The pleasing odor of a newly roasted lamb and bitter herbs hung low over the carefully swept slave hut that was the Levi’s residence.
“Gershom, did you remember to strike the lamb’s blood on the lintel and the door post of the house?”
“Of course, Miriam, I would not be so foolish as to forget to do something like that. Oh, it would be awful to leave our Moses, here, buried in a hasty grave on this the night of our deliverance.”
“Papa is the blood on the doorpost and the lintel of the house?”
“Yes, little Moses.”
The atmosphere in Goshen was one of repressed, excitement. In the Levi’s Spartan household, every member of the family checked and rechecked their scant belongings, for there would be no coming back. Even if Pharaoh claimed to not know it, tonight they would leave Egypt for good. No more gathering straw for bricks, no more laboring from dawn to dusk, they were going to a land of milk and honey and Pharaoh could not stop them. What was more they would not leave empty handed, their labor and the labor of their ancestors would be paid in silver and gold and they would leave Egypt with great substance.
“Are you sure, Gershom, that the blood was sprinkled on the doorpost and lintel of the house?”
“Yes, Miriam”

Sitting down to eat the feast of unleavened bread, roasted lamb and bitter herbs, the excitement was palpable. This was the night that the Lord has chosen to take them back to the land of their fathers. There was concern and anticipation for, at the stroke of midnight, Egypt’s firstborn would die.
“Papa, check the doorpost and the lintel of the house, I took a torch and looked, I did not see the blood,” cried eight year-old Moses.”
Hastily, Gershom lit a torch and walking to the front of the adobe sand hut, looked, there was no blood! Minutes to midnight and no blood on the doorpost of the house!
Rushing to the pen where the sheep were kept, the ashen faced Gershom chose an unblemished lamb, one-year-old, killed it and sprinkled its blood on the doorpost and the lintel of the house.
“That was close,” he sighed. How could I have forgotten a thing like that.
One look at the sands in the hourglass and it was clear that it was almost midnight. Suddenly there was a scream and then a wail as Egypt wept for her children that were no more. The firstborn of all Egypt was dead. The plague ravaged everyone- Pharaoh’s household and the household of his non-Hebrew slave, entrepreneurs and their laborers, farm owners and farm hands. Only the land of Goshen was spared.

Pharaoh and the Egyptian aristocracy, Egyptian commoners and slaves who ordinarily did not have a voice united in demanding that Israel leave. Else we will all die they complained. Stripping themselves of jewels, gold and silver, those that had them gave these ornaments of gems and precious metals to the Hebrews and demanded that they “Be gone!”

To Forgive part III