Now the LORD had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. – Exodus 11:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 21, 2018): Exodus 11

We are a people of competing fears. As the drama over immigration rages in First World nations, there are contradicting fears that seem to rage on both sides of the discussion. For some, immigration is a problem because we are often afraid that we import the problems of the world into our neighborhoods with the people that we accept into our nations. President Trump makes the most of this argument, often inciting opposition charges of racism. But the flip side of the argument is that First World nations need to grow their populations faster than they currently are biologically to create healthy economies. In other words, immigrants in First World nations are needed to create the flourishing economies that the residents of these nations currently enjoy. Without a populations increase, the economies of these nations will settle into recession or depression modes. The only partial solution to this problem, without immigration, is an expansion of world trade markets, and the resultant free trade treaties on which that expansion would rely. So the people of these nations have a choice. They can remove immigration and threaten their economies, or they can embrace immigration, mostly from Majority or Third World nations, feeding their economies, but creating the risk of the problems that may enter the country with these immigrants.

And this was precisely the situation in which the Egypt of Moses found themselves. Israel was a complication. They were foreigners with foreign problems. As with modern-day immigrants, the political power of Egypt was unsure of their allegiances. And so they were made slaves and oppressed under the thumb of the majority. These immigrants that Moses led were feared by the leaders of Egypt. And so they were unwanted. Yet, they also represented the fiscal future of the nation. They were slaves, and while the Israelites may have been looked down upon, the economy of the nation depended on the work that they provided to the wealth of the nation. They were necessary for Egypt’s fiscal well-being.

Moses had a solution to the fear. He was willing to remove the people from the country. While we think of the biblical Exodus as being a mass migration that happened under the direction of Moses, it is likely that that was only part of the Exodus. The Exodus of Israel out of Egypt was already well underway as people trickled away from Egypt, just as Moses had left the country forty years earlier. Moses was far from the exception; Israelites had been leaving for generations. But the final removal of Israel from Egypt would have an economic effect on the host nation. And so the Pharaoh wavered about whether or not he was willing to let the people go; he suffered under competing fears.

But God tells Moses that this is the end. After the events of this plague, Pharaoh would decide that Israel was more trouble than she was worth. After this event, Pharaoh would not allow Israel to go. He would force them out and compel them to leave. The time had come for Pharaoh to discover an economy not based on the slaves of Israel because they could no longer stay.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Exodus 12