Is the Angel of Death, the Death Angel or the “destroyer” (depending on the
translation) sent by YHWH a bit dimwitted? We know that YHWH knows his
people because they are circumcised (at least the men), although Moses was
not – which leads to a funny story later, when YHWH sees that Moses and
his son are not circumcised (I guess he wasn’t looking at Moses’ genitals
before?) and YHWH goes to kill Moses, but luckily Moses’ wife saves the day
with a piece of flint – read about it at Exodus 4:24-25, and if you want to
read the really wild version complete with the hatan (the Satan) and lots of
bad Angels, check out the midrash Nedarim 32a. For wild fantasy, you can’t
beat the midrash.
So anyway, YHWH can’t trust the Angel of Death 14 with not confusing the
YHWH loving Hebrews with the degenerate Egyptians who have had an
advanced civilization for about 2,000 years already, with the pyramids being
over 1,000 years old by the time this story supposedly happened. So YHWH
comes up with the wonderful idea of marking the door of each Hebrew with
lamb’s blood. This requires some explanation itself. Weren’t all the sheep
already killed not once but several times by the other plagues? So I guess
the Hebrews were slaves having their own livestock? But the narrative never
says that the Hebrew’s livestock was exempt from the other plagues. And
while we are on the subject, if they were slaves, how is it that they all had
their own houses? Slaves usually lived with their owners. But again, let’s not
let a little thing like logic stand in the way of a ripping bloodthirsty tale.
If you want to read more about this sadistic episode, AVOID Wikipedia
(“Plagues of Egypt”), which spends an inordinate amount of its time trying to
provide natural explanations for the plagues, as though they were real
historical events. All the citations are of books and apologists claiming the
historicity of the plagues. “Scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a
chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and
environmental disasters hundreds of miles away.” This is despite the fact
that there is no mention of the plagues or of Hebrew slaves in any Egyptian
sources. None. Zero. So the only source material for these plagues that
supposedly have natural causes (according to Wikipedia) is the Hebrew
Bible.
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