Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The 4th Hallelujah Psalm

10: Death

11 The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will cause Pharaoh and Egypt to have one more trouble. Then Pharaoh will let you go out of Egypt. He will cause you to leave very quickly and go away from him. ² So tell the Israelite people now what they must do. Every man and every woman must ask the Egyptians that live near them for gold things and silver things.’

³ The Lord caused the Egyptians to be kind to the Israelite people. As for Moses himself, Pharaoh's officers and the Egyptian people respected him as an important man.

⁴ So Moses went to the king and he said, ‘The Lord God says this: “At about midnight, I will travel through the whole country of Egypt. ⁵ I will cause all the firstborn sons in Egypt to die. The firstborn son of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, will die. The firstborn son of the female slave who makes flour, will die. Even the firstborn of the farm animals will die.^{[a] 6} Everyone will be crying loudly in the whole country of Egypt. Nothing like that has ever happened before now, and it will never happen again. ⁷ But no trouble will happen to the Israelite people. Not even a dog will frighten them or their animals. Then you will know that I, the Lord, make a difference between Egypt and Israel.” ’

⁸ Moses continued to say to the king, ‘All your officers will come to me. They will fall down in front of me and they will say, “Now go! Leave here with all your people.” After that, I will leave.’

After he said that, Moses left Pharaoh. Moses was very angry.

⁹ The Lord had already said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you. But that will give me the chance to do even greater miracles in Egypt.’

¹⁰ Moses and Aaron did all these miracles in front of Pharaoh. But the Lord caused Pharaoh's mind to be hard. So Pharaoh would not let the Israelites leave his country.

²⁹ It will be very bad for you, teachers of God's Law and Pharisees. You are hypocrites! You build up the places where people have buried God's prophets. You make the places where they have buried good people to be beautiful. ³⁰ You say, “Our ancestors killed God's prophets long ago. If we had lived at that time, we would not have helped our ancestors to do that.” ³¹ So you are speaking against yourselves. You show that you are the sons of those people who killed God's prophets. ³² Now you must finish the work that your ancestors began to do!

³³ You are like a family of dangerous snakes! You will not be able to run away. God will surely punish you, and he will send you to hell. ³⁴ So listen to this. God says, “I will send prophets to you. I will also send to you people who know many things. And I will send people to teach you what is true. But you will kill some of these people. You will kill some of them on a cross. In the places where you meet to pray, you will hit some of them with whips. They will run from one town to another town, but you will follow them.” ³⁵ Because of all this, God will punish you for all the good people that you and your ancestors have killed. Long ago, Abel was the first of those good people. You also killed Zechariah, the son of Berekiah. He died in the yard of the temple near the altar.^{[a] 36} Yes, I tell you this: God will punish the people who are alive today for all those murders.