Appendix
687
Thebes became chief god of Egypt during the eighteenth dynasty, the
power of the sun god Ra was recognized as so great that a compromise
was made by combining Amen and Ra to make one god—Amen-Ra.
A few years after the Exodus, when Ikhnaton introduced a short-lived
monotheism, the only god retained was Aton, the sun disk. Seeing
how entrenched sun worship was in the religious life of the Egyptians,
and how highly the sun god Ra, Amen-Ra, or Aton was revered, we
can understand why the plague directed against the god was brought
upon Egypt toward the culmination of the fight between the God of
the Hebrews and His Egyptian adversaries.
[759]
Also the tenth plague, the slaughtering of the first-born (
Exodus
12:29
), was striking at least one god, and that was the king, who was
considered to be Horus, the son of Osiris. As the ruler of the Nile
country, he was addressed by his subjects as “the good god.” Hence,
the last plague crowned the actions wrought by the miracle-working
power of the Hebrew God. So far gods controlling the forces of nature
or animals had been disgraced, but now a god living in a visible form
among the Egyptians was also humiliated by the despised God of the
Hebrew slaves, of whom the proud Pharaoh once had said, “Who is
the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the
Lord, neither will I let Israel go.”
Exodus 5:2
.
Note 3. Page 282. In
Genesis 15:13
we read that the Lord said to
Abraham, “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land
that is not theirs, and shall serve them: And they shall afflict them
four hundred years.” This text raises the questions whether the 400
years refer to the time of affliction or sojourning, or both, and what the
relation of the 400 years is to the 430 years of
Exodus 12:40, 41
, and
Galatians 3:16, 17
.
The statement in
Exodus 12:40
, that “the sojourning of the children
of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years,” gives
the impression that the Israelites, from Jacob’s entry into Egypt to
the Exodus, actually spent 430 years in the country of the Nile. That
this impression cannot be correct is obvious from Paul’s inspired
interpretation presented in
Galatians 3:16, 17
, where the 430 years
are said to cover the period beginning when God made His covenant
with Abraham until the law was promulgated at Sinai. Paul seems to
refer to the first promise made by God to Abraham when he was called
to leave Haran.
Genesis 12:1-3
. At that time the 430 years began,