Chapter Five— Escape from Egypt
Last time we saw that God saved Jacob’s family by bringing them all to Egypt to get food during the famine. But then they all died and their great grandchildren became slaves to the Egyptians! They were slaves for 400 years. That is a very long time. It is about 10 generations, so some of them were the great great great great great great great great grandkids of the original Israelite families who settled there. During that time, most of them began to worship other gods. The Egyptians didn’t have just one god for everything. Instead they had gods for all kinds of things—like river gods and land gods and even insect gods! Hahaha!
The Israelites grew from about 70 people to almost 2 million people and the Egyptians were beginning to be afraid of them because they were getting stronger and stronger. The ruler of the land was known as Pharaoh but he was not the same Pharaoh who knew Joseph. He didn’t know anything about Joseph which means he probably got an F in history. Anyway, he was not friends with the Israelites and he did not want them to be strong, so he decided to kill the baby boys, but he let the girls live. It wasn’t because he was partial to girls, but he knew that the boys could become soldiers and learn how to fight someday so he wanted to get rid of them.
In those days, women did not go the hospital to have babies, but women who were called midwives came to deliver the babies at home. The Israelite midwives feared God so they refused to kill the baby boys. So then Egyptian soldiers would go from house to house checking for baby boys. Moses was born at this time, but his parents hid him—not in the closet, because they knew the soldiers would look there first—but in the river! No soldier was going to go into the river looking for a baby. But Moses’ mom and sister knew that the princess used to bathe there, and they knew she would feel sorry for the baby. When the princess found the baby she asked if she could raise him herself. So when Moses was old enough for pre-school, he left his mom and dad and lived in the palace and went to school there. God wanted Moses to get an Egyptian education and be raised like a prince so he could one day become the prince of God’s people—kind of like Joseph did.
Moses in the Nile
That didn’t happen right away. In fact Moses was 80 years old before he came to set God’s people free. After God spoke to him from the burning bush, Moses joined up with his brother Aaron and they confronted another mean Pharaoh and told him to let God’s people go.
The burning bush
The Pharaoh wouldn’t listen so finally God said, “That’s enough!” God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and tell him that God would do bad things to him if he didn’t obey. Pharaoh refused to listen so God began to attack the gods of Egypt. Remember how Egypt had all kinds of gods for everything? Well, God starting attacking them one by one so all of the Egyptians would know who the real God was. Here’s how it worked:
- Hapi was the god of the Nile River which was the source of life for all of Egypt. God made all of Hapi’s water turn to blood.
- Heqt was the toad goddess who was thought to be the ruler of the land. But God sent frogs that made it seem like she couldn’t control her own area.
- Geb was the idol of earth and vegetation and the plague of gnats really got in his face!
- Khepfi was the god of insect life. Can you believe insects have their own god? What next? Well, God sent swarms of flies that Khepfi could not control.
- Apis and Hathor were the bull-god and cow-goddess of Egypt, and the 5th plague affected the livestock of Egypt.
- Thoth, also known as Imhotep, was the god of healing. The Egyptians sometimes burned human sacrifices to him and scattered the ashes to petition his favor when they were sick. But this time when Moses scattered the ashes, the people became covered with boils, so Imhotep was powerless to save them.
- Nut was the goddess of the sky and she would bless the crops. But God brought hail that destroyed all the crops.
- Anubis was the god of the fields and God brought a plague of locusts to destroy everything in the fields that hadn’t already been destroyed by the hail.
- Re was the sun god and believed to be the father of the Pharaohs. But God brought darkness on the land of Egypt and there nothing Re could do about it.
- The last god of all to be destroyed was Pharaoh himself. He thought he was a god, but he could not keep his own son from dying when God killed all the first-born in the land.
The people of Israel did not die because they put lamb’s blood on the top and sides of their doors so the killing angel of death passed over their houses and let them live. God told them to do this which might seem like kind of a silly thing to do. But God wanted them to look ahead to another Lamb who would come some day and save his people forever.
After this, Pharaoh let the people go and they left immediately. When they got to the Red Sea, they couldn’t get across and the mean Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army after them. They were caught between the army and the sea with nowhere to go! But God parted the sea for them and they got across during the night on dry land. The Egyptians thought they could get across too, so they started out but then their chariot wheels got stuck, and God let go of the wall of water and all the Egyptians drowned in the sea.
So God saved his people again. Not because they deserved it. Remember that they were idol worshippers too. They were no better than the Egyptians. But they found grace because God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that he would make them a great nation and all the nations on earth would be blessed through them. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, a person would come from this nation who would one day restore Eden. I bet you forgot about that! But God didn’t forget…
Evidence of God's Grace to Me:
Evidence of God's Grace to Me:
Playing Dress Up
Lipstick Malfunction
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