The Water's Edge

Exodus 11-15:21

The Untitled, Open-Ended Study Bible

Rev. David Collins

Nov. 1, 2026

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Today in the the Untitled, Open-Ended Study Bible, we’re going to get the Hebrews out of Egypt.

Well, we’re not. But we’re going to read the story, and maybe we’ll find some things that help us, especially this week… as we wait to find out what our neighbors really think about the direction of our country. 

I really would love to see a version of this story play out there week, wouldn’t you?  Not with all the plagues and death, obviously. But instead of a narrow win and a long night of recounts. I just want the water to part, Pharaoh’s army to wash away, and everyone on the beach to finally agree on what they just saw. Dare to dream. 

That is a lot to ask of a Bible passage, though.

It’s a big one, too. And this passage is a great example of how the Bible is pieced together like a quilt. The oldest fragment comes last: a little jingle sung by Moses’ sister, Miriam. Right before it is the full version of that song, credited to Moses. And the story itself, which you’ll know if you’ve seen the movies, keeps getting interrupted by instructions to the reader about how to celebrate Passover, the holiday that’s being invented inside the story. It’s very meta. It’s like the director stopping the movie halfway through to tell the audience what to do after the credits so they never forget it.

The Final Plague

Exodus 11:1 The Lord said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterward he will let you go from here; indeed, when he lets you go, he will drive you away. 

Before this, there were nine plagues. Three times, Pharaoh hardened his own heart (8:15, 8:32, 9:34). And every time, it was right after God gave him relief. The frogs leave, and he changes his mind. The flies leave, and he changes his mind again.

Meanwhile, the people around him are catching on. By the third plague, his own magicians tell him, “This is the finger of God” (8:19). During the hail, some of his officials bring their livestock inside because they believed Moses’ warning (9:20). By the locusts, his servants are begging him: “Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” (10:7).

Everyone could see it but him.

And all the while, he’s making deals or at least trying to. “Sacrifice to your God right here, in Egypt. Beautiful country. The best. Why would you leave?” (8:25). Moses says no.

“Tremendous offer. The men can go. The women and kids stay. Very fair. Many people are saying it’s very fair” (10:11). Moses says no.

“Everybody goes. Total freedom. But the flocks stay. That’s the deal. Best deal you’ll ever get” (10:24).

Moses says, “Not a hoof shall be left behind” (10:26).

God didn’t come to negotiate with Pharaoh. God came to win. And winning doesn’t mean the people walk out with whatever Pharaoh lets them keep. Before the last plague even falls, God tells them to collect their back pay.

2 Tell the people that every man is to ask his neighbor and every woman is to ask her neighbor for objects of silver and gold.” 3 The Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. 

But look who pays. It isn’t Pharaoh. It’s the neighbors. Ordinary Egyptians who never cracked a whip, but who lived in houses made of slave labor bricks. They benefited from the system, so they pay for it too. ~

And the text says they did it with favor. Some of them seem to have known it was owed.

But the neighbors’ gold isn’t the only price Egypt pays for its king. Egypt started this story by killing Hebrew baby boys. Now the story comes back around.

4 Moses said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘About midnight I will go out through Egypt. 5 Every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the female slave who is behind the handmill and all the firstborn of the livestock. 6 Then there will be a loud cry throughout the whole land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again. 

And the text doesn’t pretend only the guilty are crying. It names the firstborn of Pharaoh on his throne, and the firstborn of the slave woman grinding grain behind the handmill. That’s the lowest person in Egypt. The narrator could have left her out, and didn’t.

Atrocities and God

If anyone else were doing the killing here, we’d call this an honest account of war. The innocent die right alongside the guilty. They always have.

But it isn’t anyone else. It’s God. And it doesn’t get easier. When we get to Joshua, God tells Israel to wipe out whole cities, “young and old.”

Some people handle that by saying, “Well, that’s just the God of the Old Testament.” But Jesus never met some other God. This is the God he prayed to. And these are the scriptures he read. 

So while I can’t wrap all that up today, I promise to give it the time it deserves soon. For now, we can point out the seams in our theology the same way we point out the seams in the Bible. 

You don’t have to wait for a narrator to step in and tell you which parts are good and which parts are bad. You’re allowed to trust your conscience while you read. You’re allowed to be bothered by it. I am. God can handle it.

And the Bible itself doesn’t leave it here. This isn’t the last time it tells a story about a firstborn son dying. Centuries later, at another Passover, the only truly innocent one, God’s own Son, God himself, suffers and dies.

God doesn’t spare his own firstborn.

And right when the story gets as heavy as it can get, the director walks back on screen with some liturgical instructions about how to celebrate the Passover!

Passover Instructions

It says to pick a lamb. Kill it at twilight. Paint its blood on your doorframe so death passes over your house. Roast it and eat it with flat bread and bitter herbs, and don’t leave any for the morning.

12:11 “This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly.” 

Eat standing up, dressed to run. That made sense for people about to walk out the door in the middle of the night. Or anyone with small kids, standing over the sink. 

By the time of Jesus, nobody ate Passover standing up anymore. The Gospels say Jesus and his disciples reclined at the table. The rabbis made it a rule: even the poorest person in Israel had to recline at Passover, because reclining is how free people eat. 

The tradition changed the instructions, because eating like escaping slaves forever would miss the point.

We’re not supposed to be slaves. Not even to the Bible. 

Tell Your Child

One thing about passover never changed though. In a later interruption, the instructions tell parents what to say when their kids ask about all this.

13:8 You shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’

Now the parent being instructed was never in Egypt. Neither was the child. Neither was anyone at that table, after the first generation.

That’s the point of Passover. Holy days are meant to form children’s identities. But some will say, “I don’t want to put that on them. I want them to make up their own minds” 

That how people end up believing they’re self-made. They think the freedom they have just happened, or that they earned it. And people who think they made themselves don’t usually feel like they owe anybody anything.

So right here near the beginning of the Bible, it says don’t leave your kids to figure it out on their own. Tell them the story. Bring them to the table. Let them ask what it means, and then answer, “This is what God did for me.” Until one day they say it too.

And then it goes back to the action. God does what he said he would do. 

29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, 30… and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.

And then, Pharaoh sent all the Hebrews away. But it’s not just the Hebrews who leave. I had never noticed it before. 

A Mixed Crowd

38 A mixed crowd also went up with them and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds. 

That word for “mixed crowd” means a great mixture. These weren’t just Israelites. They were everybody else who decided to leave.

And maybe some were Egyptians. During the plague of hail, there were officials who believed Moses about the it and brought their animals inside. Maybe a few of them packed up.

Maybe the slave woman from behind the handmill is in that crowd. She just lost her firstborn. She has every reason to hate this God. But maybe she follows the Israelites out the door anyway, to find out more. 

Pharaoh couldn’t change his mind. But everyone else could. 

And next there are some more instructions for the Passover but one of them relates to this mixed crowd. 

48 If an alien who resides with you wants to celebrate the Passover to the Lord, all his males shall be circumcised; then he may draw near to celebrate it; 

Okay. That’s a big ask. But look at what’s on the other side of it: “he shall be regarded as a native of the land.” No probation period, no second-class seats at the table. Once you’re in, you’re family. ~

49 There shall be one law for the native-born and for the alien who resides among you.

Nobody had to learn Hebrew first. Nobody had to prove they came the right way. There was no right way. They ran out in the middle of the night with whatever they could carry, the same as the Israelites did.

Some Christians in this country want immigrants to earn a place at the table before they’re allowed to sit down. God’s law says once you’re in, you belong. Same rights, same table.

That was good news for a crowd of runaways. And it’s still the law in God’s house.

More Interuptions

Now, if you’re following along in a Bible, you’ll notice there are even more instructions for the Passover in chapter 13, and it might even have a different name in the heading. Honestly, explaining all that would just kill whatever momentum we have going here. It would have been really great if the editors back then could have gone to a writer’s workshop. 

But the end of chapter 13 does introduce the awesome pillars of cloud and fire, which is how God led the Israelites around. This is also where we learn that Moses took Joseph’s bones with him. 

The Red Sea

But Chapter 14 is awesome. It opens with God doing something strange. He tells Moses to turn the people around and camp with their backs against the sea. So that Pharaoh will think they’re lost and trapped, “and he will pursue them, so that I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army” (14:4). And it works.

5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the minds of Pharaoh and his officials were changed toward the people, and they said, “What have we done, letting Israel leave our service?”

That’s what happens when a powerful man loses. Losing isn’t the end of it. A lot of us are worried about exactly that this week. What if Tuesday goes the way we hope, and the people who lost decide it doesn’t count? What happens in the two months between the vote and the swearing in?

So here come the chariots. The people look up and see Egypt coming, and they do what scared people do. They panic, and they blame the leadership.

11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?”

Which is a great line. They’re running for their lives, and they still find time for sarcasm.

My people. 

The Water's Edge

You know, It really would take a Red Sea kind of victory on Tuesday to restore my faith in my fellow Americans. Not a win. A wipeout. Nine out of ten people on the other side changing their minds and saying out loud that they were wrong. I know that isn’t going to happen. And even if it did, I know what Wednesday morning would sound like. The election was stolen. The chariots would still come.

So no matter what, we’re all standing at the water’s edge. 

14:13 But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

One of the all time best lines in the Bible. It’s hard to do, but it sounds awesome. But it doesn’t stop there. 

15 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.”

So be still, but also go forward. Be still and know. Be still and trust. And in that stillness, in that trust, start by taking one step, and then another. 

The rabbis tell a story about a man who did both. His name was Nahshon, and he was the first to walk into the sea. They say that he took one step and then another, until the water was up to his nose, and only then did it part.

14:21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.

Here’s one of those seams again. Moses stretches out his hand, and the waters split. And in the same verse, God blows an east wind all night and dries the sea out. Scholars think two versions of this story got stitched together right here.

So the Israelites walk through. The Egyptians follow. And then the water comes back.

30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

They believed in God and in each other, for a little while anyway. Megan will tell you next week how long that lasted.

And then they sing.

Moses sings for eighteen verses. But the oldest piece is the one at the end

Miriam's Song

20 Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. 21 And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

It’s the same words as the opening line of Moses’ song. Many scholars think hers came first, and his grew out of it. Hers is a two-line chant passed down for generations before it was written down. It may even be where the whole story started.

The rabbis asked a funny question about Miriam’s song. Where did they get the tambourines?

Tambourines?

These people left Egypt in the middle of the night. They didn’t even have time to let their bread rise. But they packed tambourines. Before the last plague, before the chariots, before anyone knew how this would end, they had enough hope to pack their tambourines.

Whatever happens, the sea is still ahead of us. The chariots might still come.

But pack your tambourine, just in case.

And bring it to the table. 

This table started as a Passover meal. On the night before he died, Jesus reclined with his friends, the way free people eat. He took the bread and the cup and told them a new story about deliverance, that comes from sacrifice. He is firstborn, given instead of taken. You only have to be still. He has already fought and won for you. 

So come and rest a minute. You’re free. Bring the fear you carried in this morning, and whatever hope you’re keeping alive.

And if your kids ask what this means, tell them. This is what God did for me and for you. 

Then, whatever Tuesday brings, we’ll get up from this table and go forward.