Pharaoh's Lament

Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his officials and all the Egyptians; and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. Exodus 12:30

Pharaoh's Lament
By Rev. William Dohle

I sat there in shock, by the waters of the Nile,
With my little boy in my arms.
And the cries of the others through the city flying on the breeze.
And one word coming to my mind...
Why?

Why did I not listen when they came to me?
It would have been so easy to.
My adopted brother and his blood brother, with his accursed staff.
My brother's whispers in his ear and their constant cry.

"Let them go!"

"Let the people go... to worship in the hills, to sacrifice to their god, to...something!
"Let them go out of my power!  Let them go out of my land!
"Let them go...and let their God have control!"

"Tomorrow I said.  Tomorrow I asked.
Not today.  Not today!"

Even when the plagues came.  The frogs and the gnats, the flies and the pestilence, the boils and the darkness.
Even when the natural world rebelled around me, I would not let it go.  I would not release my power.
I could not.
What would it say of me!?  What would it say of the god, Pharaoh?
What would my legacy be if I blindly let them go?
They would not understand.  They could not understand.
I could not let them go.  Not for their God...or anyone.

And then tragedy.  The final straw.  Last night, after nine other plagues, they came again
With word of death on the wind.

Your son, Aaron said pointing to me, and every other firstborn in the land will die.
I laughed in his face.  I actually laughed.
My adopted brother actually looked sad as he turned away to walk from the palace.

Did he see the fate of his nephew?
Could he not have stopped this tragedy?

And then in the night the deathly cries.  One home after another.
It was as if Egypt erupted in sorrow.
And the sorrow fell too on my own home.

And so I told them to leave.  "Be gone!"
"Go and worship your God as you wish!  And pray a blessing upon me too!"

The God of Israel, a God of nature and of death itself
A God of fierce wrath has consumed Egypt.
So great was his love for his people.

I shudder to think of this god.  I shudder to think of what he will do...
What he still will do
To protect his precious people.

And yet something within me stirs.
Is it pride?  Or anger?

But even as I see them go I will not relent.
I must pursue them.
What was I doing letting them out of my service?
These people, and all they have, are mine!

What else is a man to do with a hardened heart like mine?