# BELIEVERS: why does God act so circuitously in freeing the Hebrews from Egypt? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 27, 2009, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-why-does-god-act-so-circuitously-in-freeing-the-hebrews-from-egypt/483289 "2009-01-27T21:41:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2009, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-why-does-god-act-so-circuitously-in-freeing-the-hebrews-from-egypt/483289/1 "2009-01-27T21:41:04Z")
I’m placing this in Great Debates because of the religious nature of the question, but otherwise I don’t think it truly belongs here. I don’t have a thesis to defend, as I personally don’t believe that the Exodus story has any more factual basis than the Labors of Herakles. Also, my primary interest here is in believers’ take on this story. In other words, please try to phrase your answer in terms of the story’s reality. Anyway… Even when I was a twelve-year-old kid who believed that the Bible was the literal and inerrant word of God, I had problems with the Exodus narrative. Even if you take “omnipotent” to mean “more powerful than anybody else” rather than “able to do anything, even things that are logically impossible,” it’s clear that Yahweh is pulling punches all through the Plagues–and not out of mercy. If he’d wished to conduct the affair without bloodshed, after all, he could have struck all the Egyptians blind, or sent them all to sleep, so the Hebrews could pack up and walk out without any real opposition. He could have softened Pharoah’s heart (rather than hardening it, as the narrative records) so that he was filled with love for the children of Israel. If Yahweh had a moral problem with interfering with free will, he could have had Moses deliver an ultimatum and, if Pharaoh did not immediately comply, do a mini-Sodom & Gomorrah on the royal residence; repeating as necessary with the successors until Egypt submitted. (I’d bet the number of iterations would be no greater than two.) Instead we have the drawn-out chain of events in Exodus. What are Yahweh’s motives in acting thus? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/believers-why-does-god-act-so-circuitously-in-freeing-the-hebrews-from-egypt/483289)._