Shalom. This video is about the second portion in the book of exodus shmot called the Vera, which means I appeared. And so we have now God having recognized the play of Israelites, I will hear the cry of the Israelites, I have heard it, and I will now fulfill my promise to them, exodus 6:5.
And God tells us the Israelites, they do not listen. So Moises appeals to God “What am I going to do they do not listen to me?” So God tells Moises that Aaron will be his spokesman. And God is going to do all the signs and numbers which will help Moises convince pharaoh and the Israelites.
We have now the problem also raised about God hardening his pharaoh’s heart. The first few time pharaohs hardened his heart response to the place and it is God hardened pharaoh’s heart. So what is the idea, just God really get into pharaoh’s heart and hardened it makes it tough?
The most of the commentators say no, that is an expression. Saying that once you start down the road of sin and defiance against the right way, it is harder and harder to change if God has hardened your heart, but you have done it to yourself.
So pharaoh does allow the Israelites to journey into the wilderness after the plague has blooden for logs but then he changes his mind and this keeps the pattern keeps happening. You get a few more plagues. Pharaoh allows them to go forth to pray and then he relents and makes them come back, and this goes on even at the end of all the plagues which does not come in this portion. Pharaoh sent the army after him, and even after the death of the first born sons.
Now, we do have a very interesting passage where it says that I have until now been known he was el shaddai but I have not made my name known as Yahweh and I am telling you my name is Yudheyvavey. They did not know my name is Yudheyvavey. But the tour in genesis clearly says that he did was called Yudheyvavey, I do not mind. We do not know how to pronounce it but that is how we pronounce that those four Hebrew letters.
So why, well, either there are two different stories that are wove in together, and the author of this one did not know about that, which the orthodox really reject of course. And the possibility is that you give different significance, to maybe they knew the name I do not know it but they did not understand the full implication and that it is not a known as redeemer here possibly.
Amen. We have one of the most interesting and important passages where God uses four terms of redemption. Use of the term the whole said I will free you. They eat salty and I will deliver you, I will redeem you if over gaal tea and I will take you the lacafty to be my people. This is chapter six versus six and seven. And according to the tradition, each one of those four words of redemption, I will free you, I will deliver you, I will redeem you and I will take you to be my people, are the reasons for the four cups of wine that we drink at the Passover Seder. There is also a fifth term there, I will bring you to the land of Israel which the rabbi were not sure was a redemptive term or not having to do with the exodus, and so that is why have the fifth cup of Elijah because we will not answer that question till the messiah comes and who announces the messiah but Elijah.
And the other idea about those four cups is that there were four faces to the horrible oppression of Egypt, therefore, decrease that pharaoh issue. They were force to build pitom and raamses. The lies were made harsh by bitter hard labor. Israel male infants were to be drowned. No straw was provided for bricks. And so one of this terms was you have redemption was to free them from each of those four decrease.
Now, the final issue is, we have all this plagues in this portion and they go against the natural order. First of all, that is not really true, if you read the newspapers reagent for a hundred years, as I am planning out on another video, you will see that these happened. These are natural occurrences. Now, it is not actually blood on the Nile, it is red muddy discharge in the upper Nile that comes down and maybe a red algae and the frogs do not like it so they jump out and they die and decay and it lead to lice and insects and all this things do happen, maybe not in two weeks but over a hundred year and so when you are telling the story early for a hundreds and hundreds of years before it gets written down, let us play out in another video, make sense that our ancestors would see this as miraculous and telescope it into a shorter time.
Now, the one final play here I want to make is that, all this plagues seem to be responses to Egyptian gods, because this is after all a battle between who is God. Because pharaoh thinks his God, and we know God is, so God is going to make it very clear to pharaoh that pharaoh is not God.
The plagues seem to be symbolic of the defeat of the various gods worshipped by the Egyptians. For example, the frogs are a very ancient Egyptian symbol of fruitfulness and the insects are symbols of rebirth particularly the dung, beetle and scarab become plagues on the land. A sacred bull considered to be the God of Athos, the sacred ram the God Amon were devastated by the fifth plague, the cattle disease, and finally rob, and the supreme sun God was defeated by the plague of darkness. So there you have it we know it who is really God. That is an introduction to part of Vera, as we do not have the climax of the story which then comes in partial vow and vaciella. When the final plagues occur and the Israelites are redeemed from Egypt.
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