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When God says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” (Deut. 32:35; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30), He means it. We can take matters into our own hands and enact a form of justice on those who commit evil against us and our people, but we can only right the wrong done to us. Our acts of justice don’t vindicate God and bring Him honor and glory.
We see the intersection of vengeance and mercy in the 10th plague on Egypt, memorialized in the annual remembrances of Passover and Unleavened Bread, two key lessons in the Torah reading בוא Bo (“come,” Exodus 10:1-13:16).
Those annual appointed times also are key lessons that teach us about the Messiah in the Gospels.
Feasting on Yeshua
The Hebrew words mitzvot (commandments) and matzot (unleavened bread) have an identical root, which is מצה.
When reading the Torah in the original Hebrew, you can only ascertain which word is being used in context. What we have here is a play on words. When we feast the unleavened bread, we are supposed to also symbolically or mystically feast upon the commandments of God.
Yeshua brought this point out when He was being tempted by HaSatan in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11) and Yeshua rebuked him by quoting Deut. 8:3:
““He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 8:3 NASB)
How God punishes Egypt and her gods for slavery and genocide
Moses and Aaron did not participate in any way in the 10th plague in the way they had in the previous nine plagues. God performed the 10th plague on His own.
Moses and Aaron had to put the blood on their doors and wait patiently for the angel of death to finish his work just like all the rest of the people of Israel.
“Moses said, “Thus says the LORD, ‘About midnight I am going out into the midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of the Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; all the firstborn of the cattle as well. Moreover, there shall be a great cry in all the land of Egypt, such as there has not been before and such as shall never be again. But against any of the sons of Israel a dog will not even bark, whether against man or beast, that you may understand how the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’ “All these your servants will come down to me and bow themselves before me, saying, ‘Go out, you and all the people who follow you,’ and after that I will go out.” (Exodus 11:4–8 NASB)
It’s in a dog’s nature to alert his or her master to stranger danger yet Moses tells Pharaoh that after God goes through and kills all their first born, even their dogs will show fear respect for the people of Israel. That is how strong the God of Israel is compared to all the false gods of the world. He will command both men and animals to respect His people.
The “gods” of Egypt were not merely fantasy. Angels who had fallen from their station and became demons are the inspiration for most, if not all the false gods. These demons receive false worship when people worship these false gods in another name.
And God was publicly shaming them.
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.”” (Exodus 10:1–2 NASB)
God dished out what the Egyptians did to His people Israel when He inflicted the plagues on Egypt and on their false demonic “gods.” Vengeance belongs to God, not to us.
The Egyptians denied food, water, a fair wage for a day’s work to the Israelites. The Egyptians also inflicted genocide on the Israelites. God repaid the Egyptians for all those things while at the same time proving Egypt’s gods were false and powerless to protect them.
““How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations!
“But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.
‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’
“Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, To the recesses of the pit.” (Isaiah 14:12–15 NASB)
The lesser demons want to be in charge of their little fiefdoms and the more powerful demons want to be in charge of nations and entire people groups, but God, in His time, will utterly destroy all of them. All men, all creation belongs to God, whether they acknowledge that or not. If I choose not to follow Him, that is not His fault, that is my fault. That includes the Egyptians. They belong to God just as much as the Israelites.
God freed the Israelites by slaughtering, with His own hand, the Egyptians. This didn’t please Him but it had to be done. God is the one who purchased the children of Israel from Egypt. Since He is the one who liberated the first born of Israel with the first born of Egypt, God says that all the first born of Israel are His.
God didn’t just kill the first born of Egypt but He killed all the generations that those first born would have produced if they had lived. Every generation of Israel that lives owes a debt to God for their existence because they only exist because God killed the first born of Egypt thousands of years ago.
The body dies but the spirit belongs to God. Death is temporary with God. God has the power of resurrection and He says He will resurrect all the innocent someday.
Summary: Tammy