Plunder and Plagues

The plagues upon Egypt comprise a “negative” sacred architecture. They lifted up Egypt in an ironic liturgy as a defiled altar upon which was placed the firstborn of Ham.

Since the time of Joseph, Pharaoh’s relationship with Israel had come to resemble the abuse of Jacob by his uncle Laban—a syncretist who worshiped household gods and treated his extended family as servants for the purpose of unrighteous gain. Just as Jacob plundered Laban and his gods, so the children of Israel would plunder Egypt and its gods.

Joseph as Firstfruits

In faith, the obedient man offers his firstfruits to God in heaven as an acknowledgment of the source of the blessings which he enjoys on earth. In response, God sends the rest of the harvest as He promised. Adam was the “firstfruits” from the ground in human terms, but he failed to present the spiritual “fruits of the Spirit” that God required. This resulted in a curse of barrenness in land and womb (historical continuity relies upon food and offspring), but these limitations were mitigated to some degree by regular sacrificial offerings.

In the “there-and-back-again” structure of the Abrahamic promises (Canaan – Egypt – Canaan), Joseph’s obedience was a Firstfruits which built up the nation of Egypt by increasing its landholdings and thus its dominion and authority.

The death of Joseph ended the forming stage of this process (covenant head) and the oppression under Egyptian slavemasters resulted in Israel’s prayers for deliverance (as covenant body). Both head and body had now suffered under the yoke of Egypt.

The journey from the priestly via the kingly to the prophetic is always God’s means of transformation. Between Ascension and Maturity there is always the refining fire of Testing, a battle between the serpent (in this case, the serpent-crowned Pharaoh) and the Adam who must prove wiser than a serpent by the Spirit of God. This explains the contest between the serpents in Exodus 7.

The fivefold covenant pattern becomes sevenfold through the triune “opening” of the Ethics step, which branches out into the three facets of human obedience: “hear God, obey God, speak for God,” or Priest, King, and Prophet. Thus, a fivefold covenant (theory) becomes sevenfold in history (practice). The Law of God is given, opened, and received. This is also the process Israel underwent at Mount Sinai, and it is replicated in the ministry of Christ and the Church in the first century.

Just as Joseph had received two dreams as a double witness from God, the priestly (sheaves – Firstfruits) and kingly (sun, moon, and stars – Pentecost), so Joseph’s Pharaoh also received two dreams, the priestly (fat and lean cows – Altar) and the kingly (the blessed and cursed Pentecostal harvest that would thresh the nations – Lampstand). The result was the vindication of Joseph as “The Prophet,” the wise man with God’s Spirit (Genesis 41:38) who became a “father” to the king (Genesis 45:8).

The later Pharaoh who did not know Joseph (and thus did not “receive” the Law) also saw the signs and heard the double witness of Moses and Aaron. Egypt by now should have been a prophetic nation, but she had used the blessing of God as an opportunity to fill up her sins. Instead of becoming a prophetic house of prayer for all nations (just as she had been a priestly house of bread for all nations), she was now a den of thieves, a brood of snakes. The root word for prayer in the expression “house of prayer” in Isaiah 56:7 possibly carries the idea of asking God to judge, so the prophetic stage of this process was fulfilled in the prayers of the Israelites for freedom from their bondage.

Both Egypt and Israel were now ripe for judgment. Egypt was rich, and Israel was a nation within a nation, ready to become “God’s firstborn” (Exodus 4:22).

So, the plagues upon Egypt must be seen as the reversal of the prosperity which had been brought as an argosy from heaven by Joseph as God’s right-hand man. Just as God filled Egypt for the sake of Israel, He would now empty it for the sake of Israel. Pharaoh’s hardened heart had rendered Joseph’s royal cup a vessel of destruction. Drinking from it would make him stagger and fall, and the natural abundance of his kingdom from the hand of God would be shattered by supernatural plagues.

The relevant point for our discussion here is that the Firstfruits office of Joseph in this particular construct explains the architectural nature of the Ten Plagues. As a reversal of the Ascension step in the pattern, the plagues at Maturity build a three-tiered doppelgänger of Egypt’s ascension to power, an evil twin or “altar of the abyss,” and place a human child upon it.¹See Altar of the Abyss. The question was, whose child would it be? This rivalry between the altar of Joseph and the altar of Pharaoh is an implicit prediction of the later conflict between Elijah and the child-sacrificing priests of Baal on Mount Carmel. As Yul Brynner’s Pharaoh famously says in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), “His god is god,” an inverted response to the tetragrammaton, “I AM.”

The Prophetic Grid in Genesis

The plagues cannot be understood without reference to the “prophetic grid” established in the book of Genesis. The three Ethical offices of human authority represent “hearing, acting, and speaking,” but, since God works in fractals, each office also contains all three steps. What differentiates between them is their diverse domains: the priest in the Garden, the king in the Land, and the prophet in the World.

The priest’s office focused on silent obedience, yet each priest was to “hear, obey, and speak” if required. This is the background for the “lamb-like” silencing of Zechariah in Luke 1:20. The king’s role focused on meditating upon and living out the law as an example to the people, but each king was to “hear, obey, and speak” as necessary in his given domain. If the king ventured into the domain of the priest, God would punish him as He punished Korah and Uzziah. The prophet’s office ruled over both priests and kings, and included authority over the surrounding nations, yet each prophet was to “hear, obey, and speak” as God directed.

Messing with this three-by-three grid in any way was a deadly game of “tic-tac-toe.” Those who enjoyed greater light suffered stricter judgment. The first person to learn this was Adam in the Garden of Eden.

The Prophetic Grid in Exodus

In covenant terms, plunder and plagues are always a multiplication of the obedience or disobedience to the Ethics. Consequently, the plagues sent to judge Egypt were a multiplication of Moses’ own three-by-three prophetic grid given by God in Exodus 4. Although the three tiers comprise a “signified” world in vertical terms, each is also a process of death and resurrection in horizontal terms.

The Ten Plagues are related to the Ten Words (made obvious when the exegete submits to the Jewish “scroll” division!) but the point here is to show the plagues as a “negative multiplication” of the signs which Moses was given to warn Pharaoh of God’s power. In the plagues, the entire nation of Egypt was “lifted up” as an altar for child sacrifice.

Now for some observations and comments based on this architectural chart:

• This construct is an upside-down Noah’s ark, where it is the firstborn seed of the Woman (Cain) who perishes. The waters below are the bloody door and the waters above are the windows of heaven. The Nile turning to blood was a reminder of the blood of the Hebrew infants, which were later protected by a bloodied door at Passover. The red cord in Rahab’s window was the completion of the “ascension” of Israel to a new “dry land.”
• The division of the “waters below” and the “water above” thus prefigures Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan. The next mention of hail is in Joshua 10:11, where Israel’s victory over the corrupt king of Jerusalem was assisted by hailstones.
• The Septuagint translators who lived in Egypt (centuries later) identified the fourth plague as the dog fly which attaches itself to the edges of eyelids.
• Between Aaron as Priest (Day 1) and Moses as Prophet (Day 3), the Lord reclaimed His throne as true King. The only “serpent plague” here is the Lord, and it is Pharaoh whose serpents are swallowed up. Likewise, it was the fiery serpent-like seraphim in God’s court who authorized the prophet Isaiah to put the idolatrous city of Jerusalem under the ban.
• Notice that God separated between the Hebrews and Egyptians (as a Veil) on “Day 2.” The fertile land of Goshen only suffered the first three plagues.
• These three “Creation days” are, of course, symbolic. The journey into the wilderness was to be three days. Consequently, the time of Pharaoh’s hardening (as Bronze) kept Israel in slavery for “three days.” But how long was the entire period in reality?
• The first plague lasted a “Sabbath week,” and the ninth plague was three days of darkness—ten days in total, which is the time between Trumpets and Atonement. Based upon the timing of Passover and the mentions of harvest, it seems that the total period of plagues lasted for five “moons” (as in Revelation 5:9-10). Israel plundered Egypt and marched out in military array, that is, five abreast. Five and ten are military numbers, and also the numbers of the hands and feet. These all relate to the fifth step of the Bible Matrix, which is Maturity: hosts and swarms, plunder and plagues.
• Just as Day 3 produced the Firstfruits of the Land, the third set of plagues leads to the death of the firstborn. The plagues upon Egypt were a sacred architecture yet in a negative sense. They lifted up Egypt as a defiled Bronze Altar upon which was symbolically offered Canaan, the kingly firstborn of Ham (Genesis 9:25, Psalm 105:23).²For more discussion, see “Cutting Off Canaan” in Michael Bull, Dark Sayings: Essays for the Eyes of the Heart.
• This three-day pattern, in Tabernacle terms, brings us to the Table of Facebread. It is thus fitting that Pharaoh’s last words to Moses concerned his face. Culminating in the Passover, the “land and womb” blessings brought by Joseph would be transformed into an empty table and an empty cradle. In its attempt to devour the firstborn of God, Egypt had devoured its own. But the word “see” is also important. It was the Lampstand, a stylized burning tree, that watched over the Table of Facebread. Moses even switched off the lights on the way out.

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let them go. Then Pharaoh said to him, “Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.” Moses said, “As you say! I will not see your face again.” (Exodus 10:28-29)