followHIM - Exodus 7-13 -- Part 1 : Dr. Andrew C. Skinner

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

What is pericope, and why is Exodus 7-13 referred to as such? Dr. Andrew Skinner instructs how the Exodus from Egypt reverberates throughout all of scripture. He relates how Jehovah has the power to bring about his miracles,  his purposes, and deliver his people.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/episodesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producers/SponsorsDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: MarketingLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Rough Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Transcripts/Language Team/French TranscriptsAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow Him. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I am your host. I am here with my co-host, the four score years old, John, by the way. John, have you read the book of Exodus chapter seven? It says that Moses was four score years old. So I figured maybe that would be a compliment to compare you to Moses. Do you feel complimented? Yeah, what is the score again? It's a four score years old. It's 28 points. You are, yeah. Touchdown time. John, we are studying Exodus 7 through 13 today. A lot of chapters in Exodus. We needed a brilliant mind

and we got one. Tell everybody who's with us. We have Dr. Andrew Skinner with us today and so excited to have him. I have so many books of his on my shelf. One of my favorites of all time is this Gethsemane book that he wrote, which I use in New Testament class sometimes, but our audience probably would love to know. There's a two-volume verse-by-verse commentary on the Old Testament written by Dr. Ogden and Dr. Skinner. I'm going to use the bio that's here. Andrew C. Skinner is a professor of ancient scripture and Near Eastern studies, a Richard L. Evans professor of religious understanding at BYU, where he served as the dean of religious education and as the first executive director of the neil a maxwell institute

for religious scholarship a member of the international editorial group that translated the dead sea scrolls how cool is this an author or co-author of more than 200 articles and books on religious and historical topics dr skinner taught at the byu jerusalem center and was its associate director he has served in the churchYU Jerusalem Center and was its associate director. He has served in the church as a bishop, a counselor in a district presidency in Israel, a member of the Correlation Evaluation Committee, and a member of the Sunday School General Board. He and his wife, Janet Corbridge Skinner, are the parents of six children and have ten grandchildren. We call him Andy because we've known him for years, and we just love this man and what he's contributed. Brother Skinner, thank you for being with us today.

Well, thank you. Thanks for your hospitality. It's a great privilege. John, you probably know this, but BYU Religious Education has a YouTube channel. And I think Dr. Skinner is maybe the star of that YouTube channel. He probably doesn't even know it, but he is, I think, in almost every other video. Let's jump in. Exodus chapter 7. And we really need to go back to chapter 6 or even the very end of chapter 5 to understand

the nature of the signs and wonders that the Lord will bring to Pharaoh, king of Egypt. But before we do that, could I make just a couple of introductory comments about this section? Please do. In graduate school, we call it a pericope. It's spelled pericope. But if you want to sound really intelligent in theological circles, you can use the word pericope. And the pericope, Exodus 7 through 13, is really the story of Israel's deliverance and the institution of the Passover commemoration. I guess the first point to make is that it would be hard to overstate the importance of this section of Scripture, not just for the Old Testament, but for all of Scripture. Exodus 7 through 13 is the core of the Exodus

story, which as our listeners will know, reverberates throughout all of Scripture. In the Old Testament, in the New Testament, in the Book of Mormon, in fact, this central event in the lives of the Israelites is a core event, along with a couple of others. And when you think about how the story of the Exodus has influenced the lives of Israelites today, namely our Jewish brothers and sisters, we come to appreciate the fact that this really is one of the key events in all of scripture. And it's had such a significant impact on Israel, on who they are, on whose they are, their relationship to Jehovah, on Jehovah's power to bring about his purposes.

So again, to reiterate, it would be hard to overstate the importance of Exodus. It's huge in terms of the influence that it's had on Scripture, the standard works, not just the Bible. In section 8, in the Doctrine and Covenants, this is the spirit of revelation. This is the spirit which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground. Yeah, and it's assumed that you understand that. It's assumed that you know that story because it is so prominent and powerful.

And consider for a minute how many times the Exodus story is recounted every year at springtime around the world by our Jewish brothers and sisters, by Jewish families, as they participate in the Passover meal, which is also called the Seder meal. Seder is a Semitic word, a Hebrew slash Aramaic word that means ordered or arranged. And when you look at the preparations that go into a Passover meal, that's literally true. It is one of the most descriptive of all of the commemorations of celebrations in the Jewish liturgical calendar. That's one point. A second point is to emphasize Exodus 7 through 13 is a foundational, if not the foundational story of deliverance in the Old Testament. It's the prototypical story of divine deliverance, and it serves as the foundation for the kind of deliverance that we see in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.

If I can maybe just emphasize that the Passover that we're going to be looking at today is one of two unparalleled occurrences of deliverance, both performed by Jesus Christ. The deliverance in Exodus 7 through 13 is performed by the premortal Christ, who is Jehovah. Jesus was God before he came to this earth. And so that significant act of deliverance is a core, if not the core event of the Pentateuch. And then, of course, the deliverance provided by Jesus Christ in his atoning sacrifice. But interestingly enough, the Passover meal was the foundation of the institution of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Jesus, as a good Jewish covenant Israelite, kept the Passover every year as was required. And that last night of Jesus's mortal life, then we see that the evening begins as a Passover or a Seder meal, but by the end of the time that the apostles leave the upper room with Jesus, that Passover meal has been transformed into the sacrament

of the Lord's Supper and the universe is never the same again. So that's a second point that I would like to make before we dive into the actual text, and then a third point, if you wanted to pick a passage in the Old Testament that foreshadows the atonement of Jesus Christ, just a single passage, I think you'd have to go to Exodus chapter 12. And that's part of our discussion today. The symbolism in Exodus 12, pointing to the future Jesus Christ, seems to me to be without parallel in many ways in the Old Testament. As a single episode in the story of salvation history, Exodus 12 is hard to beat beat. So thank you for indulging me, but I think it's important that we understand ahead of time what we're looking at today in these few chapters, just the core, the core of deliverance in the Old Testament and the foundation of deliverance by Jesus Christ. We'll talk more about the symbolism specifically in Exodus 12, but this really is pretty significant.

Pete Andy, so as our listeners are going into this, they should be kind of in the back of their minds, have obviously the Savior's atoning sacrifice in the back of their mind as they read about this story, and also their own maybe sacrament experience that they have every Sunday. If we were to keep those at the back of our mind, we'd probably get more out of this. Wow, I think you're absolutely right. This provides a springboard for our own personal devotions that center on the sacrament every week. We think about Passover and the springtime of the year, but it's a one-time event per year. But we think about the sacrament, it is, as far as I understand, the only ordinance that we get to participate in for ourselves and not have to be a proxy for somebody else. All the other ordinances, especially temple ordinances, when we

go to the temple, we do it one time for ourselves and then we become proxies for others. Not so with the ordinance of the sacrament, and it happens every week, which is an amazing reflection of our Father in heaven's love for us and the Savior's not just weekly concern, but daily continual concern for members of Covenant Israel. So you're absolutely right. It provides the springboard for our reflections on deliverance, on substitutionary atonement, on the love of God that's demonstrated in the salvation history of covenant Israel. I love that. This idea that we can, we worship God with all of our heart, mind, and strength, right? So as we're listening, let's not just engage our mind, but let's engage our hearts here.

This is information that we can learn. We can worship God with our mind, but we also just need to be feeling and thinking, how can I use this? If you have a sense of the Passover, your sacrament experience really does become better. Let's start at the end of chapter 5 of Exodus for some background information. At the end of chapter 5, we understand that Moses and Aaron have been to Pharaoh already. The word Pharaoh is an Egyptian word, per-aa, which literally means great house, signifying the royal palace. It's the great house where the great man lives in. And so that's the connection between the Egyptian word and Pharaoh himself.

And of course, Moses and Aaron have asked Pharaoh to let God's people go into the wilderness so that they can worship God. And in chapter 5, verses 22 and 23, we see that Moses returns to the Lord because Pharaoh has rebuffed them quite significantly. And in fact, he has made life even more difficult for the Israelites that are in bondage. And so Moses, and understand that Moses is one of the greatest men who has ever lived on the earth, certainly one of the greatest prophets. But we see a little bit of his human side come through in his protestations to Jehovah. He says, in effect, why have you brought trouble upon your own people? In fact, why did you send me to Pharaoh?

Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak your name, he has done evil things to this people, meaning the Israelites, and you have not rescued or delivered your people at all. This is not working the way I thought it would. That's exactly right. Why did you have me go through this exercise if it's going to turn out this badly? Not for me, but for your own people. The Lord responds to Moses very, very patiently in chapter six. And he says, basically, now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh. In other words, Moses, buckle your seatbelt because you haven't seen anything like what you're going to see.

Andy, I'm so glad you pointed that out. How often do we as people do this same thing? We feel like we have a prompting, we're going to move forward, it's going to work out, and it doesn't. And we go back to the Lord saying, where did that prompting come from? I can see it, Nephi. I can see why Nephi taps into this story. You know, the reason I really appreciate this discussion is I think a lot of us are familiar

with these amazing, beautiful stories because of the Ten Commandments and Prince of Egypt, a couple of movies. And there's not the emphasis of Christ that I love that I'm hearing right now. And that's why I'm glad all of our listeners who may be familiar with those movies can look at this with these kind of eyes, where we're focusing on, look at the Passover meal, look at the symbolism of Christ, and then we can appreciate that, go into actual text. And I love those movies, and I'm grateful for them, but now we get to look for the Savior in all these verses. So, thank you for bringing that in and let's continue to do that today. Wonderful. Thank you. The part that I like to focus on in my old age is the

patience that the Lord has with Moses. And he says, in effect, now calm down, wait and see what I'm going to do to Pharaoh because of my strong hand and because of my strong hand, he will eventually drive the Israelites out of his land. Things will be that powerful that he in effect, want them to go. He won't want them to keep around. In Moses's mind, Andy, it's got to be like, what? There's no way Pharaoh's ever going to want us to leave. That's right. And we see that throughout the first nine plagues where Pharaoh even at one point says, okay, if you'll stop this plague, plague of frogs, then I think we can let you go out and worship your God. But then he has a change of heart. And we'll talk more about Pharaoh's hardened heart. There are a couple of things to

say. So notice then in chapter six, the Lord reintroduces himself to Moses in verse 3 of chapter 6. He reminds Moses that he's the one that appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. And notice that they're listed separately because each one is important to God and each one has a separate experience with the great Jehovah. So the Lord wants Moses to understand that Jehovah is capable of bringing about his purposes. And then he says, according to the King James Version, by the name of Almighty God, but my name Jehovah was I not known to them. And I think it's okay if we admit that the King James translators misread this passage.

It's clarified for us in a JST edition at the bottom of the page where the Lord's statement is a question rather than a statement. He says, and was not my name known unto them? In other words, the name Jehovah was known by the patriarchs and it was known all the way back before that. And I just want to say, as a student of Hebrew, that this is a perfectly legitimate translation from the construction. There were no question marks in ancient Hebrew writings. And the way that you asked a question was you made a comment in the form of a statement, but you inflected it as a question. And that's, I think, what Jehovah is doing. He's saying, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, El Shaddai in Hebrew,

and by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them. So the key word in verse three is the word but. And interestingly, in the way Hebrew works, this is one consonant in the Hebrew text. It's called the vav. And vav, then, is the way that you insert a conjunction. The point is, is that rather than translating as but, it really is to be translated as and. And by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them. So we have the JST evidence and we actually have the Hebrew that can be translated appropriately as a question. And I've always appreciated the fact that the Joseph Smith translation helps us to appreciate points that we may miss in the text.

And then he says, and the Lord says, and I have remembered my covenant. And thankfully, the Lord does remember the covenant that he made with Adam and then reconfirmed to Abraham. Abraham was such a powerful follower of truth and a powerful follower of Jehovah that it becomes known as the Abrahamic covenant. And we all remember that there are four main subheadings to the Abrahamic covenant, four main categories of promised land, innumerable posterity, priesthood authority, and ultimately exaltation. And in this case, we're going to focus on the land part of it. I have made my covenant and I remember my covenant and I've got a land, a promised land prepared for the Israelites who have been groaning under Egyptian bondage for the last several hundred years.

And it's all, again, about redemption. It's all about the things that the Lord will do to bring about the fulfillment of his covenant with covenant Israel. If I'm the intended audience of these books, isn't the idea to be my family history where I, if I'm living just after the time of Moses and I pick up my five books of Moses, this is the idea of I'm supposed to get from this that I'm part of this covenant as well and that I have a role to play. One of the all-time great Hebrew scholars, Professor R.K. Harrison, talks about the beginning of the Old Testament, the book of Genesis, and he says, it's nothing more or less than a family history. And it's written so that all Israel feels a part of that family history.

And we'll get to this later. But interestingly enough, when our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate the Passover every springtime of the year, they are obligated, they're required to consider themselves as part of the Israelites who came out of Egyptian bondage. This is not abstract. They themselves are required to consider themselves as though they were part of the original Israelites. And if they don't do that, then they're not fulfilling the requirement of the Passover. That's true even to this very day. There's a special part in the original Israelites. And if they don't do that, then they're not fulfilling the requirement of the Passover. That's true even to this very day. There's a special part in the Passover where we're told, you know, our Jewish brothers and sisters are told, you must consider

yourself as though you were part of the original Israel. Chapter 6, verse 5, I remember. So important to keep that in mind, that we ourselves are part of this story. We may be removed by however many years, maybe, but the point is, is that we're part of this story. We're part of this Israelite community. This is us we're talking about here. I had a student once, oh, it was such a great moment. She was a Jewish convert, one of my students. And I asked my class, can somebody just, somebody willing to explain the Passover a little bit and the Exodus as we were talking about this, and she raised her hand and she said, that is when the Lord brought us out of bondage. And she didn't say them, it was her family. And I had to stop and say, did you hear the way that she said that? That is when the Lord protected us and brought us out of bondage. And I just loved the way that she put that and had to stop and have the whole class

remember that. She was well taught by her parents because that is the requirement of the Passover. And if you haven't had a chance to participate in a simulated Passover or even in a regular Passover, if you have a Jewish family or Jewish friends, take the opportunity to do that because you then begin to sense that this really is our story. It's not their story. It's our story. Absolutely. It's our covenant.

We are children of Abraham. This is our family this is talking about. If you read these next few verses, Andy, it feels like the intended audience or a modern day reader can sense the Lord speaking to them. I will bring you out of bondage. I will be your God. I will, just like I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I am the Lord. I swear it to you. Well, and you point out these verses, verses six through eight, as very important verses because they foreshadow the four aspects of redemption that are commemorated in the Passover or Seder meal. And you just articulated them. I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under

the burden of these dreams. I will rid you out of their bondage. I will redeem you. I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians. I will rid you out of their bondage. I will redeem you. I will take you to me. So these four aspects of redemption are recounted in the Passover, even in modern times. It wasn't just for them. And so, again, this draws all of us into this important family history. Someone listening today might think, well, I'm not in bondage to the Egyptians, but we are in bondage to the monsters of sin and death, as Jacob would say. And the Lord saying, I will release you from this bondage of sin and death.

And not to put too fine a point on the times in which we're living, but you know, there are people on the opposite side of the world that are living in bondage and no political comment intended, but there are all kinds of bondage, bondages that people grown under in our day. And we're so grateful then that we have this model that reassures us that Jehovah in ancient times had enough power to bring about his purposes. Jesus Christ in our day has enough power to bring about his purposes. And if we extend that, the real lesson is Jesus Christ and our Father in heaven have

enough power to answer our prayers. No matter what our challenges, we have to be patient. And sometimes the Lord, for wise purposes, allows these conditions to go on. And we wonder why. And then we start wondering, well, maybe I'm supposed to learn some different lessons from this. But yeah, bondage is alive and well in 2022. Whatever your own personal struggles are, the Lord says, I can bring you out from under that burden. Exactly.

Beautiful. We then have of Moses that goes to speak the children of Israel in verse 9, but they are not listening to his voice because of the discouragement brought about by the cruel bondage that they're experiencing. And so the Lord says to Moses, go and speak unto Pharaoh that he let the children of Israel go. And Moses says, well, they didn't listen to me before. Why are they going to listen to me again?

And he puts up this protestation that he has already expressed way back in chapter four of Exodus. He says, Pharaoh is not going to listen to me, a person of uncircumcised lips. And this is a curious phrase. It's a Hebrew idiom, and circumcision versus the uncircumcised suggests the demarcation between those that are covenant Israel, those that are known, as opposed to those that are foreigners. And so what we might discern from this is that what Moses is really saying is that I have problems in a foreign tongue. And we naturally think, well, yeah, he doesn't understand Egyptian.

But that's actually not true. If we take a look forward in the New Testament, go to Acts 7, verse 22. This is the great disciple Stephen who is bearing his testimony about Christianity and about Jesus as the Messiah. But he does it by teaching the history of Israel. So Acts chapter 7 is Stephen's defense of Christianity and his defense of Jesus as the Messiah, but he does it by teaching history. Notice what Stephen says about Moses.

Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds. So, well, wait a minute. Moses says, I'm slow of speech and I'm uncertain. So what's going on here? And I think that the answer, at least part of the answer is that what Moses is saying is my native tongue, I was raised in Egypt. My native tongue is Egyptian. I don't speak so good the Hebrew lingo. I don't speak Northwest Semitic. And as a result, I'm not viewed by either the Israelites or Pharaoh and his court as an eloquent and polished ambassador, not just for my people, but an ambassador, a competent ambassador for my very God.

And he repeats that, by the way, in verse 30. He says, I am of uncircumcised lips. How shall Pharaoh hearken unto me? Yeah, he speaks Egyptian, but he doesn't speak the language of his own people. And so he is not regarded as competent, as a worthy ambassador of this. And that's a little bit of a different twist, I think, than we sometimes think of as what's Moses' problem with language. No, I don't think he stutters. No, I don't think he has a speech impediment. I think he's telling us that because he was raised in Pharaoh's court as a young man,

he speaks Egyptian. That's his mother tongue. And he's trying to learn Hebrew or a form of Hebrew, Northwest Semitic. So he can represent Israel. So that he can appropriately represent Israel. Now, this takes us to another important point. And we see this upcoming with the plagues. It is true that the signs and wonders that Jehovah will do through Moses are intended to let Pharaoh, intended to have Pharaoh let the

Israelites go. But the target audience really isn't Pharaoh or the Egyptian nobles in Pharaoh's court. The target audience for all of these signs and wonders is Israel itself. That's who Jehovah really has in mind. Yes, he's going to use these signs and wonders to make Pharaoh let the Israelites go. But the real intended audience, the audience that Jehovah is most interested in is Israel itself. And I think that we get a sense of that in much of this narrative. Andy, that makes such perfect sense.

It reminds me of maybe some people who are new to the church that I've met who will start talking and they'll say, you'll have to forgive me. I don't speak the, the lingo yet. Right. I don't know the doctrine yet. And I'm sorry. And there's always this apology of, I don't, I don't, I don't know it as well as I should. I'm sorry. And I'm, and you're thinking, no, the Lord can speak through you, even if you don't have the background of maybe someone who was born in the church and raised in the church. I have students like that who come up after class, oh, I just, I don't know who this person is or this person is. I don't know what BYC is, right? I don't know. I don't know what

some of these acronyms mean, and they feel uncomfortable. And you're saying, yeah, if it was just Moses, the Israelites would go, hey, you don't know what you're talking about. But with the Lord speaking, they're going to go, wow, this really is the Lord. Well, and think about the blessing it is to have the New Testament, specifically this great disciple, Stephen, who puts us on to this train of thought, who clues us into the way things are really working so that we don't make assumptions that are wrong. If it wasn't for Stephen's recounting of history before the Sanhedrin, and I think about how bold he is in doing that. And what's funny is a lot of my students,

they have the assignment to read this section in Acts. And a lot of them skip over Acts chapter seven because it's the history of Israel. And they say, it's boring. Well, it ain't boring if you want to understand the way that the world was working in Moses' day and in all of those periods up to the time that we see Jesus born on the earth. John, this reminds me of a story you used to tell about a guy who gets called as a Sunday school teacher and he doesn't even know how to read. Yeah, I was leaving the mall downtown in Salt Lake City and saw a man standing by a table signing copies of his book and nobody was talking to him.

People were walking right past him and my heart ached because I have been in that spot before. Why am I here? This is crazy. And people look at your book and walk away and don't want to make eye contact. Well, and he had this book, Mafia to Mormon. He was in Mafia in Michigan. It was. And he- You say that so casually. Oh, he was in the Mafia in Michigan. Yeah. He came home from work one day, whatever you call it. And his wife said, I let a couple of young men in the house today. They were missionaries. And he was like, oh, you should never let anybody in the house. They're not missionaries. That's their cover story. Those are federal agents. We got to get out of here and everything. And it causes this big fight. And she says, well, they're coming back tomorrow. What? They're coming back tomorrow. She convinces him to wait. And he's watching them come down the street and said, one of them looked

like he was about 12 and the other was maybe 18, you know, and he said, a cop will never let you get behind them. So he opened the door and said, come in to see if they would walk past him, let him be behind them. And they did, they just walked right in. And so opened the door and said, come in to see if they would walk past him, let him be behind them. And they did, they just walked right in. And so he settled down and they had this big discussion. A long story short, he unloads on all these questions. He's got religious questions now that he knows they're really missionaries. And the missionaries end up calling the mission president, hey, we've got this man, he has all these questions, but it's 930. And the missionaries end up calling the mission president hey we've got this this man he has all these questions but it's 9 30 and the mission president says well you can stay till 10 30 but

let me talk to your investigator and so here's the mission president with this mafia guy will you follow these young men home and make sure they get home safely? Because there are some shady characters out there. And he says, yeah, I'll take care of them. So at 1.30 in the morning, he takes them home. But he ends up joining the church. And finally, the bishop with great discernment told him, you're in, but you need to be all the way in. And at the peril of his life, he's able to get out of the mafia. The great part of the story is, what kind of a calling do you give a

former mafia guy? Obviously, you have him teach the 10-year-olds. So, as the bishop extended the call, and I love this story, he said, bishop, I can't read. I've been conning people my whole life. I skipped kindergarten. I can't read. I can just feel the bishop having been inspired to extend this call, and then the guy says, I can't read. The bishop just kind of said, you'll be fine. Here's the manual. He says, I walk into some 10-year-old boys in my class. He says, boys, I'm supposed to, imagine the tenderness here, the humility. I'm supposed to be your teacher, but boys, I can't read. And the boys said, we'll help you. And they were up on the chairs on their knees surrounding a lesson manual. And he said, those 10-year-old boys read me the lesson manual, and those boys taught me the gospel,

not just by what they read, but by how they treated him, I think. And if you get the book Mafia to Mormon, it's dedicated to my 10-year-old primary class, these 10-year-old boys. But that's a short version of the story that's so wonderful. But in another way, as you were kind of paralleling this, I don't speak the language. I am so new at this. I'm supposed to be your teacher. I can't read. And here's these boys. We'll help you. And I like to illustrate when I tell that story, this is the pure love of Christ, love for Christ, love like Christ. Yeah. Well, just the idea of what Andy is telling us here is that Moses does not

feel like the guy. Think of a missionary, right, Andy, out there? I am not the representative you want, I promise. Or that you need. I was going to tell a personal story about empathy that I gained for Moses the first time we went to Israel to teach at the BYU Jerusalem Center, this was in 1990, and the Gulf War was looming large on the horizon. had to go to Greece for six weeks to make sure that things were settled enough and that Saddam Hussein wasn't going to start launching his missiles while the students were trying to make their way to Jerusalem. And so the point is, is that my family and I got to Israel on a Thursday. By, I think, Sunday, the decision had been made to have the students go to Greece, but the families of the teachers would stay in Israel. And that meant that I had to leave my family in Israel by themselves while I went to Greece to greet the students.

And my wife didn't speak Hebrew and my children didn't speak Hebrew and they had to start school and they had to figure out the bus system. And my wife says, you mean it's not safe enough for the students, but it's safe enough for family with children, that kind of a situation. So the point is, is that I went, I was for six weeks with the students in Greece. Everything kind of calmed down. Saddam Hussein did attack Israel, but that wasn't until January. So I got back to Jerusalem and to my family at the end of September. And the first morning that I was back, sat down for breakfast and wanted a piece of toast. And Janet put this slab of stuff on the table, and I thought, gee, this looks awfully white for butter.

But I thought, well, you know, I'll try it. And I tried it, slathered my toast with this stuff, and it tasted weird. And I said, what did you buy? Well, she showed me the package. And because she didn't speak Hebrew, she had bought lard instead of butter. And I thought, you know what? This is the way that Moses must have felt. He is fluent in the language of the Egyptians, but he's not fluent in the language of the Israelites, the Hebrews.

And so he's slathering his toast with lard instead of butter. We joke about that, but the punchline, the real punchline is, is that we went out and bought butter and the lard actually tasted better. So we used the lard from then on. But the point is, is we need to have empathy for those that haven't had exposure to the language that we use. And that's a kind of a side lesson from Moses's experience. Before we move on, our readers will notice that in the midst of all of this and before we read about the Lord's solution to Moses' problem in chapter 7, verse 1, we get this section of family history dropped right in the middle of the narrative, verses 14 through 25.

We're, you know, reading along, talking about Moses going back to Pharaoh and how he's protesting. And I, you know, I don't have the qualifications, credentials, all of a sudden the narrative changes and we start talking about family history. And notice that the history that's being talked about is Moses' history. The author of this this, wants us to understand why Moses is chosen of the Lord, and that is because he is the authentic, legitimate representative of the Israelites. He is a member of the tribe of Levi, and only the first three sons of Israel are mentioned here to get to the point that Moses and Aaron are legitimate, designated representatives, and they are representing their own people. And it's done by this insertion of family history, that they really do have the Lord's approval, that they are

the very ones whose family they are representing and whose families they're going to save. I was going to say, Andy, that's where we get Moses' parents' name. Exactly. Yeah. Right here. We wouldn't have them if it weren't for this. We've got this interesting understanding of the way that Moses and the Israelites taught and were taught. And it's using the examples of family history to justify their legitimate call. And of course, the other reason that this put in is that Moses and Aaron being Levites will be in charge of the priesthood when the Melchizedek priesthood is taken away at the time of the great apostasy with the golden calves in Exodus chapter 32. And what will be left is the Levitical priesthood,

and Aaron will be put in charge of the Levitical priesthood. And so that helps readers as well as the family of Israel understand that this is the reason why Aaron will be in charge of the Levitical priesthood is because he's a legitimate representative of one of the first four tribes of the family. How would you say Moses's mother's name? Is it Yochabed or Yochabel? Yochabel.

I just think of her tossing that basket into the river. We do come to appreciate her strength of character and her faith, trusting that the Lord will take care of this baby boy and guide his life to become the powerful prophet that he did. By the way, some of our readers who know their ancient history will recognize that this is a kind of a pattern or a theme story that applies to other ancient kings. For example, there was a king in Mesopotamia named Sargon the Great, and his story is remarkably like Moses' story where he is put into a... And that very well may be with those traditions, those historical traditions floating about, that may be the source of Moses's mother's inspiration to put him into a reed basket. It was done earlier for other mighty leaders of nations and it worked out fine. So, it might very well work out fine now.

And you used the word floating there. That was a good little insert. Yeah. That was a good pun. So, Moses feels out of place. I don't think he ever quite recovers from that self-recognition that he has some work to do too in order to be the consummate leader of the Israelite people that the Lord needs him to be. But he didn't start out that way. That's a lesson for us is that the Lord takes us where we're at and whoever he calls, he qualifies. And it may take a few years for us to ramp up and become fully the kinds of leaders that we think the Lord needs and that he does need.

But he guides us and he nurtures us and he mentors us along, all of us. And Moses is a great example of that. You know, one of the things I love about this story is Moses expressing his inadequacy here and there. And who am I to do this? And I love that the Lord doesn't answer the way that we might with, oh, you're great. You're awesome. You're wonderful. You're special.

The Lord just says, I will be with thee. I love that answer. It's that you're right, Moses. And to all of us, you all have weakness, but I will be with thee. And in me is where your strength is going to come. And I love that message. To Moses, and I think it teaches us to help our children, those we teach, have not just confidence in themselves, but confidence in God and that he can help them. That he'll be with them. The fourth article of it, you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, means that you trust that he has enough power to bring about his purposes using you. In you, he will manifest his power and his glory.

Little old me. I do love President Monson's, I guess what we would call it, paraphrase of the principle that you articulated, whom the Lord calls, he qualifies. He doesn't leave people to themselves. He is always with us. And that's one of the great lessons that we derive from Moses. So Moses and Aaron, they go to Pharaoh's court, but the Lord has told them that he wants them to do something when they first arrive again back in Pharaoh's court. If I can direct our attention to chapter 7, verses 8

through 12, the Lord speaks to Moses and to Aaron and says, when Pharaoh shall speak to you, saying, show a miracle, what are you going to do? Well, the Lord says, what you're going to do is you're going to take the rod that's in your hand and throw it down and it will become a serpent. And of course they do that. And the magicians of Pharaoh's court are able to duplicate that miracle. But what happens in verse 12 is maybe the summary of the message that we need to derive. That is to say, the serpent that came from Moses and Aaron's rod swallows up all of the other serpents. That is to say, God's mastery over Pharaoh and over the gods of Egypt are one of

the first things that Moses and Aaron do in Pharaoh's court. And there's an important side note, a footnote to this particular episode. It centers on snakes, on serpents. In almost every culture of the Mediterranean world, anciently, the serpent or the snake was a dual symbol. On the one hand, it represented the ultimate goodness of God. And on the other hand, it represented the ultimate evil of demons that also inhabit the world. And of course, that's true in the Judeo-Christian culture. On the one hand, the serpent represents Satan, Lucifer in the garden. And on the other hand, the serpent represents the Messiah, Jesus Christ, as acknowledged by Jesus in John chapter three. He was the very one as Jehovah who commanded Moses to raise the brazen serpent. And so we live in this world where serpents symbolize so very

much good and sometimes evil. And that was true in ancient Egypt, that the ultimate beneficent deity in the Egyptian pantheon was represented by a serpent. Also the ultimate malevolent demon in the Egyptian pantheon was represented by a serpent, Apophis. And that is demonstrated by Pharaoh himself. As you and many others will remember, at this point in history, Pharaoh wears the double crown of upper and lower Egypt. The snake, yeah. And the serpent, the cobra, the aureus as it's called, is the symbol right in the front of Pharaoh's crown, the symbol of his power and the symbol of his authority. Every Pharaoh in Egypt was regarded as a living God on earth.

So we have Moses representing the true and living God to one who was regarded by his people, Pharaoh, as a living God on earth. And in fact, he has the serpent as his symbol. This is his power. This is authority. What happens? The serpent of the true and living God swallows up the serpents of the false God that are produced, the snakes that are produced by the magicians in Pharaoh's court. So there isn't very much in this section from chapter 7 to chapter 13 that doesn't have tremendous symbolism as the backstory of why it is included in the text. I hope I explained that clearly enough, but serpents play such an important role in the ancient world. And for the Egyptians, the serpent represented Pharaoh, who was the living God on earth. He was Horus, the son of Osiris, who was the great original god of the Egyptian pantheon, the god of resurrection.

That's why Osiris is always portrayed in papyrus documents in the color green, because he represents life, verdancy, and so on. So that's the backstory here, and I think it's a fascinating one. And I think it's a powerful one. It also helps us to appreciate that this image of the serpent was usurped by Lucifer so that he could come in the guise of the Messiah. He wasn't the Messiah, but he comes in the guise of the Messiah. And what does he do? He promises, Lucifer promises things that only the true Messiah can promise. You shall not surely die, but you'll be as the gods. Well, he doesn't have the power or the authority to bring that about, but he's trying to demonstrate to Adam and Eve that he really does have that,

the power and authority that's represented by the image of the serpent, which is a true image of the Messiah. And we see that even in Christianity as well. There's a great verse in Revelation. There's a dragon that looks like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon, where I'm trying to maybe pretend that I can say things like the Lord. I think that's what Lucifer is trying to do in the garden. He's trying to make people think, because he is a liar from the beginning, he's trying to make people think that he has this messianic qualification, that he's the Messiah.

He's teaching the truth. Well, not really. So we see the image of the serpent being a powerful one. I wanted to say that when Pharaoh saw that serpent eat the other serpent, he maybe should have picked up on the message, right? Like, this is really a big foreshadowing of what's about to happen. Yeah, well, how many times are we presented with messages from the Lord, and we either

ignore them because we don't want the information, don't confuse me with facts. My mind is made up, which is certainly true for Pharaoh. But you're right. What must have been going through his mind is he sees the very image of his own power and authority as a living God on earth being overcome by this God whom he has earlier said, Who is this Lord that I should pay any attention to him? Well, he's going to start paying attention to the true and living God. Do the scriptures differentiate between serpents and vipers? Because Jesus used the phrase generation of vipers. And I know that in that series, The Chosen, they made a comment about,

he said we were vipers. The Pharisees said, do you know? Yeah, there are different words, both in Hebrew and in Greek, that are used. In fact, in this part of the Exodus narrative, there are two different words that are used. Both are translated as snakes, and I suppose that there are fine distinctions to be made. I don't know off the top of my head what word it is that's used in the New Testament, but it would have been a Greek word since the original text of the New Testament was written in Greek. Yeah, I've heard that, you know, vipers were poisonous.

Snakes are not necessarily poisonous, but vipers are, and that maybe the Savior, when He called them a generation of vipers, was, you're for sure the bad kind of snake, you know, I don't know. Just from my personal experience living over in the land, I can say that many, if not most of the snakes are poisonous. We constantly remind our students to, if you see a snake, leave it alone because you have no idea.

You don't know. That's exactly right. And certainly the uraeus, the cobra symbol that Pharaoh wore was poisonous. And we could have a discussion about why the serpent becomes a symbol of deity on the one hand or ultimate evil on the other hand. Why is the serpent associated with the concept of resurrection? When the serpent encounters a human, the serpent has to make an instantaneous decision whether to strike and inflict punishment or to slither away.

So that idea of instantaneous judgment, which is the purview of the gods. Also, the snakes, they shed their skin every year and they are renewed. And so the idea of resurrection immediately comes to mind with the idea of the snake renewing itself or being resurrected, if you will, quote unquote, on a yearly basis. A lot of reasons why serpents played such an important role in the ancient world. With that then, the Lord is ready to unleash the different plagues on Pharaoh and on the Egyptian kingdom. And the first plague, of course, has to do with the River Nile. Now, Andy, as we go through these 10 plagues here, I know that listeners are going to say, I don't like the Lord dishing out these plagues, but I think it's important

that you started out the way you did because one Pharaoh is choosing these plagues because God says, I'm going to remember my covenant. I am going to keep my covenant and no one's going to stop me. I know that some people get uncomfortable with the Lord sending plagues on these people, but I like that the Lord keeps his covenants. I do too. And lest we start blaming the Lord for things that Pharaoh himself is responsible for, we can look at a verse like verse 3 of chapter 7. And this is an important passage because we see this theme throughout the next chapters

where the Lord speaking, I will harden Pharaoh's heart and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. Well, first of all, notice that there's a footnote to verse 3 of chapter 7 in which we get this marvelous JST correction where Pharaoh hardens his heart. Pharaoh hardens his own heart. And that JST correction then follows through the rest of the chapters. than that, in chapter 8, verse 32, and in chapter 10, verse 1 of Exodus, we have Pharaoh saying, I will harden my heart. I think that that was originally the correct reading of the text, and somehow transcribers or translators got confused, got mixed up, and thought that it was the Lord who was hardening Pharaoh's heart when it's really fair. But even more important than that, chapter 8, verse 32, and in chapter 10, verse 1, the word in Hebrew that's used, that's translated as harden, you know, I will harden my heart or he hardened his own heart, is the word for heavy.

Kaveid is the Hebrew word, kaveid or kavod. And so what the text is really having Pharaoh say is, I will make my heart heavy. And this plays directly into an ancient Egyptian religious practice, which is known as the weighing of the heart. Some of our listeners may be familiar with that. The most common judgment scene that tourists buy that are painted on papyrus pieces is called the Hunefer judgment scene. And what we see is a candidate who wants to enjoy the afterlife, wants to become a god himself or herself and live in the realm of the gods. And in order to do that, the person on their

deathbed has to pass different tests. And one of the tests is the judgment that they must pass through. And so we see this person being brought to the god Anubis, who's the god of the dead. He's the jackal-headed god. And we see another Egyptian god who's got a slate in his hand and a stylus and he's taking notes and that's the god Thoth, who is the god of scribes. And then we see the balance scales, where the candidate for eternal life's heart is being weighed against the feather of the goddess Maat. It's a very famous scene. A lot of people will recognize it. I have a copy of it right here where you can see that there is a person that desires to live life like the gods in the afterlife.

He's brought to the balance scales, his heart, and don't get too caught up in the scientific mechanics of how a candidate can stand there but have his heart weighed on the balance scales. They viewed the world differently than we do. So he wants to enjoy eternal life with the gods. His heart is weighed. If his heart weighs heavier than the feather of Ma'at, it means that the accumulated deeds of his life have been evil. And so things are out of balance. And if his heart weighs heavier than the feather of Ma'at, then he's turned over to what's called the Amut monster.

And the Amut monster is represented as a creature with the head of a crocodile, the chest and paws of a lion, and the rear end of a hippopotamus. These are the three largest man-eating animals in Egypt, in the ancient world, as they are today, right? I mean, so you stay away from those three. And so he's cooked, he's done, he won't get eternal life. But if your heart weighs as light as the feather of Maat, then you are brought into the next realm where you stand before Osiris and you go through a series of, I guess what we would call, ordinances is too strong a word. We would use that word, but the ancient Egyptians would say he goes through a series of enthronement tasks. And then he's anointed for eternal life. The ankh is poured out on his head. He's robed with the robe of the gods, and then he's ushered into the presence of Osiris to live

his life. All of that is to say that the Hebrew text, at least in two passages, recognizes the significance of making your heart heavy. And that's probably the way that all of the passages in this section of Exodus read, that Pharaoh made his heart heavy, because it reflects the actual judgment scene that every Egyptian knew about in ancient times. And that's an amazing correspondence there. So remember, in chapter 8, verse 32, and in chapter 10, verse 1, it isn't Pharaoh or isn't the Lord saying, I will make his heart hard. It's Pharaoh saying, I will make my heart heavy, which is in perfect harmony with the judgment scene of ancient Egypt.

And I think that that's a remarkable correspondence, frankly. So those who have traveled to Egypt and who have maybe a papyrus representation of the judgment scene can look at it with new eyes. Ah, this is in fact what's happening with Pharaoh in these chapters as we go through the plagues. Please join us for part two of this podcast.