Exodus 12:29

Verse 29 is a warning coming true. Moses had told Pharaoh that about midnight the LORD would go out into the midst of Egypt, that every firstborn in the land would die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh on his throne to the firstborn of the maidservant at the mill, and that a great cry would follow such as Egypt had never heard and never would again (Exodus 11:4–6). It happened at the hour he named and in the way he said. Just before this, God had given Israel the Passover. Each household killed a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts, and the judgment of this night passed over every house so marked (Exodus 12:1–28). Hebrews says that Moses kept the Passover by faith and sprinkled the blood, so that the one who destroyed the firstborn would not touch Israel’s (Hebrews 11:28).

The verse names the LORD as the one who acted. The verb nâkâh means to strike or smite, and it is often used of a deadly blow. The word for firstborn, bᵉkôwr, comes from a root meaning to be first, and it names the eldest son and the first young of the herds. The blow was aimed at that one member of every family.

Its reach ran from the top of Egypt to the bottom: “from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.” The heir to the throne and the son of a prisoner fell alike, with the animals beside them. The only firstborn spared were those in houses marked by the blood. God had already set a difference between his people and Egypt during the plagues (Exodus 8:22–23), and on this night that difference ran through every street, between the houses under the blood and the houses without it.

When the blow fell, “Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians.” The word for night, layil, is the ordinary word for the hours of darkness. Judgment came while Egypt slept, and the king who had held out through nine plagues was woken along with the humblest of his people.

“And there was a great cry in Egypt”. The word for cry, tsaʻăqâh, is a loud outcry of distress, the shriek of people in anguish. This was the cry Moses had foretold, rising from the whole nation at once. The reason follows: “for there was not a house where there was not one dead.” The verb behind “dead” is mûwth, the plain word for dying. The doubled negative leaves no exception. Every household in Egypt had a death in it that night, from the palace down.

The whole story of this night, the Passover meal and the judgment and the departure, is told together in Exodus 12, and the two belong side by side. In Egypt there was weeping in every house, and in Israel the households that had kept the Passover were spared.

The same night, Pharaoh “called for Moses and Aaron by night”. The verb qârâʼ means to call out to someone or summon them, and here it is an urgent summons from a broken king. His words are a string of commands: “Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as ye have said.” “Both ye and the children of Israel” takes in the whole nation, men, women and children. Pharaoh had tried before to set terms on their going (Exodus 8:25–28). Now he lets every one of them go.

The phrase “serve the LORD” carries the purpose of the whole Exodus. The verb ʻâbad means to work, labour, serve, till and worship, and causatively it can mean to make someone a slave. Israel had laboured for Pharaoh, and now they go to serve God. He had said so from the start. At the burning bush he told Moses that Israel would serve him on that mountain (Exodus 3:12), and his message to Pharaoh had been, “Let my people go, that they may serve me” (Exodus 7:16). God freed his people in order to bring them to himself, and the road leads on to Sinai (Exodus 19).

“As ye have said” uses dâbar, the ordinary verb for speaking. With these words Pharaoh concedes that Moses had spoken the truth all along. He is the same man who once asked, “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). Now he orders Israel out to serve that very LORD.

Verse 32 completes the surrender. “Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone”. The verb lâqach is the common word for taking, and here Pharaoh is pressing them to take it all. The flocks, tsôʼn, are the sheep and goats, and the herds, bâqâr, are the cattle. Moses had insisted that the animals must go with them for sacrifice, “there shall not an hoof be left behind” (Exodus 10:26), and Pharaoh now grants it in Moses’s own terms, repeating “as ye have said”.

God had told Moses before the last plague that Pharaoh would not only let them go but would thrust them out altogether (Exodus 11:1). He had promised to bring Israel out from under the burdens of the Egyptians with a stretched out arm and take them for his people (Exodus 6:6–7). Centuries before, he had told Abraham that his descendants would serve a foreign nation and be afflicted, that he would judge that nation, and that afterward they would come out with great substance (Genesis 15:13–14). This night keeps all of those promises. The psalmist tells the story the same way: God brought Israel into Egypt and turned the Egyptians’ hearts to hate his people (Psalm 105:23–25), then sent Moses and Aaron to show his signs among them (Psalm 105:26–27). Isaiah looks back on this redemption when God tells Israel that he created them, redeemed them and called them by name, and gave Egypt for their ransom (Isaiah 43:1–3).

The setting at night matters too. Israel ate the Passover lamb that night (Exodus 12:8), and the LORD made it a night to be observed by all their generations in memory of how he brought them out of Egypt (Exodus 12:42).

“And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people”. The ordinary Egyptians now did the pressing. The verb is châzaq, which means to be strong or to make strong, firm or hard. They laid hold of Israel with all the force they had, to get them gone. The same verb stands in some places for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, so the strength that once held Israel in Egypt now pushed them out of it.

“That they might send them out of the land in haste”. The verb shâlach, to send, is the word of Moses’s repeated demand, “Let my people go”, and now the Egyptians do the sending themselves. “In haste” is mâhar, to hurry, and the rest of the verse shows that fear drove the hurry: “for they said, We be all dead men.” Mûwth comes back here. The Egyptians spoke in terror, expecting that the whole nation would die if Israel stayed another day. It was an exaggeration born of panic, and it shows how completely the LORD had broken Egypt’s will.

Israel was ready for this. God had told them to eat the Passover with their loins girded, their shoes on their feet and their staff in their hand, and to eat it in haste (Exodus 12:11). The meal was eaten by people about to leave, and the journey that God led them on begins soon after (Exodus 13:17).

Verse 34 gives a picture of how quickly Israel left: “And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneadingtroughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.” The word for dough, bâtsêq, is used for dough whether it has risen or not, and here it had not. Châmêts is the verb for being leavened, for dough that has risen. There was no time to wait for it. The kneading troughs, mishʼereth, were the bowls in which a family mixed and worked its daily bread. The people wrapped them, dough and all, in their clothing and carried them on their shoulders, shᵉkem, because there was nowhere else to put them on a flight like this.

Verse 39 finishes the picture: “And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual” (Exodus 12:39). Bread takes time to rise and time to bake, and Israel had neither, because they were driven out and had to go at once.

God had already told them to eat the Passover with unleavened bread (Exodus 12:8), and he made this hurried bread a lasting memorial. Each year Israel kept seven days of unleavened bread (Exodus 13:6–7), the feast that follows the Passover (Leviticus 23:6). Moses called it “the bread of affliction”, eaten because Israel came out of Egypt in haste, so that they would remember the day they left all their lives (Deuteronomy 16:3). Every generation tasted the flat bread of that morning.

Paul draws on the same bread for the church: “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7–8). Israel’s unleavened bread marked a clean break with Egypt, and in Christ his people make a clean break with the old life of sin. Anyone in Christ is a new creature, and old things are passed away (2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus is himself the bread of life (John 6:35), the true food for those he brings out of bondage.

“And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses”. Bên is the word for son, and “children of Israel” means the whole people descended from Israel, acting together. The “word” of Moses is dâbâr, which means a word spoken and also a matter, a thing or a command. Here it is a command, and it came from God. At the burning bush God told Moses that he would give Israel favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they would leave with silver, gold and clothing (Exodus 3:21–22), and before the last plague he told Moses to have every man and woman ask their Egyptian neighbours for jewels of silver and gold (Exodus 11:2–3). Israel obeyed, and God did what he had said.

“And they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment”. The verb is shâʼal, which means to ask, inquire, request or require. In 1611 “borrowed” was the KJV’s word here, but the Hebrew is the ordinary word for asking. Israel asked openly, and nothing in the story speaks of a loan to be paid back. The Egyptians wanted them gone, and they gave whatever was asked. Precious metal and clothing were real wealth then, easy to carry and of lasting value, so Israel went out equipped for the journey and for what lay ahead.

Verse 36 says why the Egyptians gave so freely: “And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required.” The word for favour, chên, means grace, favour or charm. The LORD gave it, and the Egyptians’ hearts turned toward the people they had despised. Solomon says that the king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, and he turns it wherever he will (Proverbs 21:1). “Lent” in this verse translates shâʼal again, the word for asking, and here it means the Egyptians granted the request.

“And they spoiled the Egyptians.” The verb is nâtsal. Its usual meaning is to deliver or rescue, as when God came down “to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:8), and here it means to strip someone of what they have. The God who delivered Israel out of the hand of Egypt also stripped Egypt of its wealth on their behalf. The psalmist remembers it: God brought his people out with silver and gold, and there was not one feeble person among their tribes (Psalm 105:37).

Everything on this night turns on the blood of the lamb, and the New Testament shows us whom that lamb pictured. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and Paul writes, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Peter says we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish (1 Peter 1:18–19). As the blood on the doorposts sheltered Israel’s firstborn from death, Christ’s blood shelters all who trust in him from the judgment their sin deserves.

The firstborn of Egypt died under judgment for their nation’s sin. God’s own Son is the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15), the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18) and the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29), and he died for sins that were never his. God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). On the cross God’s Firstborn bore the judgment so that those who believe in him are passed over.

The Exodus also pictures what Christ does for his people. God has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood (Colossians 1:13–14). Our old man is crucified with him, so that we no longer serve sin (Romans 6:6), and we are made free from sin and become servants to God (Romans 6:22). Paul calls believers to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made us free (Galatians 5:1). Israel was freed to serve the LORD, and Christ’s blood purges our conscience to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). We walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), on a journey that leads to the rest that remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9–11), while we wait for the redemption of our body (Romans 8:23).

Israel spoiled the Egyptians as it left, and Christ spoiled principalities and powers, triumphing over them in his cross (Colossians 2:15). The KJV uses the same English word for both. Israel left rich with silver and gold that would adorn God’s tabernacle, and God has blessed his people with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). Believers are built up as living stones into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5), to worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). The journey Israel began that night carried them through the wilderness (Exodus 13), and every step of it rested on the Passover. In the same way, every blessing of the Christian life rests on the Lamb who was slain.

This passage shows a God whose word stands. He warned Pharaoh that the firstborn would die at midnight, and they died at midnight. He promised Abraham that his descendants would come out with great substance, and they walked out of Egypt carrying its gold. The plagues of Exodus 7–12 were long and Pharaoh’s resistance was stubborn, yet nothing that God had said failed to happen.

It shows a God who is both just and merciful on the same night. The judgment on Egypt was terrible and deserved, and the shelter he gave Israel was a gift, bought with the blood of a lamb. Behind that night stands the cross, where the same justice and the same mercy met in Christ.

And it shows what God’s deliverance is for. Israel was freed to serve the LORD, carrying the bread of their haste and the wealth he had given them, and both would be used for his worship. The same God who brought Israel out of Egypt brings his people out of the bondage of sin, provides for them on the way, and gathers them to worship him.