During the time between the call of Abraham and the famine that drove them to Egypt the Hebrews were nomadic herdsmen. Isaac had tried to settle in Gerar but was driven out when he became too numerous and prosperous for the local king to tolerate. (Gen 26:6-16) (That event prefigures Pharaoh’s attitude and his subsequent actions which set up the Exodus. Israel had become so numerous that Pharoah worried that they might side with his enemies in a crisis.) {Ex 1:8-11) Jacob also tried to settle down in Shechem with his wives and sons after he had separated from Laban in Haran. When the local prince, Shechem, abducted and raped his daughter, Dinah, Jacob’s sons destroyed the town and forced Jacob to move south. (Gen 34) During the 400 years between the descent into Egypt and the Exodus, the Israelites had settled down in Goshen. They continued to be herdsmen, but they built houses and towns. That they were no longer nomads probably facilitated their enslavement. Constructing houses and towns meant that a substantial portion of their wealth was not mobile. Stationary assets are easy for the taxing authority to inventory. The comforts, security and routine of settled life are difficult to abandon even in the face of a gradually worsening situation.

As was mentioned earlier, Scripture does not record any direct interaction between God and the Hebrews from HIs assurance to Jacob that it was right to go down to Egypt (Ge 42:2-4) until the call of Moses. Since that gap was some 400 years, one could expect their faith and their theology to have drifted. The entire history of Biblical Israel starting with the Golden Calf at Sinai and culminating with the Roman exile in 70 CE testifies to the cyclical nature of faith. Since the interaction of the patriarchs with God was integral to the Hebrews becoming a people and they still had their tribal identities when they came out of Egypt, it is clear that those stories had been passed down through the generations that followed the death of the sons of Jacob. Those stories and the fact that they were herdsmen helped keep them distinct from the pagan culture that surrounded them, but they surely did not prevent the erosion of faith.

Because of this, one of God’s purposes in the plagues was to reintroduce Himself to the Hebrews. He said this explicitly:

“I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.” (Ex 6:6-8)

There were two more things to be accomplished in the Exodus. The first, of course, was to get the Hebrews physically out of Egypt. As will be explained later, this would not be as simple as opening the door. The Hebrews had put down roots in Egypt. They had homes, property and neighbors. The prospect of a three-day festival in the wilderness and then a return to normality was one thing; uprooting everything they knew and following the prophet of a no longer familiar god into the wilderness would have been quite another.

In this light, one can see another purpose for the Plagues. In addition to their effect upon the attitude of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, they served to assure the Hebrews that God was fully capable of doing whatever He said He would do. That assurance would initially serve to secure the Hebrew’s obedience to Moses’ instructions for the night of the Passover. Since the Egyptians were vegetarians as previously mentioned, the prospect of simultaneously slaughtering thousands of lambs and smearing their blood on the doorposts (Ex 12:3-7) would certainly have caused some trepidation among the Hebrews. This concern was explicitly mentioned by Moses when Pharaoh offered to let the Hebrews do their worship without leaving Egypt:

Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us.” (Ex 8:25-27)

The second thing to be accomplished in the Exodus would prove even more difficult. That is to get Egypt out of the Hebrews. During 400 years they had grown used to the surrounding pagan culture. They had also grown used to the security and comforts of settled life. Moving the Hebrews from Egypt to Sinai took 50 days and accomplished the first objective. Moving them from Sinai to the Promised Land took 40 years and was necessary to accomplish the second. As will become clear, at every step of the process God arranged things so that return to Egypt was not a viable option once Israel had departed.

The wilderness years were, in a sense, a recreation of the environment in which Abraham had come to faith. While God is obviously capable of being dramatic, it appears that His preferred method of interaction with His people is more subtle.