God’s Attention to Detail – Exodus 12:1-14

A text – Exodus 12:1-14

12 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. ³ Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. ⁴ If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. ⁶ You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. ⁷ They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸ They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. ⁹ Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. ¹⁰ You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire. ¹¹ This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. ¹² I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

¹⁴ “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

A reflection:

This story may be familiar to us all – Moses is trying to free the Israelites from captivity in Egypt. God visits nine plagues upon the Egyptians to move Pharoah to let them go, to get them out of his land. But although Pharoah does say, “Get them out of here,” he later relents each time and makes life worse for the Israelites. This story is what God does to prepare everyone for the tenth plague, the death of firstborn offspring.

What was new to me, reading this passage for this week’s lessons, was how God prepared Moses and Aaron and the people ahead of time for this extreme plague. First God realigns the whole calendar. Ten days in advance of the night of the killing of the firstborn, God has a message for the descendants of Israel. (Israel was the name God gave to Jacob, the man whose son Joseph wore the coat of many colors and brought the whole family to Egypt generations before to avoid dying from famine). “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.” Whatever calendar they had been following, this was the new calendar, like January 1. I had never paid attention to this part of the story before.

Then God tells them that on the 10^th day of this month, follow these instructions for what you must do to avoid the worst plague of all. You must follow these instructions or face the death of your firstborn children. That advance warning gave each family time to find a lamb or, if they were too few, to join with another family to follow the instructions. It gave them time to pack their belongings as well. This message from God was God entering into human time and reckoning how many days it would take to plan, prepare the people, and give them a way to avoid death.  

God knows our life. God knew the Israelites and their routines, their troubles, their pain. God knew the dangers they faced and the powers that held them. God knew exactly how long it would take them to follow God’s plan to save them from slavery. God chose Moses and his brother Aaron to lead this people God loved out of the danger of captivity in Egypt and into many other challenges in the wilderness that formed them into a nation. God takes into account our lives, every part of them.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for saving Israel. Help us to remember the details you considered as you brought them into freedom. Help us to recall your lovingkindness to your beloved people. Amen.