His Love Endures Forever

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.
His love endures forever.

To him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt.
His love endures forever. - Psalm 136:1,10

What a bizarre thing to say. From my perspective, killing children is not a demonstration of love. I would call it cruelty, murder, perhaps genocide.

I suppose the author considered God's love (particularly his enduring love) to be more or less exclusive to Israel. The killing of every firstborn male in Egypt for the sake of Israel is seen as a cause for celebration and worship. This idea that's God's love is foremost or exclusively for the chosen people (chosen, not more obedient) crops up often in the Old Testament. Malachi even tells us we can see God's love by comparing Israel to those he hates.

I've mentioned before (point 5) that nations in the Bible seem to be only as good or evil as their kings. When righteous kings rule, the people are obedient and God blesses them. When wicked kings rule, the people are wicked, and God pours out his wrath upon them. I somehow doubt that all the people of a nation suddenly became moral or immoral when a new king was crowned; more likely the rise of a wicked king meant that the wicked people became wealthy and powerful, and with the rise of a righteous king they were killed or removed. Unless human nature has changed drastically since Bible times, I can't believe that there was ever such a thing as a wicked or righteous nation, only nations in which the ruler allows either wickedness or righteousness to prosper. If this is true it seems horribly cruel and unjust for God to bring judgment on a nation like Egypt. There was never a referendum on whether to let God's people go, and even if the majority of the Egyptians were resolutely opposed (which they weren't, as we'll see) the minority would not deserve continued judgment. (Someone might argue that God judges nations as a whole because it is not possible for him to pick a specific kind of person, such as "the wicked", out of a group and kill only them, but Exodus says that it is.)

But it gets worse. The Bible says that God "hardened Pharaoh's heart" so that he would refuse to release the Israelites. I've heard people defend God by claiming that first Pharaoh hardened his own heart several times, and then at a certain point God started hardening it for him. This is supposed to show that if you rebel against God for too long, eventually he gives up on you and makes you an object of his wrath or something like that. (So much for "His love endures forever".) Aside from not addressing the problem of judging a whole nation for its ruler's irrational obstinacy, the main problem with this claim is that it's not true. God planned to harden Pharaoh's heart right from the start. Look:

The LORD said to Moses, "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.'" - Exodus 4:21-23

And He says it again. (This is still before Moses has come before Pharaoh for the first time.)

"You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites." - Exodus 7:2-4

Sure enough, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. This is referred to at least a dozen times between Exodus 7 and 14. Sometimes it says Pharaoh hardened his heart, and sometimes it simply says that his heart became hard, or was hard, but mostly it says that God hardened his heart. I suspect that the writer of Exodus doesn't pay particular attention to who was responsible for each instance of hardening. The point seems to be that both Pharaoh and God are responsible.

It's strange that God goes through this long, brutal charade of demands and plagues and heart-hardening. The text seems to indicate that at several points God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart actually prevented Israel from being released, so clearly all this suffering is not an unfortunate-yet-necessary means to the deliverance of Israel. It seems that God's only reason for sending at least the last three plagues (those that occur after the last mention of Pharaoh hardening his own heart) was to demonstrate his power. God killed thousands of children just to prove that he could. And it gets worse:

Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. - Exodus 11:5

If the death of a child was a just punishment (which it isn't, according to the God of Ezekiel), the death of Pharaoh's firstborn might be considered just. You'd have to argue that it was punishment for his general cruelty, rather than for his final, God-forced refusal to free the Israelites, but we'll let that pass for now. It might even be possible to argue that the Egyptians in general deserved this punishment for their cruelty towards Israel, although I would vehemently disagree. But what possible reason could God have for killing the sons of slave girls?

Forget about God hearing the cries of the oppressed. That's not what this is about. Far from concerning himself with their liberation, God is perfectly willing to bring suffering and destruction on Egypt's non-Jewish (i.e. non-Chosen) slaves. I suppose the reason is that the death of their firstborn slaves, along with their livestock and their own sons would make a more impressive demonstration of God's power for the Egyptians. That's God's goal here.

Bear in mind that by the time the tenth plague rolls around, no one wants the Israelites in Egypt anymore. The Egyptians have been made "favorably disposed" to them. (Which seems to mean scared to death.) Even Pharaoh's officials are urging him to let them go. And the Israelites themselves are still in slavery. The only one who's interested in delaying the exodus is God, who is intent on further proving his power by killing children.

By the way, I've often heard the argument that God refrains from performing great miracles in our time because of his great respect for human free will. The idea is that if God openly and miraculously intervened in our world, we would be forced to believe in Him. I have several objections to this argument. Is simply believing in God's existence what He wants from us? Isn't it obedience? Disbelief in the existence of God is quite a recent development; did humans have less free will before the advent of atheism? And most importantly, where is this concern for free will in the Bible? Jesus doesn't refrain from performing miracles for fear that it might force someone to believe in him. Signs and wonders are a staple of evangelism is Acts. And in the Old Testament, miracles are continuously performed not in spite of but for the purpose of proving the existence and power of God. (Remember Mount Carmel?) Here in Exodus, not only is God not concerned that his miracles will compromise free will, but he repeatedly overrides Pharaoh's free will in order to to preform more spectacular (and more horrible) miracles, and he does this explicitly for the purpose of proving his existence and power.

It astounds me that God did not simply kill Pharaoh himself, and anyone else who would prevent Israel from leaving. This would be more effective, more just, at least as easy and no less spectacular than killing firstborn sons. Why target children? That's movie-villain stuff. Even in war, the death of children is a ghastly thing, and anyone with a shred of decency will try to avoid it. That God kills thousands of people at the same time, and kills only firstborn males, and kills every one of them except those in houses with lambs' blood on their door, shows that He strikes with a precision that no earthly force could dream of. That He directly targets not those who deserve punishment or those who present and obstacle to the freedom of his people but children, even the children of slaves, and that he planned to do this from the beginning, and hardened his adversary in order to make this possible, and did it simply to demonstrate the magnitude of his power, makes him a monster.

To clarify, I do not believe that God is a monster. I believe in a good and compassionate God; a God whose love endures forever. But I do not believe that the God described here and in similar Bible stories is my God. (If you think this is an isolated incident, see Joshua 11.) It amazes me that anyone can believe in the God described by Moses and Joshua. It amazes me even more that people can describe this God as loving.