As far as we know in the history of Egypt do they ever have faith? If God just wanted to free the Hebrews that is a simple task. We conjecture that God is trying to make himself known to the Egyptians but this never happens as far as I know so why bother. The more I read of the Old Testament the more I realize that there is a recurring theme. I have absolutely no hope of understanding why God does what he does. I keep getting the sense that God has an eternal vision that must transcend our individual lives and our ideas about what life is all about. One thing I find interesting is that this story goes back to my early childhood in Sunday school. You just sort of take it in as cool story. Perhaps that's the best way to read some of these passages. Yet I do wonder if a story about slavery, battles of holy snakes vs demonic snakes, the good guys inflicting plagues up an entire nation. If I can't barely make any sense of it all, why is this the one of the first things we expose our children to?

Thanks Rob. I think I'll adopt that view, it makes a lot of sense.

Copying Rob's post from 2013. I totally forgot about it and really would have helped me as we've been reading. "A bible prof at GFU said something regarding Genesis and Exodus that makes a lot of sense. He said that they are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Meaning they should be read and understood as events that happened, but that we should NOT look to them as moral or ethical instruction. This helped ease my mind and made has made my OT reading more enjoyable."