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The judgments which the Lord poured out upon Egypt are one of the most misunderstood statements of God’s heart in redemptive history. God gives us a clear picture of the depths of His mercy, power, and holiness all in one motion, yet many simply believe the Lord to be “sovereignly” causing all these events out of an affinity to see His enemies squirm. Nothing could be farther from the truth, seeing the Lord does not take delight in the death of the wicked. The climax of these judgments is one that is particularly easy to misconstrue, as it involves the death of innocent children and infants by the hand of the Lord.
In order to understand the Lord’s heart in this matter, we must first know the motive He has in releasing judgment upon peoples and nations. In the case of a stiff-necked people, the Lord brings about calamity and turmoil in order to shake them into humility and dependence upon Him. The Lord is hardly concerned with their comfort and circumstantial well-being in this age compared with His zeal for them to be in His bosom in the next. He uses the gentlest means possible to bring about a true repentance and solid pursuit of His will. God will do whatever necessary to cause individuals as well as corporate bodies to come under the benevolence of His leadership. His hope is that the people will turn to Him before He actually has to bring about trouble on them, and this is why He always proclaims the warning beforehand.
When the Lord brought the plagues on Egypt, His motive was to drive them to a place of submission to His leadership through the release of the Hebrews. He was acting from the wellspring of kind intention He held toward them, not in cold and harsh anger. Though He gave full warning before each plague was loosed, the people refused to turn. The personification of their obstinacy was seen in Pharaoh, who had been given to them as a leader after their own heart. Their conscience became more and more seared at every, “No,” with which they responded to Moses because the Lord was moving in their midst in such a dynamic way.
The plagues also became increasingly worse as the people were hardened because it would take a greater means to turn them to Him. When finally they reached the last plague, the people were in such rebellion that they would rather see their firstborn sons killed than humble themselves before God. It was not an issue of unbelief, for they had seen the precision of the Lord to bring about what He spoke through Moses, and what kind of mercy He gave the Egyptians when it was requested. They fully believed that God would kill their sons that night, and they also knew that they could inquire of Him to restrain His hand. Even still, they chose to keep silent in their pride, desiring to be hardened in stubbornness and self-will. God gave them what they sought from Him: not mercy, but destruction in their own strength. When the Lord brought it about, they were pierced to the core because they understood that it had been their free choice, and the reality of what they had done was too great for them to stomach. They recognized the measure of their hatred for the Lord by saying, “We will all be dead,” (Ex.12:33) in understanding that if they did not submit at that point, they would eventually desire for the Lord to kill them as well rather than give the Hebrews up.
In the midst of this, we might ask how the Lord could bear to kill the innocent because of the sin of the wicked. What was He feeling as He went through the streets of Egypt? Did He have any emotion when the little boys breathed their last by His hand? I believe He wept over the hardness of Egypt and their resistance toward His good pleasure over them. His emotions are reflected by Moses’ response to Pharaoh after telling him of the judgment to come, when it says, “And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger” (Ex. 11:8). If He is pained over the death of the wicked, He surely did not take delight in the death of the innocent babes.
Yet, God put a redemptive factor even in this judgment, and this action was actually one of the most merciful things the Lord could have done to the Egyptians. His vision is so much greater and far-reaching than simply the momentary life of these little ones. Every younger brother and sister of the firstborn could look to this event and marvel at the Lord’s power, seeing the result of their parents’ stubbornness toward the Lord. The Lord touched such an intimate place of encounter when He cut off the firstborn that it would be remembered for generations to come.
From the beginning, it was not the Lord’s will to afflict Egypt, but their own will. The death of the firstborn was the furthest thing from the mind of the Lord when He dreamed of how He could cause the Egyptians to hope and trust in Him. He put every other way of escape before them rather than the death of the innocent, yet they would not receive His mercy. In the end, He gave them what they cried out for, though it pained Him to do so. He made an unmistakable statement of what He is willing to do in mercy and in zeal for His people that when the generations passed, they might not make the same choice as their fathers, but trust His leadership from the beginning.
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