Pharaoh (of the Exodus)

Pharaoh announces to his people that he will stand up to the terrorist attacks from the rebelling slaves and their nameless god.

Context

• Reference: Exodus 1:12

• The Israelites, who had lived in a part of Egypt named Goshen, were enslaved by the Egyptians and forced to construct temples and pyramids for them.

• Moses was raised in the palace of the Pharoah, the ruler of Egypt by that Pharaoh's daughter.

• After killing an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating an Israelite slave, Moses fled to Midian where he married the daughter of a Midianite priest.

• A burning bush commanded Moses to return to Egypt and free the slaves.

• The brother of the princess who adopted Moses, the eldest son of their father, inherited the title and became Pharaoh when Moses sought to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

• Since Moses was "slow of speech", his brother Aaron spoke for him.

• In the Pharaoh's court, as an attempt to show God's power, Aaron transformed rods into snakes.

• When Pharaoh refused to release the slaves, God unleashed ten plagues against them.

• The final plague threatened to kill the firstborn sons of all the Egyptian families.

Aftermath

• After the tenth plagues, Pharaoh agreed to free the slaves.

• He then changed his mind, and he and his army pursued the Israelites into the Sea of Reeds (commonly mistranslated as the Red Sea.)

• The Israelites crossed safely to freedom. Pharaoh and his army drowned.

Notes

Countries and other groups, when they've suffered severe attacks, tend to have a common response. Each claims that it is unique in the same way. Each claims that, unlike everyone else, its people respond to adversity with added strength, and that attacking it will only make it more determined to survive.

From Pharaoh's point of view, the plagues must have seemed very much like terrorist attacks. Strange and awful occurrences struck at the symbols of what the country valued the most. In their case, it was the aspects of the world, including the rivers and the sun, that they most closely identified with their gods.

The Egyptian society was based on hierarchies, with everyone knowing his place in the stack. For slaves to rise up and make demands was, from their point of view, unconscionable. And for them to claim to be supported by a god who had no name and no distinct representation must have seemed ridiculous.

Many legends have survived about Moses's early years, about which little appears in the Biblical text. (The 1998 animated film The Prince of Egypt presents a surprisingly good version of the story.) In one story, when he was tested as a baby by being shown the Pharaoh's crown and a pile of hot coals, an angel pushed his hand away from the coals; when he placed his burned hand in his mouth, it damaged his tongue and made him "slow of speech." In another, he snatched the crown from the earlier Pharaoh's head and smashed it to the ground.

So when the Pharaoh at the time of the plagues found his country under attack, he might well have gone before his people and rallied them with a speech about their unity and power. This is what that speech might have been.