In Walter Brueggemann's book, The...
Illustration
In Walter Brueggemann's book, The Prophetic Imagination, he tells how God once destroyed an evil regime that enslaved people and that that is a message of hope that God will always destroy tyrannical evil.
And Pharaoh rose in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where one was not dead.
... the cry concerns the killing of the firstborn, the ones born to rule. That is highly ironic, for now the self-sufficient and the impervious regime is reduced to the role of a helpless suppliant. The cry of Israel becomes an empowering cry; the cry of Egypt is one of dismantling helplessness. But it is too late. History has begun and the initiative has been taken by the new God for the new community. The empire is left to grieve over its days of not caring and its gods of order and its politics of injustice, which are now ended.
-- Joseph
And Pharaoh rose in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where one was not dead.
... the cry concerns the killing of the firstborn, the ones born to rule. That is highly ironic, for now the self-sufficient and the impervious regime is reduced to the role of a helpless suppliant. The cry of Israel becomes an empowering cry; the cry of Egypt is one of dismantling helplessness. But it is too late. History has begun and the initiative has been taken by the new God for the new community. The empire is left to grieve over its days of not caring and its gods of order and its politics of injustice, which are now ended.
-- Joseph
