“Still Moses was afraid, insisting he had never been eloquent, that he was slow of speech and slow of tongue. God said he would teach him what to say, but Moses asked him to send someone else.”
Atretes snorted. “God should have struck him dead.”
“God is patient with us,” Rizpah said, smiling.
“Indeed,” Theophilus agreed. “And we are grateful. God said that Moses’ brother, Aaron, was well-spoken and that God would give the words to Moses, and Moses would give them to Aaron, who would speak them to Pharaoh. He also said he would harden Pharaoh’s heart, and signs and wonders would be performed before the Hebrews as well as the Egyptians.”
“Why would God choose such a coward to lead his people?” Atretes said, disgusted.
Theophilus laughed. “I wondered that myself when I first heard the story. But had Moses been a mighty warrior, vastly intelligent, and with the charisma of an orator, who do you suppose would have received glory for what was to come?”
“Moses.”
“Exactly. God chooses the foolish and weak things of the world to shame the wise and the strong, to show his power and our weakness without him. God’s power is perfect in our weakness, for it’s only through his strength we accomplish anything of value.”
Theophilus went on, telling of Moses and Aaron going before Pharaoh and demanding that he let God’s people go. Pharaoh refused. When Moses dropped his staff upon the floor and it became a snake, Pharaoh’s magicians used their secret arts to make their staffs become snakes also. But Moses’ snake swallowed the magicians’ snakes. When Pharaoh still refused to let the Hebrew slaves go, Moses touched the Nile River with his staff, and the water became blood. Still Pharaoh refused.
The Lord brought plague after plague upon Egypt: frogs, gnats, swarms of insects, pestilence on Egyptian livestock, boils, thunder and hail, locusts, and darkness. During each plague, Pharaoh relented, then, when the crisis passed, hardened his heart once again.
Atretes sat up. “The man was a fool!”
“The man was proud,” Theophilus said. “Proud men are often foolish.”
“Nine plagues! Frogs, gnats, boils? What does it take for him to bow down before God?”
“How many plagues have you suffered in your life, Atretes? Defeat. Slavery. Beatings. Humiliation. Degradation. Betrayal. What did it take for you to bow down before God and accept the truth that he is sovereign majesty of all creation?”
Atretes’ eyes narrowed coldly, his face hardening.
Theophilus saw and wondered if he had spoken too freely, offending rather than teaching. He retracted nothing, nor softened it. Rather, he waited, leaving the choice to Atretes as he had so often done before.
Atretes thought of Julia. He thought of the hundreds of things that had happened to him from the time he was a young man fighting for his people. He remembered all he had experienced as a grown man fighting to stay alive in the arenas of Rome and Ephesus. Through it all, Tiwaz had remained silent and uncaring. And still it was this god’s name he cried out, not that of Jesus. Even after he had been told the gospel by Hadassah.
“You speak the truth,” he said. “I was as much a fool as the Egyptian pharaoh.”
“God is already at work in you, Atretes,” Theophilus said, warming to the barbarian.
Atretes gave a bleak laugh, feeling no vital change within him, only a burning curiosity to hear everything about God. “Go on.” It was more a command than a request, as humble a capitulation as he would allow himself.
“God told Moses that he would send the angel of death upon Egypt and all the firstborn in the land would die, from the child of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the children of slaves in the kingdom down to the young of the cattle in the field.”
“Revenge.”
“Retribution. And hope. He told Moses that Pharaoh would not listen to him so that his wonders would be multiplied in the land. God also told Moses what to tell the people to do to have death pass over them.
“Moses gathered the Hebrews and told them that each household was to take a male lamb, unblemished and one year old, and kill it at twilight. The blood of the lamb was to be put on the two doorposts and the lintel of the house in which they ate. When God saw the blood of the lamb, he would pass over and no plague would befall them when he struck the land of Egypt with death. The meal prepared from the lamb was, and still is, called Passover.”
Theophilus spread his hands. “As God did fifteen hundred years ago for the Hebrew slaves held in cruel bondage, God did again for all of us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus is our Passover lamb, Atretes. When Christ shed his blood for us upon the cross, he broke the chains of sin and death and gave us eternal life.”