12. The language of oppression!

12. The language of oppression! “As the Hebrew women were helping to deliver the baby. and on the delivery table, they would examine the baby. and if the baby is a girl, let her live. If it is a boy, you shall put him to death!” (Exodus 1:16). Generations after Joseph's death, the 15th Dynasty, the Hyksos royal family, which had been so strong, crumbled. The mainlanders of Egypt rose up against the Hyksos and overthrew the 15th Dynasty and established the 18th Dynasty. The Hyksos dynasty was Semitic, meaning they were related to the Israelites, which allowed the Israelites to live in peace in Egypt. However, the Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty was an Egyptian. After being ruled by a foreign power under the Hyksos dynasty, nationalistic patriotism came into the hearts of the Egyptians. The social structure of Egypt was slowly changing. The institutionalized social-state system gradually began to break down as the empire grew in size and became more specialized and professionalized. As the state became more powerful, the kingship became even more powerful. Thutmose I, who was a very powerful king, did not want Israel to be strong. So he said to the people, “Let us be wise against them, for these people, the children of Israel, are more numerous and stronger than we are, and let us be wise against them; for fear, if they become more numerous, they will join with our enemies in war, and fight against us, and we will go out of the land;” and he set bishops over them, and burdened them with heavy burdens, and made them build for Pharaoh the treasury cities of Bidom and Ra'amsheth. But the more they were mistreated, the more their children and people multiplied, and the more the Egyptians grew anxious about the Israelites, and they tightened their grip on them and made their lives difficult with hard labor, putting them to work in tilling the soil, baking bricks, and farming. But when the Hebrews still multiplied, Thutmose I ordered midwives to kill the newborn male babies of Israel. Ironically, however, one Hebrew child would end up in that Egyptian castle, growing and developing. He was like a second Joseph. Moses' mother couldn't bear to kill her beloved son, so she entrusted his life to God, placing him in a basket and floating him down the Nile. When the princess was out at the palace by the Nile, she saw the basket floating down, and when she picked it up, she found a smiling child in it, so she named him Moses, which means “brought up out of the river,” and found a nurse to feed him, and Moses' birth mother became his nurse, raising him and educating him in the Hebrew traditions and ideas that he was imbued with without his knowledge. Moses was not born a prince, and despite his Hebrew descent, he became an Egyptian prince through Hethsheba, an Egyptian princess. Hatshepsut was the unmarried daughter of Thutmose I, so she could have legitimately succeeded to the throne. However, she abdicated the throne to her husband, Thutmose II. When they had no sons, Thutmose II had a son by a courtesan, who became Thutmose III. Pharaoh's daughter took Moses in and raised him because she had no sons of her own. Hethsheba loved Moses, whom she had raised, more than the son her husband's concubine had given her. Thus, Moses and Thutmose III became rivals, and Moses was in danger of being killed by his political opponents at every opportunity. In the midst of this, Moses struggled with his own identity and saw his people, the Hebrews, reduced to slavery and serfdom in Egypt. Suddenly, Moses realized that he had a sense of identity with his people, and in a fit of rage, he struck down an Egyptian soldier who was mistreating his people. It's a fleeting moment, and one that Moses can't take back. Eventually, he leaves the palace and heads out into the wilderness. Little did he know, however, that the wilderness was also a great training ground and staging ground for the Exodus to come, a place where he would see firsthand the path he would have to tread as he led the Israelites. Moses then traveled further into the wilderness, where he and his family began to learn how to survive in a place and environment that he had never seen or heard of before, and where he was trained and trained for 40 years. Forty years of being trained as a prince in the palace of Egypt, and then another forty years of learning to live in the wilderness. He was trained in the highest intellect and leadership, and then he was trained and trained again for another forty years in how to survive and overcome the challenges of the lowliest, seemingly humblest, but harsh reality of nature, so that he would surely have the most extensive and thorough training to overcome and survive in any environment, any situation, and any strategist he encountered. Then Moses, having heard the voice of God and having been given a mission by God, now clearly realized what he had to do, he and his brother Aaron went to the Israelites to tell them what the Lord had covenanted with them. They believed in God's promise to save them, so the Israelites bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord. But Pharaoh refused to listen to Moses and Aaron. He did not want the Hebrews to listen to God, and he did not allow the Israelites who were providing the labor to rebel against him. In the end, the words and actions of Moses and Aaron, contrary to Moses' promise of deliverance and liberation, only brought the Israelites greater and greater suffering, hard labor, and hardship and pain. Translated with DeepL.com (free version) Moses' demands also reflected the young Pharaoh's view of the Israelites as a proud and overbearing king. Not only did Pharaoh reject Moses' first demand outright, but he was even more harsh, ordering that the straw for the bricks be given to the Israelites and that they must gather it themselves, while demanding the same amount of work as before, and furthermore, if they did not complete the day's work, he abused the Israelites terribly, cracking the whips on them. But Moses, with God's revelation and guidance, stepped forward and confronted the king head-on, striking him with a terrible plague: the ten plagues.  What were the ten plagues? 1. turned the waters of the Nile into blood (Exodus 7:14-25) 2. frogs covered all the land (Exodus 8:1-15) 3. caused the motes of all the land of Egypt to become lice (Exodus 8:16-19) 4. The houses of the Egyptians were filled with swarms of flies (Exodus 8:20-24) 5. caused all the livestock to become vicious and die (Exodus 9:1-8) 6. scattered ashes, causing poisonous plants to grow (Exodus 9:9-12) 7. hail from the sky (Exodus 9:13-21) 8. caused locusts to eat all the green grain (Exodus 10:4-19) 9. a pitch black darkness covered all of Egypt for three days (Exodus 10:21-29). 10. And finally, there was a plague that killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:29-33).  These plagues caused the people of Egypt to suffer in increasingly intense concentrations, resulting in greater and greater material and human losses, showing them that their idols were nothing in the sight of Jehovah. Originally, the Egyptians had known the Nile as their lifeblood, and the Nile itself, its fish and insects were objects of religious worship. But the Nile-god, the frog-god, and the sun-god had proved to be powerless before the LORD.  God himself said  “Let them know that there is no one like me in all the earth.” (Exodus 9:14)  And God said to Moses,  “I have raised you up to show you my power and that my name may be known throughout all the earth” (Exodus 9:16).  This shows how ineffective the idols were, as God searched every corner of Egypt and worshiped them. God also wanted to convince the Egyptians, as well as the Israelites, that God was the only one to be worshiped. In doing so, the Israelites returned to Canaan, and in fact, through Joseph, the children of Jacob returned to the land of Canaan 430 years after they had left it.