Why would a 'god of love' slaughter all the first born of Egypt after -forcing- Pharoah to keep the Jews in Egypt when Pharoah really wanted to let them go? What happened to god's respect for "free will" there?
And why would a 'god of love' slaughter the first born of the -cattle-? What did the cows have to do with Pharoah's decision?
How does this represent the acts of a 'god of love' who respects "free will"?
2006-10-04 13:33:40 · 10 answers · asked by bobkgins_sock_puppet_3 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
That's the point...
Pharoah was unwilling to let the Jews go, until the stakes got high. Then he relented and let them go after his curse upon the Jews was turned back upon the people of Egypt.
Pharoah's free will was in place. He chose to keep the Jews where God no longer wanted them. Pharoahs' free will choice based in pride and rebellion against the God of the Jews had costly consequences.
Sin always has a price.
Our true free will is exercised when we willingly conform to God's agenda rather than what is convenient for us.
2006-10-04 13:40:25 · answer #1 · answered by Bob L 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
At that time, God was not known to anybody but the Hebrews whom the Egyptians treated them as slaves for more than 400 years
When Moses came to the Pharaoh and asked him to release the Hebrews from Egypt for God's will, he humiliated that will and that God.
Moses gave the Pharaoh evidences that he was a man of real God by turning the stick to a snake and turning the river Nile red as blood.
The Pharaoh hesitated so many times in his decision and the Bible itself states that the reason behind this hesitation was the role of the Hebrews in Egypt (in Agriculture and such).
The Pharaoh made his decision but God made him make his refusal wide to show everyone that Pharaoh stood in the face of God
Consequently, God punished the Pharaoh in his people, in his land and animals and that was to make the power of God clear to everyone.
Either the Pharaoh nor the Egyptians would have known God without that experience.
2006-10-08 10:15:25 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Pharaoh was not willing to let the people leave Egypt.
One such principle is God’s testing of individuals by causing or allowing certain circumstances or events, or by causing such individuals to hear his inspired messages, the result being that they are obliged to exercise their free choice to make a decision and thus reveal a definite heart attitude, read by God
According to the way the individuals respond, God can also mold them in the course they have selected of their own volition. “the heart of earthling man” first inclines toward a certain way before God does the directing of the steps of such a one. Under testing, one’s heart condition can become fixed, either hardened in unrighteousness and rebellion or made firm in unbreakable devotion to God and the doing of his will.
Having reached such a point of his own choice, the end result of the individual’s course can now be foreknown and foretold with no injustice and no violation of man’s free moral agency.
Some translations render the Hebrew account to read that Jehovah “let [Pharaoh’s] heart wax bold” (Ro); “let [Pharaoh’s] heart become obstinate.” (NW) In support of such rendering, the appendix to Rotherham’s translation shows that in Hebrew the occasion or permission of an event is often presented as if it were the cause of the event, and that “even positive commands are occasionally to be accepted as meaning no more than permission.” Thus at Exodus 1:17 the original Hebrew text literally says that the midwives “caused the male children to live,” whereas in reality they permitted them to live by refraining from putting them to death. After quoting Hebrew scholars M. M. Kalisch, H. F. W. Gesenius, and B. Davies in support, Rotherham states that the Hebrew sense of the texts involving Pharaoh is that “God permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart, spared him, gave him the opportunity, the occasion, of working out the wickedness that was in him. That is all.”
Corroborating this understanding is the fact that the record definitely shows that Pharaoh himself “hardened his heart.” (Ex 8:15, 32, KJ; “made his heart unresponsive,” NW) He thus exercised his own will and followed his own stubborn inclination, the results of which inclination Jehovah accurately foresaw and predicted.
2006-10-04 15:04:45 · answer #3 · answered by BJ 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Bible seems to tell us about more than one unique god. Indeed seems to be at least one god in the first half and another one completly different in the second half. That would be analyzed according the time and place context.
So, I don't think a lot in the god of the Genesis. Instead, I prefer the god as father shown by Jesus.
2006-10-04 13:40:02 · answer #4 · answered by apuleius 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
May be that he was working on the pharoahs free will? And the death of the cows were on the pharoah's head.
2006-10-04 13:39:47 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
For the first few times Pharrow "hardened" his own heart. Then God hardened pharow's heart. Pharrow made the initial decisons. Other than that I don't know. That is a good question.
2006-10-04 13:42:13 · answer #6 · answered by ryan s 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
God is loving, but you must also remember He is holy, just, and faithful. He does what He says, and He pours out His wrath on those who do not repent.
2006-10-04 13:36:45 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
What about the two witnesses...who will punish unrepentant humans in the future...You forgot about them...
2006-10-04 13:41:55 · answer #8 · answered by - 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This is probably why...
Exodus 15:3
The LORD is a man of war
2006-10-04 13:37:52 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
because the theme of the exodus story/myth ... (and the entire old testement) is: "you f*ck with the hebrews, yer toast!"
who wrote the old testemnt? the hebrews ...so its goning to reflect that
(no, i'm not anti-semetic) O_o
.
2006-10-04 13:37:46 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋