Post-Passover Pondering: “Why didn’t Pharoah, a first-born son, die?”

My little Joshua and I were watching The Ten Commandments this past Saturday. Sidebar: I love that movie. It’s one of Hollywood’s last true epics and arguably the finest work of Cecil B. DeMille (his final movie). Is the film entirely accurate to the Bible? No, it takes liberties, and not just in fleshing out the backstory of Moses (about whom the writer himself has little to say in Exodus). Nevertheless, there is a clear reverence for the Word of God on display from the very beginning of the movie, which features Mr. DeMille addressing the audience on the history behind the production…

“Our intention was not to create a story but to be worthy of the divinely inspired story created 3,000 years ago in the five books of Moses.”

You won’t find words like that today uttered by Hollywood producers of DeMille’s status (he was arguably the filmmaker of his era), but I digress.

Late in the film, as the final plague swept across Egypt, killing the first-born who were not residing in houses covered in the lamb’s blood, Joshua (remarkably engrossed, despite the agedness of the film) turned to ask me a question many have wondered…

Why didn’t Pharoah die if he was a first-born son?

Perhaps it’s a question you’ve asked or wondered about yourself. There are a few different possible answers you might consider, such as the possibility that the Pharoah in question was somehow not the first-born son and heir of his father, the previous Pharoah. I’ve seen some argue that God specifically spared Pharoah’s life in order for his heart to be hardened and for him to lead the army after Israel to the edge of the Red Sea.

Personally, I think the answer is due more to the reason why this was a plague in the first place.

The plague to kill the first-born children in Egypt was more than just a severe punishment by the hand of God, it was specifically a rebuke of the earlier infanticide that brought Moses into the house of Pharoah in the first place. Recall that it was the prior Pharoah who saw the growth of the Israelite nation and feared they might either rise up against him or perhaps ally with an invading army on some future occasion. So, thinking of the need to cull the heard, so to speak, he ordered first-born Israelite sons to be drowned in the Nile. It was only by the faith and cunning of one mother, and the Providential hand of God, that Moses was not one of those many casualties.

Fast-forward to the days preceding the Exodus: Moses first approaches Pharoah with the demand for the people to be set free and, when Pharoah refuses, Moses and Aaron put a plague on the Nile, turning its waters into blood. How poetic: The very river that was used to murder so many now runs red with blood as a punishment against Egypt for what they did to God’s people.

That was the first plague. The last one, book-ending the first, saw God directly respond to Egypt’s killing of the babies: He put a plague of death over the land, promising that the first-born would die. But, true to His character, the Lord also offered a way out. Everyone that died on the night of the tenth plague died because the heads of those houses refused to believe in both the goodness and severity of God. They refused to believe God could or would bring His wrath on the land, and they refused to trust in His way to escape that wrath.

Many died that night.

So why did Pharoah, presumably a first-born son of the prior King of Egypt, not die?

The answer, in my opinion, is because Pharoah was not just a son; he was also a father. As such, he was not the target, but the one who would have to witness the reality of God’s power. In short, in every home that was not covered in the blood, only the first-born “children” were killed, not first-born “fathers.” That, I think, is exactly what the text implies…