A helpful resource on Exodus and violence

A question which has come up a couple of times in recent months, as we’ve been exploring Exodus in Yardley Wood BC, is the issue of divine violence in the Old Testament. I noticed today that Greg Boyd, whose writing I’ve found to be tremendously helpful, has promised a series of posts on this topic on his excellent ReKnew website. You can find out more at: 

http://reknew.org/2013/02/reflections-on-divine-violence-in-the-old-testament/

God, Egypt and nature... some follow up thoughts

Time off this week has offered a welcome opportunity to catch up on viewing and reading, and a couple of items have caught my attention, provoking further thought about a subject we reflected on in YWBC a few weeks ago.

One of the concerns expressed by a number of people in our discussion on the plague stories of Exodus was the suffering experienced by nature and animals during the sequence of afflictions which befell Egypt. For example, animals, as well as humans, are afflicted by gnats and boils, the land is ‘ruined’ by flies, trees and plants are ‘shattered’ by thunder and hail. And, of course, even the firstborn of all the livestock, as well as humans, are struck down.

When we discussed this in church a few weeks ago, I made the suggestion that nature is caught up in the suffering which results from Pharaoh’s intransigence, but also as part of a process by which God will eventually secure for it a better future under the protective care of the people of Israel. At the time of the Exodus, Egypt was regarded as the ‘bread basket’ of the world, a thriving economy that provided food to the surrounding region. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to think about the intensive farming methods that would have been employed by Egypt. In contrast, the new order planned by God for Israel is one where the land lies fallow for recovery every seven years and donkeys get to rest on the Sabbath (Exod 23:10-12).

I’ve been reminded in recent weeks how we read the Bible from a very human-centred perspective, which can blind us to the bigger story God is unfolding, a story of freedom for all creation, for which it longs, groaning as if in labour (Rom 8:22). Over the weekend, we spent an hour enjoying the ‘last chance to watch’ the BBC’s wonderful documentary Africa, on iPlayer. One of the most moving lessons of Africa was the way it demonstrated the terrible hardship, a daily battle for survival, which is experienced by so many animals in our world. Watching Africa, and its account of elephants and zebras walking for days on end in a search for water, I was reminded of God’s words at the end of Job 38:

³⁹ ‘Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
   or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, 
⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens,
   or lie in wait in their covert? 
⁴¹ Who provides for the raven its prey,
   when its young ones cry to God,
   and wander about for lack of food? 

It seems that part of the lesson God is trying to teach Job is that there is work that he is doing in our world, a work of care and provision for his creation, that humans are often oblivious to.

A second point which emerges from Job is the way God is portrayed as wrestling with his creation, seeking to bring order to a world which is beset by chaos. This is an issue which has wider implications for how we understand God’s relationship to our world. Is creation perfectly ordered, a clockwork universe which has been set in motion by a God who now regulates every tiny event of every life, or is God still seeking to lovingly assert his authority on our world, a process only to be completed at the eventual moment when all things are made new? This brings me to the second article I came across this week, the news that the cosmos may be ‘inherently unstable.’ You can read the full story here, the suggestion that research on the properties of the Higgs boson is reviving an ‘old idea that the Big Bang Universe we observe today is just the latest version in a permanent cycle of events.’ Reading Scripture, in light of these new scientific discoveries, seems to me to provide further support for the idea of viewing creation as untamed, and God as one who is lovingly working to bring about its deliverance, as well as ours.

God, Pharaoh and how our own hearts sometimes get hardened

This morning we spent time in YWBC thinking about one of the most troubling parts of the Exodus story, the process by which Pharaoh’s heart becomes hardened. We usually refer to the natural disasters which God visited upon Egypt, in order to bring Pharaoh to his senses and make him aware of the need to set the people of Israel free, as the ten plagues. But Exodus also describes these events as ten ‘signs’ (E.g. Exod 8:23).

As we discussed this morning, my view on this story is not that God has predestined the response of Pharaoh from the beginning. I suspect that if Pharaoh had paid attention to, say, the first three signs, there would have been no need for the final seven. Take a look, for example, at Exodus 4, where God is discussing the creative power he will loan out to Moses to persuade the Israelites of his credibility as a leader. God comes across not as someone with a blueprint, but as someone who is confident he can respond to whatever challenges or objections Moses has to deal with.

In Exodus, the word often used to describe Pharaoh’s hardness is kabed, which means strength – it carries a sense of obstinacy, of arrogance. Even at the beginning of the plague stories, Pharaoh is presented as someone who is stubborn and pride, the sort of person with too much to lose from admitting their own faults or mistakes (not just losing slaves, but losing face as well). There was probably never a strong chance of Pharaoh being flexible with Moses. When God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, it seems like he is merely strengthening a resolve and determination which is already entrenched.

There are some people I know who seem to become more and more set in their ways over time, more bloody-minded and frustrated with the people and the world around them which, unlike them, continues to change. Sometimes we describe these people as becoming a ‘parody’ or ‘caricature’ of themselves, which sums up the way their behaviour becomes more extreme. Whether these people are plain bad-tempered, or just have an air of the ‘prima donna’ or ‘misery guts’ about them, there is one common pattern. Over time, they alienate people. Those around them become frustrated with them or wary, or even plain scared of them (I’ve known ‘scary’ people in every church I’ve been part of), and so these folks drive away the friends who might be able to offer them words of constructive criticism. I’m no expert on psychology, but my sense is that this process does set in very early in some people’s lives, and sadly reaches a point of no return for others. We find ourselves able to predict how they will react badly in circumstances where they don’t get their way.

It’s easy to read the plagues story as just a demonstration of God’s greatness over the powers of the Empire. But the case of Pharaoh’s hardened heart offers a deeper, personal challenge. And it’s also worth reflecting that this is not the only part of the Exodus narrative where people are becoming increasingly stubborn or ‘stiff-necked.’ In the second half of the story, it’s Israel itself displaying increasingly hardened behaviour. Pharaoh’s an easy target for insider readers of the story, but sometimes the barriers to God within his people are as big as the barriers outside. Specks in the eyes of others, planks in our own etc etc....