“In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:18)
“And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29)
I love it when the Lord drops insights into my head, especially through pictures.
It feels like Jesus is still using parables and object lessons to teach me truths. Well, if the rabbinic style ain’t broken, don’t fix it. Am I right? (Of course, I am.)
So, this is what I received a while back. It hit me as I was leading my Torah class students through the Book of Exodus. It’s incredible how the Lord started with one man, Abraham, and about four hundred years later – Tada! – millions of descendants. “The children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children” (Exodus 12:37). The number of Israelites that fled Egypt during the Exodus is astounding.
“Six hundred thousand men…besides children.” Let’s see now. Six hundred thousand men, most of whom had wives. On the conservative side, we’re talking somewhere in the vicinity of five hundred thousand married couples, boosting the number of individuals to about one million, one hundred thousand people.
Now, let’s assume there were an average of just two children per family unit. Now we’re talking in excess of two million souls scrambling to get out of Dodge after the Angel of Death smote the Egyptian firstborn, both human and animal (Exodus 12:29).
2,000,000 people! Now add in the non-Israelite hangers-on who saw an opportunity to leave Egypt’s oppression and throw their lot in with those millions of people following a fiery cloud across the Sinai Peninsula (Exodus 12:38). Oh, and animals, too. Lots and lots and lots of animals.
The first question that came to my mind was, “How did Moses ever coordinate the Exodus with all those people?” Aha! Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37-c.100) has the answer. What most Christians don’t know is that according to Josephus, Moses was one of Pharaoh’s generals. Pharaoh dispatched Moses to whomp the Ethiopians who had invaded Egypt. Moses handed the invaders an overwhelming defeat (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 2, Chapter 10, lines 241, 243, 248). Knowing that Moses was a trained general, it’s easy to see how he could handle the logistics for a multitude traipsing across a desert toward freedom. Exodus even says the children of Israel went out in military order. “And the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 13:18).
The next question that popped into my noggin’ was, “If Jacob and his family were only seventy in number when they entered Egypt during the famine (Genesis 46:27), how did they achieve such immense numbers by the time they left some two hundred and fifteen years later? According to one source, Israel’s population could have quickly grown from seventy to over two million during those years in Egypt. I actually found someone online who did the math.
“The number of people in a generation is (N/2) * x where N is the number of people in the previous generation and x is the number of children each couple has. If N_0 = 70 and x = 6, after 10 generations, there would be over 4 million children. And that’s assuming everyone in all previous generations had died” (Judaism.stackexchange.com).
Yeah, that’s really cool if you’re a math geek, but I wanted a simpler picture explaining how Abraham’s seed (his offspring) grew so quickly. The Lord did not disappoint me, and in the process, He showed me an excellent explanation of why the Israelites spent time in Egypt.
Think of human reproduction since we’re talking about population growth. Once the ova is fertilized, it’s called a zygote. The zygote begins to divide from one cell to two, then two cells to four, then four cells to sixteen, and on and on as it forms the blastula. A blastula is basically a multi-cellular, hollow ball. This process happens in the woman’s fallopian tubes. About eight days after fertilization, the blastocyst (formerly the blastula) implants itself in the uterine wall, where it is nurtured as a fetus for nine months until birth.
Having been present at three of my four children’s birth, I can verify that birth is a very messy procedure involving a significant amount of blood and water (amniotic fluid). I can see why the yuck factor overcomes some people. Despite the water and the blood, and with God’s grace, a newborn baby emerges into the world.
And then the Lord opened my eyes.
Because humanity had such a problem learning how to walk right with the Lord after the Fall (the post-Adam disaster and the Tower of Babel rebellion), God decided to “start over” with a man who was the right raw material into which He could impart new spiritual genes, genetic material that would produce generationally-transferable trust in God. And so Abraham was “fertilized” by God’s powerful word (Genesis 12), which created the spark of trust within that single man.
Abraham then produced one son, Isaac. Isaac produced two sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob produced twelve sons. Do you see the spiritual blastula forming? But as we know, a blastula must find a place to attach so it can continue to develop through cell multiplication until the fetus matures and arrives at the end of its designed womb time. “Then He said to Abram: ‘Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years’…But in the fourth generation they shall return here…” (Genesis 15:13, 16). Thus, the Lord orchestrated circumstances (Joseph in Egypt and a famine) that motivated God’s developing family of faith to enter the Egyptian womb to start the divine pregnancy.
In the fullness of the Lord’s time, His firstborn son (Exodus 4:22) was born in a rush of blood (the blood of the Passover Lamb, Exodus 12) and water (Israel’s Red Sea crossing, Exodus 14).
But that’s not the end of what the Lord showed me.
The Lord had more than one family line to be born of Abraham’s seed. The second line was also born of blood and water.
Jesus’ blood and water.
Jesus’ purpose was to fulfill His Father’s promise to Abraham long ago, “In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:18). Through the Seed of the seed, the Offspring of all of Abraham’s physical offspring, Jesus’ death on the cross created the way for us to escape our Egypt of sin in which we live and be “born again” as God’s children. The idea of being born again wasn’t accidental. Our wonderful, loving, merciful God had it planned from the start.
Literally speaking, it’s Jesus’ blood and water during His crucifixion (John 19:34) that opened the way for delivery from the oppressing Pharaoh of this world, Satan. Spiritually speaking, it’s Jesus’ blood (His sacrifice) and His water (the Holy Spirit, the Living Water) that connect us to faithful Abraham’s family line as we trust God as he did. “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29).
As I write this, I sit amazed at all the powerful pictures the Lord has embedded in our human existence that so clearly illustrate what He has done, what He does, and what He will do. From one seed (Abraham) came the seed (his physical offspring), which produced the Seed (Jesus), who produced even more seeds (Abraham’s spiritual offspring) to God’s glory.
I’ll never look at the Exodus story the same way.
Sources:
Josephus, Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews.
Wright, David, How Long Were the Israelites in Egypt?, Answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/how-long-were-the-israelites-in-egypt/?srsltid=AfmBOopIHHl8aMmvL9Ude-Uy4o81g7S9lDXOoWutN-X6t3qD9N_br-tN.
How can we explain the growth of Israelite population in Egypt? judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/29674/how-can-we-explain-the-growth-of-israelite-population-in-egypt.
Formation of Blastula, news-medical.net/health/Formation-of-Blastula.aspx
Shining the Light of God’s Truth on the Road Ahead
Pastor Jay Christianson
The Truth Barista, Frothy Thoughts