail Yeah, kind of here. But it's a helpful analogy is this family's always been the special one of God's purpose but it's revealed a new to this generation What has always been true of them all along. Anyway, so this is actually previewing the whole cycle of conflict that's going to go

down between Israel and Pharaoh all the way up to Passover, which is where God puts a choice in front of everyone in the land of Egypt, which is there's going to be a destroyer that goes through the land of that night. And the life of the firstborn is at risk. So in Passover, what God is showing is to have ultimate responsibility and authority over the most powerful imperial rulers of the land and their family monarchies. But it says from the first born of every animal to the peasant in their home to Pharaoh on his throne.

And all of those firstborns belong to Yahweh. And so he can give them their life or take away their life. And those are the stakes of Passover. And so God's obviously reversing and bringing back on Pharaoh, what he brought on Israel, which is to take the life of their sons. But here at Passover, Yahweh provides what Pharaoh never did, which is a choice. You have a choice of how things go.

Yahweh will protect the life of the first born if you choose to come under the covering of the substitute that Yahweh provides, and that's the Passover Lamb and the blood on the doorpost. But if you refuse to accept Yahweh's gift of covering, then you forfeit the life of your firstborn. That's how the logic of Passover works. And I'm just scribing it clinically right now, which masks over a deep disturbance in my inner force, disturbance. Ah, this, the plague of the Passover and of the taking of the firstborn,

as long as I've sat with it and worked through it, can understand how it works in the story. It's still hard for me. Yeah, it's hard for me. Is it harder than the flood for you? Same. Same. Same type of difficulty. Or with the rebellion of the sons of Korra, where the whole family suffers for the sins of their father. And essentially, that's exactly it. It's that of children being held accountable for the sins of their father. And essentially that's exactly it. It's that of children being held accountable for the sins of their fathers,

which is Ezekiel says in Ezekiel 18, that's exactly how Yahweh does not operate. That's what Ezekiel says. In Ezekiel God says, I don't hold children accountable for the sins of their fathers, but yet that's precisely the logic underneath the best-aware narrative. So.

Yeah, I'm telling you, it's one of the outstanding issues for me within the Hebrew Bible that I struggle with how it makes sense. I feel like we should dialogue about that for like another hour, but I don't. Yeah, I spent my summer trying to read deeply in a number of early Greek church fathers and scholars. I learned a lot over the summer.

It's wonderful. One was a theologian and a pastor on a Gregory of Nissa. And he has this wonderful short treatment called the Life of Moses. And it's an interpretation of the Moses story. And when he gets to Passover, he just raised up names that he just says, what do we do with this portrait of God? Holding innocent children, and he really turns up the volume.

He's like, what has a babe done? It is cried only for the nipple of its mother and best and its parents' arms. And what has it done that it deserves death for the sins of Pharaoh? I mean, he names it straight up. He names the tension. And he has his own way of resolving it that I'm still processing through.

But so this is an element of about the portrait of God in the Hebrew Bible. This is one of those portraits that is hard. If you take as your starting point, the character of God revealed in Jesus, because it seems to me that the character of God revealed in Jesus wouldn't do something like this. ... It's a real tension. Yeah.

It's called way to putting it. You see word. Totally. Oh, this bothers me. This bothers me. Well, and so we're putting it. You see word, totally. No, this bothers me. This bothers me. Well, and so we're bringing it up though, because. It's about the first point. It's about the first point.

Yeah. And so what's bothering us is that God would hold a child responsible for the actions of their parents. An infant even. Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. It's not like. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. It's not like. Yeah, the most-

Not like a 16 year old boy who's like the most vulnerable. The most vulnerable. The most vulnerable. And innocent. Yeah. The one who has done no good or evil. But putting that to the side for a second, which, you know,

you can't do. Yeah, it feels wrong, but we kind of, if we want to think about it in compartmentalty, we kind of have. Yeah. No, that's right. It's not, yeah. It trucesism good at compartmentalty. Yeah, I think I'm too

The theme of the first born which is interesting here which is saying hey you find your strength In your power in your firstborn status and In your first born sons. Yeah, who are gonna be the ones you pass on your status? The next pharaoh yeah exactly exactly, right. Not only next Pharaoh, but then also just the next patriarch of the clan of the people who live in Egypt and the different suburbs or whatever. And actually, let me just add one more layer, because for me this is the thing where my mind goes as to some kind of resolution is in Egyptian, religion, and culture, Pharaoh is God. Pharaoh is the incarnation of their most powerful deity. And different than being the image of God in the Hebrew Bible.

He is the incarnation of God. That's right. And so it's not insignificant that in Exodus 12, check this out. This is within the instructions about Passover. Yahweh says in Exodus 12, 12, check this out. This is within the instructions about Passover. Yahweh says in Exodus 12, 12, I will go through the land that night, that I pass over. I will strike down the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human and animal,

and against all of the Elohim of Egypt. I will bring my justice. I am Yahweh. So somehow Passover is a strike against the Elohim of Egypt also, which seems odd to us. It's like, well, okay, the humans and the animals and then the Elohim. But they're all one in this narrative. Taking down the firstborn of Egypt is taking down the Elohim in some way. Yes, that's what Exodus 12-12 clearly implies. Yeah, there's a spiritual rebellion that is getting intertwined in the power structure of this human empire.

Yes. And by God dealing with the power structure of that human empire is actually dealing with the spiritual evil. Yes, just like in the flood. In other words, the same dynamic as in the flood. Exactly. It's about this illicit mutant merging of Elohim and human to create monstrous human violence and evil in the world. And that's precisely what is happening in that strange sun about the sins of Elohim and the daughters of Adam in Genesis 6, 1, 3, 4, that's like the last part of the rebellion that leads to the flood. In other words, this is the melody replaying. So within the exit is narrative, God striking the firstborn of Egypt is God striking at the human divine rebellion

that is combined in Egypt. I think that's how the logic of the story works. And part of the plague of the firstborn is kind of a way of God saying, look, I'm attacking the very center and heart of your misunderstanding of power. Yes. Yeah, it's good. Not only am I going to attack it, but I'm going to give you a way out, which is to align with a new type of power, which is saying, you see this immigrant population, you think

you can just abuse. That's my first born. That's my first born. In my economy, it works completely different. You can get on board with that economy and you actually will find power and blessing. You'll get the blessing too. Or you can just run with the way you want to do it, which is giving it to your first born.

And actually I'm going to just disrupt that at its source. I'm just going to stop it. That's right. In a pretty violent and disturbing way, which feels just as violent disturbing as God's saying, I'm just gonna stop human violence on the earth in Genesis 6. That's right.

And so you're saying there's something happening here where the volumes turned up where often in the Bible, God's described as patient, slow to anger. And he's dealing in a way so that people have time to come to him. But then there's these moments, like James the Sixth. Decoration moment. And here in Exodus with the 10th plague, where it's just like... Same as Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah. It's just I'm stopping it. Yeah. And so these are moments back to the flood narrative.

And so these are moments back to the flood narrative. God accelerates a process that humans have already begun in building a culture that's become so monstrous in its neglect of human life and value. It's reached the point of no return. And that's these flood-like decaration moments. And this is why the 10 plagues are riddled with vocabulary from the flood narrative. It's uncanny. In other words, the words used to describe the waters of the flood and what

they do and what happens. It's all the same vocabulary used over and over again throughout the plagues. Thank you for that summary, because it's those de-creation moments that are exactly the parts of the biblical melody that usually for us as modern readers we're just like, I'm super uncomfortable with what God's doing right now. And I think it's okay to feel that. However, I don't want to have that blind me from also the important point being made that you just named that there are times when human that there are times when human evil gets so woven and so large scale

that it Soes of the seeds of its own ruin that creates immense Suffering and pain and injustice in the world and bringing that ship down burning is just a big moral mess Yeah, and that is reflected. And I think in the moral tensions that are raised in these stories. And I've come here now, whenever I'm brought here at this point in the biblical melody of

the cycles, it's good for me. But I can tell it's going to be something that's resolved, if ever, the side of my resurrection, just by lots of years of prayer and pondering and taking it to God in prayer because logically I keep hitting road blocks when it comes to this and that's okay. Yeah. I think that's part of the journey, at least for me. Are you just keep thinking about Thanos, Infinity War and game?

Yeah. I saw them once and I don't remember a lot. Well, so the whole plot is that you got this big bad guy. You think he's a Marvel movie universe. Marvel movie universe, totally. This is like the Avengers. I think they call it stage two of Marvel, maybe. Okay.

Or was it stage three, I don't know. It's the big purple guy who wants to like. Yeah, so it's the whole storyline of Thanos rising to power. He's a bad dude. Yeah, yeah. But the one thing that he wants is to collect all the infinity stones so that he has the power, what he wants to do is wipe away half of the creatures

in the universe. All living beings, that's right. But for him, it's a moral good, because the universe can actually sustain all of these creatures. So he's actually kind of resetting things so that the people that continue to exist can actually exist. And so you've got this bad guy who is doing something pretty horrendous. But for a reason that actually has a moral intuition to it. Yep. Yeah.

And so there was this whole internet subculture where people were saying Thanos was right. Or, you know, Thanos did nothing wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it created this weird tension where you're like just wrestling with it. Now, the God of the Bible is not Thanos because the God of the Bible is actually represented as opposite of like a good God doing the right thing. Yeah. Like, but all of a sudden put into it. Yeah. So anyways, there's this weird kind of resonance. Well, you know, here's the first place my mind goes. It actually think many of us do imagine

that the God represented in the Bible is like that. And to bring the parallel even closer, the way that all that plot tension is solved in that series of movies is when one of the main heroes Stark Ironman gives up his life on behalf of his friends. He sacrifices his life on behalf of his friends. He sacrifices his life on behalf of his friends. And that becomes the hero movement. And the whole message of the movie is that's the ultimate moral good is to give the ones life run trends. In one sense, it's a deeply Christian movie. But on another sense, notice it's portraying two powers that work in the universe, like a god, a Thanos is a god, who the only way of bringing good is to kill everybody, or

half of everybody. And so it's the sacrificial hero who saves us from the god of justice. And I really think that's how many of us experience the God of the Bible, that Jesus saves us from the wrath of Thanos. And that's right, totally. And some people would say, that is the portrait of God in the Bible.

And others would say that actually is intention with the true God of the Bible, which is nothing at all like Thanos. And here there is a major fork in the road in terms of the Christian tradition between different portraits of God coming out of the same Bible. But it's just funny to me that you brought that up because whether or not you think the God, God the Father, to use Trinitarian categories, whether you think God the Father is more like Thanos or not at think the God, God the Father, do you use Trinitarian categories? Whether you think God the Father is more like Thanos or not at all like Thanos,

we'll actually tell you a lot about what you can't get away from is moments like this. Yeah, that's right. Where it feels a little bit like the logic of Thanos. Of like, I'm going to do a net moral good, but it's going to just wreak havoc. Yeah, yeah. But the fly in the ointment, so to speak, the wrench in the plan, is that the same God that

is doing that is the same God that is providing and the substitute. The Passover Lamb. Yes, totally. In the same way that in the Abraham and Isaac story, God demands the life of Isaac, and its Abraham sins catching up to him, and God is the one who provides the substitute. So God is both the one whose character creates the tension and solves the tension within God's own self. And something like that is at the deep logic of what's going on in the New Testament and the Father and the Son, not at odds with each other,

like Iron Man and Thanos, but actually, both are expressing things that are at the very heart of God, which is justice and mercy. Well, this went quite a bit broader than the first part. Yeah. What we didn't get to look at was how Moses and Aaron, their dynamic is the first born dynamic, Aaron sons.

Well, you can just almost kind of summarize it quickly. What you learn midway through the Exodus story is that Moses has a brother. And then at a certain point in chapter seven, you're just given this little notice, which is right when they start approaching Pharaoh and really confronting him. It's Exodus 7.7. It's just a random little detail right in between these narratives, exciting narratives of conflict with Pharaoh. And it just says, yeah,

you know Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 when I spoke to Pharaoh. So Aaron is the older brother. Aaron's the older brother. But yeah, Aaron, what God just said to Moses is, I will make you like Elohim to Pharaoh. And Aaron will be your prophet. So Moses becomes an image of God to Pharaoh. And Aaron is his like, you know, helper. And Moses is the second born. Yeah.

Aaron is the first. So even it's now our first borns, within first borns. Aaron doesn't ever try to overtake Moses though. No, there's no rivalry. It's just that God once again inverts the first born order with Moses and Aaron. I mean Aaron does like kind of leave over a billion. Yeah, in a way, or he gives in to the people, and the people, yeah,

trick him or persuade him. And those people are like, let's kill Moses. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Or let's make a God and worship him. But they also at one point are like, let's kill Moses and go back to Egypt. Yes, that's in the road trip gone wrong in the number of scroll. So what's just fascinating is this dynamic of the inversion of the first born is a huge sub-theme of the Exodus narrative as a whole. It rarely comes to the surface except in these moments of Israel is my first born and then with Passover and there the inversion of the first born is right front and center, along with a whole bunch of other themes. Obviously, which is what we ended up talking about.

And then Aaron's sons to quickly summarize that. He has four sons. Yeah. Aaron has four sons. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nadav, Avihu, Elazar. And it's the first two, the older two sons that bring the strange fire

And it's the first to the older two sons that bring the strange fire into the holy place and get zapped. Yeah, sorry, I'm just going to bother. Oh, yeah, the fourth born son of Aaron is Ithamar. Yeah, and Nadav and Avihu, who are the oldest sons, end up violating the liturgy in some way. On the day, the first day of the tabernacles like service. And what they do is take incense into the tent with what's called unauthorized fire, strange fire, but bringing incense into the tent at that point was only the responsibility given to their dad. So you have the younger trying to assert the authority of their dad. Taking the role of the dad is kind of like a ham move from Genesis chapter 9 of ham, you know, trying to take in some way the position of his father. And so they die and are consumed by fire and it's the third born, Elazar, who then takes the role as the next high priest

in succession. So both with Moses and Aaron, and then among Aaron's sons, you get all the dynamics that you had in Genesis of God elevating the later born of the first born, pulling a ham move. No, no, no, no. Oh, it's a ham's a third born. Oh, ham's a third born.

Oh, yeah. But you're riffing on it. You've got the first born and the second born of Aaron, who are doing a ham kind of move, saying, let's take our power. Yeah. And even though it's not ours yet, let's do the thing that God has given only to our dad right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, we've got to stop there. So our next stop is going to be after the Torah and the former prophets. Yeah. This theme. Yeah. The narratives that really turn this up in a really powerful way is the story of Hannah and her son Samuel at the beginning of the Samuel scroll. and then Samuel the prophet becomes the one who God calls to anoint and raise up a king for Israel from the many sons of a guy named Jesse, and it's the younger one, David, that's elevated.

And then both of those set the pattern that gets drawn upon in the latter prophets, especially the book of Isaiah, about how God will raise up a future seed of David to bring God's reign and blessing over all the nations, but through suffering and distress. Okay, so the first born in the prophets. Yeah, man. What a great team. Hey, this is Dan Gammal with the podcast team.

And one of the things we want to start doing here occasionally at the University of the Univert shows is introducing other staff. You know, there's a lot of people and a lot of projects that make up Bible project. It's not just our English videos or our podcast, so we thought that this spot in our show would be the perfect place to highlight a variety of people working here. So to kick us off and read our outro credits, I'm here with a friend of mine and a coworker. And the person who also happens to have the distinction of being employee number one, the first person who ever worked a Bible project. You want to go ahead and introduce yourself.

Yeah, my name is Robert Perez. And Robert, tell us a little about who you are at Bible project and what your day-to-day looks like. I'm a creative director for the animation studio and my day-to-day various. I'm directing, I'm leading the artists, I'm drawing, I do a lot of stuff but I'm kind of in charge of like a lot of the visuals. Tell me a little about yourself outside work. I'm a family man, I got three kids and a wife and I just left spending time with them. You have a big, great day, don't you? I used to know.

Now I have a, it's a poodle made of... One of those designer dogs. Yeah, yeah, super trendy. Yeah, super trendy. How many pests do you have? I have two dogs and a tank full of stick bugs. Of stick bugs? Stick bugs.

Stick bug, are you serious? Yeah, there's my sons. They're interesting. They're very wild. As far as they're very exotic, they're like, they get like, about this big. But yeah, my son is big into animals. And they're super easy because all you have to do

is like spray them with water and give them like, blackberry vines and that's all. And they're super durable. Yeah, hard to break. Hard to kill. Yeah. Wow. We're talking a lot about bugs right now.

Wow. What will you read the outer force? The credits. Yeah. Today's show was produced by Cooper Peltz, with associate producer Lindsey Ponder, our lead editors Dan Gummel, Tyler Bailey, and Frank Garza are editors.

This episode was mixed by Tyler Bailey and Hannah Wu compiled our annotations for the Bible Project map. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. All our resources are free thanks to the generosity of thousands of people like you. Find free videos, podcasts, classes, study notes, and more at Bibleproject.com. Thanks for being part of this journey with us. Great, man. All right, Robert. OK.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for coming in. you