FIRSTBORN OF THE EGYPTIANS
Should we assume there was a practice of killing the
‘firstborn’ among the peoples with whom the Israelites lived?
2 Kings 3:27: “Then he took his firstborn son
who was to succeed him, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall.”
But obviously Yahweh was opposed to this practice of child
sacrifice:
Ezekiel 20:26: “I defiled them through their
very gifts, in their offering up all
their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might
know that I am the Lord.”
Ezekiel 20:31: “When you offer your gifts and make your
children pass through the fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols
to this day.”
Micah 6:7: “Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for
the sin of my soul?”
Ezekiel 16:20-21: “You
took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you
sacrificed to them to be devoured. As if your whorings were not enough! You slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering to them.”
Ezekiel 16:36: “because
of all your abominable idols, and
because of the blood of your children
that you gave to them.”
Recall that Yahweh refused the human
sacrifice by Abraham of his firstborn son (Genesis
22).
And yet while Yahweh disapproved of child
sacrifice, nevertheless this imagery of killing the firstborn is firmly
entrenched in the Hebrew Bible, and continues on into the New Testament, as if
Yahweh, the Almighty God actually had some interest in who was born first and
‘He’ had some need for their blood.
[ The Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn ] “At midnight the Lord
struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn
of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who
was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.”
But the Pharaoh himself was not a
firstborn??
“When Pharaoh
stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed
all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human firstborn to
the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord every male that first opens the womb, but every firstborn
of my sons I redeem.’”
This notion of ‘redeeming’ a firstborn son is a vast
improvement over killing him, but still retains the idea that Yahweh is a
murderous demon who craves firstborn blood, therefore, the need to ‘redeem.’
Could this killing of the firstborn have had a survival
benefit to a tribe as a whole during times of crisis when there was not enough
food? Better to reduce the number of
mouths to feed, especially those who might be old enough to snitch food from
the parents’ food stores? Of course no
child should be killed regardless of benefit to the tribe as a whole.
Despite refusing to kill their own firstborn, the Levites
nevertheless used this firstborn imagery to trick the Hebrew tribes into paying
a tax. First the Levites took a census
of all their own firstborn and then a census of all the other firstborn among
the Hebrews.
“The total enrollment,
all the firstborn [non-Levite] males from a month old and upward,
counting the number of names, was twenty-two thousand two hundred seventy-three.”
“Accept the Levites as
substitutes for all the firstborn among the Israelites, and the
livestock of the Levites as substitutes for their livestock; and the Levites
shall be mine. I am the Lord.”
Supposedly there were 273 excess firstborn among the
Israelites over and above the number of firstborn among the Levites, and so the
tax was on these 273 excess firstborn.
Apparently, the Levites got paid this tax. What a scam:
“As the price of
redemption of the two hundred seventy-three of the firstborn of the
Israelites, over and above the number of the Levites,”
“from the firstborn
of the Israelites he took the money, one thousand three hundred sixty-five
shekels, reckoned by the shekel of the sanctuary;”
It is even more of a scam when you do the math and realize
that the number of Levite firstborn is actually at least 22,300, not 22,000 as
stated, and more than covers the number of other Israelite firstborn which is
22,273. The 22,300 does not include
those who camp on the ‘east,’ the families of Moses and Aaron who are also
presumably Levites (Exodus 4:14, Numbers 3:38), thus a higher number is
indicated than 22,300.
The figures in Numbers
3 for the firstborn Levite census are in error because the numbers don’t even
add up to the supposed total given there:
7,500 + 8,600 + 6,200 = 22,300, not 22,000 as stated.
The number 273 produces the Sower’s Sevens and so I have to ask
if this tale about a tax on the firstborn is historical and factual, or merely
an opportunity to produce “sacred numbers.”
Or merely the fictional foundation for other later practices, as we can
see in Luke, Jesus’ parents were required to take him to the Temple and pay for the sacrifice of two turtledoves
(Luke 2:24), because Jesus was a ‘firstborn.’
Calculation for Sower’s Sevens
First break apart 273 into 200, 70, 3. Then apply the Sower’s parables numbers
100-60-30 and reverse, as follows:
100 x 200 = 20,000
60 x 70 = 4,200
30 x 3 = 90
Sum of products = 24,290; factor 70
Reverse
30 x 200 = 6,000
60 x 70 = 4,200
100 x 3 = 300
Sum of products = 10,500; factor 70
Sum of sums of products = 24,290 + 10,500 = 34,790; factor 70 x 7
The biblical “70 x 7” is printed in Matthew 18:22 (NRSV footnote).
The biblical “70 x 7” is also found printed in Genesis
4:24. This “70 x 7” is the special number which often emerges when I
apply the Sower’s Parables numbers.
This notion of ‘redeeming’ a firstborn or having a Levite
substitute for a firstborn was perhaps somewhat embarrassing to the author of
Wisdom who tries to justify it:
[ The Death of the Egyptian Firstborn ] “When they had resolved to kill the infants
of your holy ones, and one child had been abandoned and rescued [Moses?], you in punishment took away a multitude
of their children; and you destroyed them all together by a mighty flood.”
But actually Pharaoh did not
succeed in killing the Hebrew boy babies because the midwives did not cooperate??
(Exodus 1) So Pharaoh was punished for
just trying.
Exodus 4:22-23 has the reasoning a bit differently: “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: Israel is my firstborn son.
I said to you, ‘Let my son go that he may worship me.’ But you refused to let
him go; now I will kill your firstborn
son.’””
Have you noticed that in this supposedly historical account
of the Pentateuch, the name of the Pharaoh is not mentioned? At least I have not found it. Moses and Aaron are named, but not their
supposed adversary the Pharaoh?
It is puzzling that the number of Levite firstborn
approximate the total for all other tribes combined. Since all are descendants, supposedly, of the
12 brothers (and their wives), then why is one tribe approximately 50 percent,
and not 1/12 (or 1/14 as there are 14 names for the “12 Tribes”).
Perhaps many of the Israelites did not participate in the
census conducted by the Levites, as they figured it was not to their benefit to
do so.
Maybe some of the Israelite ‘firstborn’ lied and said they
were not firstborn, figuring it was to their benefit to do so. Or lied and said the firstborn child was
already lost. What would you say if
someone came snooping around your family asking who was firstborn and you knew
there was a tradition among the locals of killing the firstborn?
Or perhaps the Levites were not actually part of the 12
tribes, only dominated them after acquiring them in a joining lost to history;
the Levites being able to dominate because of their larger population.
Or perhaps the servitude of the 12 tribes predated the time
of Moses significantly, and the Levites were a much larger percentage after the
Exodus due to their being well-fed by the other tribes for a long time.
Or perhaps the Levites had purity regulations that prevented
them from having large families and thus they had a greater percentage of
‘firstborn’ among them.
If the Levites constituted half the Hebrews, based on the
tally of their firstborn, and if the number of all Israelite men that left
Egypt was 600,000 (Exodus 12:37), and
if the first census of Israelite men, without Levites, was 603,550 (Numbers 1:46), then the actual number of
men who left Egypt, both Israelite and Levite, was twice that – 1.2
million?? Just asking.
Is it possible for 12 sons of Jacob, the forebears of the
’12 Tribes’ (and their wives) to spawn a people totaling 600,000 men or 1.2
million men in just 430 years (Exodus 12:40) – like 14 generations, if they
were living in the fertile valley of the Nile and families were well-fed? How many children on average in each
family? Just asking. You’re welcome to do the math. I’m not going
to attempt it here.
Could this supposed vast hoard of 600,000 men or 1.2 million
men actually survive in the desert wilderness between Egypt and Palestine, by
preying on the few indigenous people living in the desert or by raiding the
surrounding towns or by eating miraculous ‘manna’ that fell from the sky? Just asking.
Manna does not fall from the sky around here. Just saying.
Jesus is a firstborn.
Hebrews 1:5-6:
“‘I will be his
Father, and he will be my Son’? And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, ‘Let
all God’s angels worship him.’”
“And she gave birth to
her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a
manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
In Luke 2, Jesus the firstborn is apparently ‘redeemed’ by a
payment to the Temple, a sacrifice of two turtledoves or pigeons, but Jesus is
ultimately killed as a blood sacrifice.
Seemingly a contradiction to have Jesus both redeemed and actually
killed.
Luke 2:22-24
“ When the time came for their purification
according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him
to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every
firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’), and they offered a
sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of
turtledoves or two young pigeons.’”
The birds were not happy about this. The Levites yes. They got paid for the service and/or had
pigeon pie.
“For those whom he
foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order
that he might be the firstborn within a large family.”
[ The Supremacy of Christ ] “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation;”
“He is the head of the
body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so
that he might come to have first place in everything.”
“and to the assembly
of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of
all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,”:
“and from Jesus
Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler
of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood,”
My idea of God is that IT does not lust after the “blood” of the “firstborn,” nor does IT even care
who is firstborn, neither favoring nor disfavoring by order of birth.
How very unfortunate that this very ancient idea of killing
the firstborn, (that Yahweh generally did not approve of unless ‘He’ was the
one doing the killing), continued on and still does continue on as the idea is retained
and promoted by Christianity and its sacred texts.
Probably you don’t care unless you are a firstborn.
Who was the first person to image God in this way, saying
God desires the blood of the firstborn? Did this idol maker have mommy issues or older
sister or older brother issues? Maybe
mommy liked firstborn older brother better – oh, oh.
I am not in favor of killing or redeeming or substituting or
‘designating as holy’ the “firstborn.”
NRSV used throughout
Posted May 15, 2018
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