Chapter 1: Death of The Egyptian First-Born


The slaying of the firstborn in Exodus of the Torah has been misinterpreted down through the ages. There are two issues that are crucial to recognize. First, the identification of the first-born by God [Exodus 4:22] introduces the concept of the firstborn from a Divine perspective. God says to Moshe to tell Pharaoh, My son, My firstborn is Israel! ... I will kill your son, your firstborn. What is being immediately established in Exodus is a Divine formula that correlates the idea of the firstborn with the timeless perspective of the Divine, not the common perspective of the Israelites (or the Torah reader).

From the perspective of God, time as we know it does not exist. God is beyond space and time. Thus our common notion that our first child precedes the birth of our second child is a linear notion of time to which the Almighty is not constrained. Recognizing this, we ask, Who is the actual firstborn from the perspective of the infinite, timeless Divine?

One may naively answer that in ancient times it is the first child of each father of the house. However from the perspective of the Divine, the first born is he or she born first, or before, the others born. Thus whoever is the current head in any household by definition has a father, thus making the father of that head person the actual first or prior born. But by this reasoning, his father is actually firstborn, since he is first, prior to his child. But the father of a father is the firstborn to a father.... and so it goes, chaining backward, until one realizes that the very, very firstborn that is, the progenitor, or the originator, of the people is actually the true firstborn.

Since this part of Exodus is talking about the Israelites in Egypt, the people who are to be Gods people, the progenitor of these people is Jacob, (later called Israel by God), who first entered Egypt with his 11 sons with the accord of his twelfth son Joseph who had established himself there previously. So the actual progenitor of all the Israelites in Egypt is Israel (i.e., Jacob). This is what is meant, literally, by the first part of the Divine formula, as God says, My son, My firstborn is Israel. With this first part of the Divine equation established, God then goes on to say, I will kill your son, your firstborn. So we must ask, who or what would be the progenitor of all the Egyptians?

To answer this question, we must now focus on the households of Egypt. As we move to the idolatry world of Egypt, the progenitors for the Egyptians were their various idols. Every household of the Egyptians had its idol, and for every beast there was a progenitor-idol. Hence among the Egyptians, the first of all firstborn were one or more idols, which were resident within every Egyptian home. These idols were in effect the Egyptians progenitor(s), and this is completely parallel with the above formula for the Hebrews progenitor: Israel (i.e., Jacob). Thus when the final act of slaying the firstborn is achieved, it is destruction of false gods, the Egyptians idols, that is the lesson the Egyptians learn. In short, the formula at the onset of Exodus tells us that God intends to slay the Egyptians progenitor(s), their idols!

In Exodus 7:4, the Almighty says, I will set my hand against Egypt, and I will bring out my forces, my people, the Children of Israel, from the land of Egypt, with great judgment; the Egyptians will know that I am YHWH. Thus it is a demonstration of spiritual supremacy that is the goal of slaying the firstborn, not a goal of vengeance, reinforcing the point that it is idol destruction which is the focus of Gods wrath, not the Egyptians themselves.

This view becomes even more abundantly clear as the final death-of-the-first-born plague is rendered. In Exodus 12:12, God says, I will proceed through the land of Egypt on this night and strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from man to beast, ... on all the gods of Egypt I will render judgment, I, YHWH. Thus it is Gods point that striking down every firstborn that is, on all the gods of Egypt I will render judgement means precisely that. All the gods (idols) of Egypt, in every household, which constituted the firstborn from the perspective of the Egyptians and from the timeless perspective of the Divine, were to be destroyed. As always, the Divine is focused on the destruction of idolatry, and the mass destruction of it was the goal here too. In short, the firstborn slain were the idols of Egypt.

It is also important to note that God emphasizes that it is specifically God who will render this judgment (... I will render judgment, I, YHWH). Since it is the destruction of false idols that is the purpose, it is imperative that the true God be the destroyer of the false gods.

Several additional things are explained by this understanding. Normally one would think that the Egyptians upon finding their children slain would not be very hospitable toward the departing Israelites. More likely, revenge would naturally come to mind. However the triumph of one god over another, from the point of view of the common Egyptian, would be a spiritual battle that simply identified one god (of the Israelites) as more powerful than others (i.e., their idols). Hence the destruction of their idols, their first-born, was not on the same emotional level as would be the death of ones own child.

Since this has been a spiritual conquest, that is the reason Pharaoh says [Exodus 12:32], ...go! and bring a blessing even on me. He requests a blessing since he sees the outcome as a destruction of his god(s) by the Israelites God, not as a slaughter of His own people.