The angel struck the Egyptians at midnight, the symbolic hour of judgment (v. 29; cf. Matt. 25:5-6), when they were asleep ". . . to startle the king and his subjects out of their sleep of sin."216Pharaoh had originally met Moses' demands with contemptuous insult (5:4). Then he tried a series of compromises (8:25, 28; 10:8-11, 24). All of these maneuvers were unacceptable to God.
There is evidence from Egyptology that the man who succeeded Amenhotep II, the pharaoh of the plagues, was not his first-born son.217His successor was Thutmose IV (1425-1417 B.C.), a son of Amenhotep II but evidently not his first-born. Thutmose IV went to some pains to legitimatize his right to the throne. This would not have been necessary if he had been the first-born. So far scholars have found no Egyptian records of the death of Amenhotep II's first-born son.
"Thutmose IV claimed that when he was still a prince he had a dream in which the sun god promised him the throne; this implies that he was not the one who would be expected to succeed to the throne under normal circumstances."218
We need to understand "no home"in its context (v. 30). There was no Egyptian home in which there was a first-born son, who was not a father himself, that escaped God's judgment of physical death.
"This series of five imperative verbs [in v. 31], three meaning go' (dlhis used twice) and one meaning take,' coupled with five usages of the emphatic particle mgalso' . . ., marvelously depicts a Pharaoh whose reserve of pride is gone, who must do everything necessary to have done with Moses and Israel and the Yahweh who wants them for his own."219
Pharaoh's request that Moses would bless him is shocking since the Egyptians regarded Pharaoh as a god (v. 32; cf. Gen. 47:7).
The reader sees God in two roles in this section representing the two parts of Israel's redemption. He appears as Judge satisfied by the blood of the innocent sin-bearer, and He is the Deliverer of Israel who liberated the nation from its slavery.
Redemption involves the payment of a price. What was the price of Israel's redemption? It was the lives of the lambs that God provided as the substitutes for Israel's first-born sons who would have died otherwise (cf. Isaac in Gen. 22, and Jesus Christ, the only-begotten of the Father). The first-born sons remained God's special portion (Num. 8:17-18). The Egyptian first-born sons died as a punishment on the Egyptians. The Egyptians had enslaved God's people and had not let them go, and they had executed male Israelite babies (1:15-22) possibly for the last 80 years.220God owns all life. He just leases it to His creatures. God paid the price of Israel's redemption to Himself. He purchased the nation to be a special treasure for Himself and for a special purpose (19:5).
