DevoBlogging – Day 27
One of my favorite scenes in the movie Armageddon is when Owen Wilson’s character, Oscar, asks Billy Bob Thorton’s character, Truman, just how bad the conditions are going to be on the asteroid that is barreling toward the Earth.
Oscar: What’s it gonna be like up there?
Truman: Two hundred degrees in the sunlight, minus two hundred in the shade. Canyons of razor-sharp rock. Unpredictable gravitational conditions. Unexpected eruptions, things like that.
Oscar: Ok, so the scariest environment imaginable. Thanks, that’s all you gotta say. Scariest environment imaginable.
I have to think that for Pharaoh, the people of Egypt, and even the Hebrews that these plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, diseased livestock, boils, thunder and hail, locusts, darkness, and the promise of more to come could be best described as “scariest environment imaginable.” Like Oscar said, “Thanks, that’s all you gotta say. Scariest environment imaginable” This makes Pharaoh’s reaction at least a little bit puzzling. In such an environment you would think that even the great king of Egypt would give into Moses’ demands. I understand that scripture tells us that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart. I have to think that it must have been pretty hard to begin with.
Pharaoh does not look at the Egyptians as anything but slaves. He has no connection to their history or their sojourning. Perhaps there was something of a story in him that would remember that Joseph, a Hebrew, once helped to make Egypt great. At this point that would have been ancient history. Amongst all of the Israelites there was no Joseph to be found. And now Moses comes talking about the God of the Hebrews and this God’s great powers. Pharaoh who would consider himself a God had to be thinking, “This God has allowed all of his people to be in slavery. Why should I fear a God who has not shown up in a generation or two?” Pharaoh’s response has to be, “What have you done for/to me lately?” Pharaoh had to be hedging his bet that he could weather these plagues. If they were caused by the Hebrew God he would probably get tired and abandon them again. Perhaps the Hebrew God who had been out of touch for so long was just blowing off some steam that this God would get it out of his system and that he would be gone for another generation.
We know that his is not the case. We know that God’s concern for his people was not growing hot and cold. We know that God respond to his people calling in their pain. We know this was not going to be a casual fling. This relationship would be for the long haul. That out of this “scariest environment possible” Pharaoh would relent after it got just a little bit scary – even more “scary unimaginable.” We know that God would be omnipresent, going before, his people as they begin their journey into the desert.
