From Bondage to Blessing: Understanding God’s Call to Leave Egypt and Trust His Provision

In this episode of the Scripture Study Podcast, Susan Petersen and Cindy Madsen explore the biblical theme of "Out of Egypt," focusing on the Exodus story and its significance throughout Scripture. They discuss the Hebrew phrase yetziat mitzrayim, Egypt's cultural influence, and how Matthew connects Jesus to the Exodus through the prophet Hosea. The hosts examine Israel's struggle to leave Egypt's comfort despite enslavement, the wilderness journey's lessons on trusting God, and the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. They draw parallels to modern life, encouraging listeners to identify their own "Egypt" and embrace God's call to spiritual freedom.


00:00 Introduction to "Out of Egypt"
03:22 The Prophet Hosea and Jesus
06:36 Jesus Called Out of Egypt
14:10 Leaving a Place of Ease
16:05 The Lot Story as Foreshadowing
22:36 Egypt vs. the Promised Land
27:28 The Symbolism of Bread
32:29 The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart


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The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

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Resources

Instagram (Susan Petersen)
https://www.instagram.com/susan.m.petersen/

Biblical Stories and Concepts

Exodus
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Exodus-Old-Testament

Egypt
https://www.britannica.com/place/Egypt

Manna
https://www.britannica.com/topic/manna-food

Books and Authors

Hosea
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hosea-Hebrew-prophet

Yael Ziegler
https://etzion.org.il/en/authors/yael-ziegler

Notable Quotes

Matthew 2:15
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+2%3A15&version=NIV

Join Us

The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Scripture Study Podcast. I'm Susan Peterson. And I'm Cindy Matson. We're so glad you're here with us. The Scripture Study Podcast is designed to be your midweek Bible boost. Let's dig in.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hi, welcome back to the Scripture Study Podcast. I am your host, Susan Peterson.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

And I am Cindy Mattson.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hi, Cindy. Hi, Susan. It's good to see you. It's good to see you too. This week we are talking about out of Egypt, is what we've named it. So here we go. Here we go. Let's jump in. Let's jump in.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Let's start out talking about the significance of Egypt. So the Hebrew for what we call the exodus from Egypt is Yetsiyat Mitzrah Mitzrahim. And what it means is the going out from Egypt. And this is the seminal story of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. This story echoes throughout the Old Testament. You might think that it would be Mount Sinai and the law, but it isn't. It's this story, Yitzaiah Mitschaim, the going out of Egypt, the Exodus typology that you will see referred to over and over again, as I talked about in the last podcast. So this week I want to build on last week's podcast by suggesting that in order to understand why the Exodus is the prevailing theme in the Bible, we have to begin by understanding what is Egypt in the ancient world. And I would say that at this point in time that we're talking about, Egypt is the most important civilization. And in many ways, it's the most important civilization in world history as you look back. If you go into any museum that has an ancient Egypt room, it is immediately evident this was an extraordinarily sophisticated, very remarkable civilization. I mean, it is a civilization that has really left its mark on the world, both morally and religiously. And unsurprisingly, it really leaves its mark on Israel. And this Egyptian influence, it's still felt in New Testament times. So what does Matthew tell us in chapter two? Quote, and when they, the wise men, were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise and take the young child, or Jesus, and his mother and flee into Egypt. The Joseph story. And be thou there until I bring thee word. For Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the prophets, saying, Out of Egypt, so yet seeat mitzhaiim have I called my son. And who was the prophet that Matthew was quoting? Well, it was the prophet Hosea.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Okay, so who is the prophet Hosea? And what is the historical context of the northern kingdom of Israel in his day?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah, great. Let's talk about that. So Isaiah was a prophet who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel during the middle to the late 8th century BC. So about 200 years after it broke from the southern kingdom of Judah. And Hosea was called to speak to the people of Israel, who he also called Ephraim or Jacob during the reign of one of Israel's worst kings. And that was Jeroboam II. This king, he led the nation into the chaos from which it really never recovered. In 722 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel would fall to the Assyrian Empire. And I'm going to digress just a bit to talk about Hosea. But I promise you that in the end, this is all going to make sense.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

So Okay, okay, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

And obviously, when we get to Hosea, to that book, we'll talk more deeply about it because it's got some really weird things in it. And that's always fun to talk about. But the book of Hosea is structured around five cycles of judgment and restoration. So basically, the book pictures God as a faithful husband to Israel who has rescued them out of slavery in Egypt and has entered into a covenant with them at Mount Sinai, where he asked them to be faithful to him alone. And when God brought them into the promised land, Israel took all the abundance that he provided for them, such as grain and wine and oil, and then they dedicated it to the worship of the Canaanite god Baal. So obviously, God has got a legitimate reason to end the covenant and to divorce Israel, right? In this metaphor of the husband. But the theme that will repeat itself is that although God will bring judgment on sin, he will always bring his people back to himself. So chapter 11 in Hosea illustrates this turning point really well. It's a beautiful poem that in this case depicts God as a loving father who has rescued Israel from Egypt and they have escaped to the promised land. But instead of gratitude for God's abundance, Israel has rebelled against him and has turned to worshiping other gods. And so in this poem, God is angry. I mean, naturally, he's angry, and he says he'll bring down severe consequences. But his anger quickly turns to heartbreak, and he's moved by mercy and compassion to forgive this son that he loves. And he says, How can I give you up, Ephraim? My heart church me, all my compassion is aroused. So while God did allow Israel to be conquered by Assyria, it's not the end of the relationship. God still really deeply loves Israel and he wants to save his people.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Okay, so in Matthew, he quotes Hosea 11:1, out of Egypt I have called my son, and that's in connection with Jesus. So how do we connect Jesus as the one who rescues us from Egypt? And what does Jesus himself say in John 15 about being called out of the world?

SPEAKER_01 6:58

That is a good question. So if we go back to Matthew 2, okay, yeah, where Matthew quotes that, which says, When Israel was a child, then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt. And we ask ourselves, why is Matthew quoting this verse? Well, it's because Jesus is Jehovah, he is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, he is the one who rescued Israel from Egypt, from this world. And so not only that, but he's calling us, like all of us, to come out of Egypt. And so in John 15, Jesus says, if the world hates you, be aware that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you do not belong to the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason, the world hates you. So as a disciple of Jesus Christ, we should expect to be hated by the world because we do not espouse the values of the world. If we're not hated by the world, well, then we should know we've got a problem. We're the ones who have the problem.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Okay, so we've connected calling Jesus out of Egypt. And now it's calling us. Why are we called out of Egypt? Right, right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

So even before Exodus, when Israel was enslaved in Egypt, we should already be really aware of Egypt. So I just gave us background, then come to that question. So Genesis has got a lot of Egypt in it, starting with Eden, which doesn't mention Egypt specifically, but Eden is described as being a land of many rivers. Okay. It has the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, which we have.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

And those rivers make you think of Egypt because they make us think of Egypt.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Exactly. Because the way they're named there.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Exactly. Egypt had what was called the Ashed tree. It was located in the temple of Ra. It was often identified as a fig tree. And eating the fruit would give eternal life and knowledge. So Egypt also has the snake, which represented both divine protection but also chaos. So Eden doesn't explicitly reference Egypt, but it definitely is referencing Egypt implicitly. And then, of course, as we move on through Genesis, there are many references to Egypt. You've got Abraham and Sarah go down into Egypt to rescue or to escape the famine. They come back from Egypt. They come back. And what does Sarah have? She has an Egyptian slave, Hagar. And then you have Lot, of course, who chose to settle, who chose where he was going to settle, because it says he looked and he saw the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered, like the Garden of the Lord, Eden, and like the land of Egypt. So you are connecting the Garden of Eden and the land of Eden. And this is definitely influencing where law is going to settle. So Yael Ziegler, who is a Jewish scholar and author, I'm going to quote her several times as I talk about Egypt, she does a really good job in her biblical commentary. So she's informing a lot of how I'm looking at this. But anyway, she points out that if you look at the occurrence of the word Egypt, so Mitzhraim, just in the Torah, the five books of Moses, just in the Torah, not in the whole Hebrew Bible, Mitzgraim, Egypt, it occurs 336 times. And she says, if you compare that to the references to the land of Israel, which is it can be very hard because it's not always called the same thing. Sometimes it's called the Promised Land, sometimes it's called just the land, sometimes it's called Canaan. So once you factor in all of that, the land of Israel, it occurs 360 to 365 times. So you're making it somewhat on a par there with Egypt. So when you're reading the Torah, we are balancing our attention between what is going on in Egypt and what is going on in the land of Israel. And I think that's a really important point to consider. So why? Well, Egypt as a civilization had made really tremendous strides in terms of its technology, its medicine, its building, its wisdom, its art, its writing. It's a highly sophisticated culture. And it's important to grasp this so that we can understand why it is so difficult for Israel to leave Egypt. You would think that an enslaved nation would gladly leave Egypt. That's definitely not the case. There are many descriptions of Israel reluctantly leaving Egypt. In fact, what does God say in Exodus 13? God did not lead them by the way to the land of the Philistines, although that was nearby. Why? For God said, lest the people change their minds and return to Egypt when they experience war. And then in Exodus 14, when the Egyptians are chasing after them, they themselves say, Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you, Moses, have taken us away to die in the desert? What in the world have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Isn't this what we told you in Egypt? Leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians, because it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert. And I think this should remind us of an earlier story, which is the story of Lot. Lot is also in a land like Egypt. The same words appear there. Because Lot wants to postpone leaving Sodom. But the angels tell him, No, you have to leave now. Well, the same sort of thing will occur during the Exodus and after the death of the firstborn son. It says in Exodus 12, the Egyptians were urging the people on in order to send them out of the land quickly. It's like they're expelling them from the land. They were saying, we are all dead. So the people, it says, take up their dough before the yeast was added, with their kneading troughs bound up in their clothing on their shoulders. And like they are just being pushed out of the land of Egypt, not this time by the angels who are dragging Lot out. In this instance, it's the Egyptians. They are pushing them out, go away. And so just like Lot, the Israelites, they wanted to delay, but the Egyptians are insisting that they leave. Get out of Egypt.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

So Cindy, I feel like you always say everything goes back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Genesis 1, 2, and 3. And this feels like a little bit of a exiting Eden, exiting heaven. Absolutely. Like it feels like everyone's reluctant to leave, but we have to. Right. In order to progress. It is hard to leave a place of ease. Yes, or a place where you feel like you're close to whatever, or you don't know what's going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Exactly. Exactly. They felt safe in Egypt. Yeah. Because they knew their place. They knew what was expected of them. I think that's true about us and our pre-mortal existence. It was probably true about us, you know, this idea in Eden. It's hard to leave a place of ease. It's hard to leave a place where you know your place and what's expected of you. And what's happening and what's coming. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I think also, you know what another thing is, Susan, I also think it's really hard to leave prosperity. And if you think you brought up the idea of rivers, so if you think about Egypt, it was a place with a river, the Nile, that reliably would flood. And that flooding would produce good soil and it would ensure fertility, ensure fecundity. That is the description of Eden. That's why Lot, when he looks down, what does he say? He says, Oh, this is like Eden, this is like Egypt. It's this place that really produces a lot of food. It was the breadbasket. It was also a place of technology, which technology, for all its bad, it's also good because it ensures like this more cosmopolitan lifestyle. It's a good life there in Egypt. Well, aside from the small problem of being enslaved. Right. But it was definitely a place where people feel a sense of well-being. They felt secure. They knew what was going to happen there. And we know that this is how they felt because repeatedly in the wilderness story, the people keep saying, we remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost. We remember the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. They remember the bread, the honey, the good meats. And we get this sense. It was not easy for them to leave Egypt. And even more, this is what we're going to see. It was not easy for Jehovah to take Egypt out of Israel. That is the problem throughout the rest of the Torah. And Egypt will take on a different name, whether it's Babylon or Canaan or whatever. It is hard to get the world out of Israel. So Yeel Ziegler believes, and I agree with her on this, that the Lot story is a foreshadowing of what happens when a people are in a society which is immoral, which is anti-religious, which has ousted God from the society, but it has built a society where people really enjoy being there. And God says, I am going to take you out of Sodom, but don't look back. Because if you look back, what will happen to you? You will become a part of the destruction. And so Sodom, like we say about Egypt, becomes the society which is basically deemed by God to be unviable. It's a society that doesn't work. It doesn't work morally, it doesn't work religiously. And so not only does God destroy it, but he sows salt, as if to say nothing can grow there. Nothing can come from that society. In fact, that during the Civil War, that's what General Grant did. He spread salt all over the fields of the South. Why? So that crops could not grow there. It's that same thing. There is no growth, there's no fecundity, no fertility in this soil. And so when Lot and his family are told, don't look back, that is meant to say you need to completely break with Sodom, which of course they don't. And there are devastating consequences to that. And that's what Israel is supposed to do. They are supposed to break with Egypt, but they make the wife of Lot mistake and they keep looking back. So is it any wonder then that the older generation has to die out in the wilderness in order to get into the promised land? You have to turn your back on Sodom. You have to turn your back on Egypt. You have to somehow understand I've got to extricate myself from the culture of Egypt. And St. John in the Gospel tells us do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Because all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions, that is not from the Father, but it is from the world. And the world is passing away with all of its desires. But the person who does the will of God remains forever. And that's in 1 John chapter 2. Now, that having been said, there's a lot that we can learn from Egypt. Like we want to learn how to create successful societies. We want to learn how to create a society that's prosperous, that's advanced. And we want to create a society that can have a leadership role in this world. And so we have to know what do we take with us from Egypt and what do we leave behind. And in Leviticus 18, we have a list here of the immoral relationships. And that part begins with quote, the Lord spoke to Moses, speak to the Israelites and tell them, I am the Lord your God. You must not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you have been living. And you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, into which I am about to bring you. You must not walk in their laws. You must observe my rules, and you must be sure to walk in my laws. I am the Lord your God. So you must keep my laws and my rulings. If a person does them, he will have life through them. I am the Lord. So he's saying, do not do as the land of Egypt. Don't engage in the kind of immorality that they engaged in. So we get our first hint of the kind of morality that we are supposed to turn our back on when we are building this new type of nation, this new kingdom where the ruler is God. But it can be really hard to turn your back on Egypt. And in Deuteronomy 11, just as Israel is on the cusp of entering into Canaan, Moses turns to them. And this is what he says: he says, the land where you are headed is not like the land of Egypt. Moses is preparing them for this potential disappointment. And it reminds me, Susan, of the story of Harriet Wheeler Young, who was one of the first three women to enter the Salt Lake Valley with the 1847 Vanguard Pioneer Company. And as the group emerged from Immigration Canyon on July 24th, 1847, She looks out over this barren, sagebrush-filled valley, which looks so desolate compared to what she and many of the others early pioneers had imagined. She says, Weak and weary as I am, I would rather go a thousand miles farther on than remain in such a forsaken place as this. And so Moses says, you know what, the land that you go to possess, it's not like the land of Egypt. Those pioneers, the land they were going to possess, it wasn't like Illinois. I mean, it things were not going to grow there. No, I mean they came from the river. They did. They came from the river, and they're going to here we are.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Well, in the same way that Adam and Eve came from the river.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

They come from a place of rivers.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Right. It all flows out from Eden. So for me, that's saying, like, oh, you come from the presence of God in Adam and Eve's case, and you're asked to go to a place where he isn't, you can still access it. However, you have to work a lot harder by the sweat of your brow. Exactly. By your sorrow, you will learn to love him. And so it's actually so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

It is a beautiful when you think Jesus says, I am the living water. In other words, I am a flowing river. I'm a river that's moving. And it's, yeah, exactly. It's bringing in all these images that they have in the back of their mind, the images of the water flowing out of Egypt, the water that flows in the garden and in Egypt. But yeah, and so this land that they go to, that Moses, it's not like that. Yeah, it's not like that.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yes, and to go back to Genesis 1, 2, and 3, like there's definitely a deeper spiritual principle working here. And in Adam and Eve's story, they're leaving the presence of God, which is prosperity. They don't even know good from evil yet. And in Egypt, they're leaving prosperity so that they can see the difference between good and evil. Again, because they don't even realize they're enslaved. And how many times are we doing something we don't realize we're enslaved to that thing?

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Yeah. Exactly. It's important, yeah, to realize okay, what is the sin that I'm enslaved to? Yes. And how is God calling me out from that? Yes. That's exactly it. So anyway, Moses, yeah, he says the land which you you go to possess, it's not like the land of Egypt from which you have come. And then he says this, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot. So from what we can tell, there was some sort of a lever and pulley system where they would actually build an irrigation system from the Nile, which would come straight into the gardens of their homes, like a vegetable garden, and they would just take their foot and they would press it and the water would rush in, right? It's easy prosperity. That was the description of Egypt. But Moses goes on to say the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess, it's a land of mountains and valleys. You can't irrigate the land. You have to be dependent on the rains from heaven, he tells them. So this is where you've got this deeper principle at work. And I think also it's illustrating where should we be looking for prosperity? And here again, El Ziegler says this. She says, I think there is something very critical that we have to note, which is that in Egypt, which direction are we looking toward for our prosperity? We're looking down at our feet. It is what we built, it's what we press with our feet that gives us prosperity. Whereas in the land of Israel, where we're looking toward heaven, your gaze is directed heavenward. And she goes on to say the next verse explains to us, it is the land where God's eyes are always upon it. God is always looking at this land. Quote, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, the verse says. And of course, the opposite is true, right? We are always looking at God. We're looking up to the heavens, we're looking up to the mountains. God is looking at the land to make sure that everything is well. We're looking to God. So prosperity is dependent upon a relationship between Israel and God. And that, I think, is the fundamental difference between the land of Israel and the land of Egypt. And this difference is meant to pave the path toward the different sort of society that God is calling the Israelites to build. Because ultimately, the prosperity and success of Egypt is what is her failure. It ultimately is what determines it because Egypt regards itself as the source of its own prosperity. And so, almost as a gift, God gives us this irrigation system that is absolutely aware of its dependence on God. That's what El Ziegler said. This irrigation system that is absolutely aware of its dependence on God. I thought that was such an interesting insight. Their irrigation system comes from the clouds, it comes from the heavens, it comes from God. So she goes on to point out that in Egypt, bread is very important. And I just lost my place in the text. So I'm going to find it. You're at the bottom of page eight. Anyway, she says, she goes on to say that there is that bread is really important in Egypt. So it may have been, there is a probability that it was the Egyptians that invented the leavening of bread. Or at least we can say that very early on, we see that they are able to leaven bread. In burial tombs, as early as the third millennia BC, archaeologists have found these models of bakeries. Now remember, in these burial tombs, they would bury with the Egyptians models of everything they thought they were going to need in the next in the afterlife. They would bury models of slaves that they thought they would need. They wear marry, bury models of food and things that they thought. So this model of a bakery, you can tell that's showing us, oh, baking bread, very, very important. They also found paintings on the walls of these tombs of baking bread. So again, it's showing us how important bread is because there is this assumption that's what you're going to need to go with you into the next life. And one of the reasons that bread is important is because without bread, one cannot go to war. So in Hebrew, the word for bread, lechim, is etymologically related to the word for battle or war, milchama. So without bread, you can't have war. And Egypt is in a constant state of war, constantly wanting to plunder their surrounding nations so that they can bring that in to build their civilization. For example, the cedars of Lebanon, you know, they want those to build their palaces. They send the armies up, get the cedar trees of Lebanon, build their palaces. And so we can see that they have to maintain the standing army. And so bread is very, very important to maintain that army. And one of the ways that we can see the importance that bread played in Egyptian society is that when Joseph was put in charge of Potiphar's house, it says he was in charge of everything except it says, heing halechim, the bread he ate, and the bread that Potiphar ate. Joseph is not in charge of that. And later on, when Joseph's brothers come to Egypt for the second time, it says in chapter 43 of Genesis that they ate their bread separately from the Egyptians because there's some sort of prohibition for the Egyptians that they cannot eat bread with other people, so other foreign people. So bread was important to the Egyptians. Well, in the wilderness, the children of Israel complain and they say, We remember the bread we had in Egypt. And so, God, what does God say? He says, Okay, I will rein bread from heaven. You want bread? I will give you bread, I will rain it down from heaven. And so, what does God give them? He gives them manna. And it's the same idea, right, of the rain. In Egypt, they get bread from the labor of their own feet. But God tells Israel, when you come into the promised land, you need to remember that the source of your bread, the source of your water, the source of your prosperity comes from above like rain from heaven. It's from God. And so a large part of this wandering experience in the wilderness is teaching Israel day after day as they gather this manna, that they are dependent upon God. And that this new nation that's being birthed is one that is different from the surrounding nations. And we'll see this specifically how Israel is different as the people reach Mount Sinai and as they receive the law. And remember, the laws reflect the values of the lawgiver. And as we explore those laws, we will be able to start to comprehend what kind of society God wants to build. Or in other words, what are the ethics of his kingdom, which then of course become expanded by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. It has been said of those of old times, you love your neighbor, you hate your enemy, but I say you love your enemy too. He's expanding on these ethics because again, they were having to learn to leave the ethics of Egypt. They're learning the ethics of God. We move into the New Testament time. God's able to say to the Jewish people who really are the backbone of the church at the beginning, here you've learned these ethics from Mount Sinai. We're going to take it a step further. And that's what he's saying to them and to us. So at this point, I want us to take a step backwards into Egypt and to look at Pharaoh and the role that he played in the Exodus, specifically the hardening of his heart. And this is another one of those tricky bits in the Bible. So in Exodus chapter 4, verse 21, the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, do before Pharaoh all the wonders I have put under your control. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. That phrase, I will harden his heart, has been the source of endless theological debate over whether God or whether Pharaoh is exercising free will or whether God is treating Pharaoh like one of those marionette puppets, you know, where God's pulling the strings in order to make him act in a certain way. And then he's punishing Pharaoh because he acted in the way that he had to act because God was pulling the strings. And this seems very unjust. And so there's been a lot of ink spill trying to explain this. But first, I want to ask all of us a question to think about. Okay. Is it's also hard for us to think that God would soften a person's heart? Why do we have a problem with God hardening someone's heart? But maybe not the problem with God softening someone's heart. So for example, in Doctrine and Covenants, section 107, verse 27, it says, I will soften the hearts of the people as I did the heart of Pharaoh from time to time. So is it okay for God to soften someone's heart in order that they will not place heavy burdens on a people, or that a leader will make wise decisions, or that a child will return to the gospel fold? I mean, we all pray for God to soften someone's heart. So why then is there a problem with God hardening a heart?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

I don't think there is, but I do. I remember reading this and it did stick out to me. But there's a few things that I'm thinking of as I'm thinking through this, which is I don't know. When we look at these scriptures, I love to take a micro view and just like look at every single word and like really try to understand what it all means. But then I'm reminded of in 1 Nephi when Nephi is commanded to kill Laban, which is kind of the same question. Why would we believe that people would be saved, but not that God would command someone to kill someone, you know? And he has a hard time with it. But I think usually what's happening in the story is for generations to come. And so if you take a macro view of that, like let's really back out. And in the same way that the old generation had to die in the wilderness for the children of Israel, what was happening in Egypt that God was looking generations down the line that needed to happen during that time? And can God bless both nations through trial and tribulation? Yes, he can. And he does.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah, I think that's really good. We assume that God is doing something for a blessing. And that ultimately it will be for that person's blessing.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Okay, well, thank you guys for listening. And thank you, Cindy, for all your hard work always. This is so good.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Always good to be with you, Susan.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

And we will see you guys next time. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Scripture Study Podcast, your midweek Bible boost. Everything we mentioned on this podcast, if we said there would be a link to it, it is in the show notes wherever you find your podcast. Cindy Madsen currently does not believe in or participate in social media. However, if you would like to follow along with Susan Peterson, she can be found on Instagram at susan.m.peterson. Have a good week.