Why did the plagues not kill Pharaoh?

  • Thread starter Thread starter nfinke
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
N

nfinke

Guest
So I’m not sure how much of my understanding of the final plague is incorrect due to the classic movie, but I figured it was traditionally understood that the death of the first born applied to all first born sons, regardless of age. It didn’t strike me until recently that the Pharoah seemed to be exempt from this plague. He obviously wasn’t exempt from the plagues like darkness and hail and frogs, and I don’t think we have evidence he didn’t also get boils. Was the Pharoah not the old Pharoahs first born son? Did he have a dead older brother? Did God just count him out of this plague because he obviously needed to be alive to release the Israelites? Did succession in Egypt not necessarily go to the first-born?
 
Last edited:
It probably only applied to children.

Also, it didn’t necessarily happen in real life. The plagues demonstrate increasingly severe consequences as a result of obstinacy. The final plague is the most severe.
 
Last edited:
Every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the slave-girl who is at the handmill, as well as all the firstborn of the animals. Exodus 11:5
Click to expand...
Pharaoh may not have been the first born, but the first born son. In other words, he may have had an older sister, or his father had affairs with another woman who gave birth to the first born who would’ve died in the event.

Either way, the Cecil B. Demille movie, “The Ten Commandments,” is a literal interpretation of Exodus and should not be taken as absolute historical fact.

As it is, there archeologists including Jewish one’s. who say there is no evidence that the Jews were ever held in bondage by the Egyptians and were released as in the book of Exodus states.

It’s debatable with valid arguments on both sides.
 
nfinke said:
Did God just count him out of this plague because he obviously needed to be alive to release the Israelites?
Click to expand...
That my first thought.
I absolutely believe it happened. I believe the events recorded between Pharoah and Moses point forward in time to when Christ would come and the army of the enemy of God is ‘cast into the sea’ and the people of God would go with Christ to the Promised Land. This miraculous escape, the parting of the sea and walking on dry ground.

My interest of the first born dying, adults as well and the first born animals, is taking place today with the first born dying through the hands of abortion. We might be living in the time that Moses pointed forward to, the appearance of Christ and the separation of the sheep and the goats as described in scripture. I guess we’ll live into that answer.
 
It’s my understanding that historians have suggested several different pharaohs as possibly being the “Pharaoh of the Exodus”, with the most major contenders being Ahmose I, Akhenaten, and Ramesses II.

None of those three pharaohs were the first-born of their fathers. All had at least one older brother or sister. In the cases where the Pharaoh had an older brother, he had already died before the plague, thus clearing the way for the Pharaoh to rule. I’m not seeing anything in Scripture referring explicitly to “first born son” so an older sister could have been the first born.

It seems highly likely that the Pharaoh, whoever he was, simply wasn’t the first born.
 
Last edited:
TK421 said:
It probably only applied to children.

Also, it didn’t necessarily happen in real life. The plagues demonstrate increasingly severe consequences as a result of obstinacy. The final plague is the most severe.
Click to expand...
Jesus kind of seems to indicate that Moses was not just a myth. All of the New Testament authors seem to hold the Exodus as an actual historical event. Just saying.
 
Last edited:
God sent down the plagues on Egypt to teach Pharaoh a lesson. How is Pharaoh supposed to learn his lesson if he is dead?
 
Jewish tradition holds that only the sons were subject to the plague, citing the fact God consecrated the firstborn sons of Israel to His service (requiring them to be redeemed from this service after the golden calf incident, when He stripped the firstborn sons of their role in the Sanctuary and took the Levites in their place. That said, Jewish reckoning holds “firstborn son” to mean firstborn of the mother, so we can’t use the reference to Jesus being a firstborn son to determine whether or not Joseph had children from a previous marriage.
 
Do you have a source for the Jewish tradition point? (I don’t need a source for the part about Jesus being a firstborn son and Joseph possibly having previous children.)
 
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Jewish scholarship does not all agree on the male/ female issue.
I was hoping there was something directly from the original Biblical language suggesting that first born meant just sons. Looks like there isn’t though.
 
Technically speaking, Pharaoh wasn’t a first born son anymore because his father was dead. Lineage typically followed the father, except for a few exception (i.e. if a noble / rich woman “married down”). So even if his mother was still alive, the fact that his father was dead made him no longer a first born son.

Also - it was Pharaoh’s heart/mind God and Moses were trying to convert. Having him die would have been counterproductive.

NOTE: this post is simply my own personal interpretation and NOT official Church teaching.

God bless
 
Last edited:
I know that some things in the Bible are literal, and others are literary. However, for the amount of times that God’s rescue of the Israelites from Egypt is mentioned in the rest of the Old Testament, I would say that it most likely happened as an actual event.
 
I think a better question, is why did God harden Pharaohs heart?
Pharaoh was ready to give in to Moses yet God hardened his heart so he did not do so.

As far as Pharaoh not dying, there are some things we are not privy too.
However it was a focal point for Passover, which in turn had a larger meaning in the NT.

Interesting conversation though…
 
BlueMaxx said:
I think a better question, is why did God harden Pharaohs heart?
Pharaoh was ready to give in to Moses yet God hardened his heart so he did not do so.
Click to expand...
Back then, they didn’t understand “primary causation” and “secondary causation”. So, anything that happened was seen as the explicit will fo God (otherwise, it would have been seen as an affront to God’s sovereignty). So, if they had thought “Pharaoh is defying God”, then they’d have thought he was more powerful than God. Therefore, it’s “God made him do it”, instead. The way I understand it, it’s merely a mode of expression. Today, we might express it as “all things work for the glory of God.”
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top