September 30th, 2024

109. Boys only? Girls? The Plague on the Firstborn of Egypt

I am a second grader who recently studied the story of the first Passover in school. I am a girl and I am the oldest child in my family. My younger brother is the firstborn son in the family. Which of us would have died in the Passover when the Angel of Death passed over the land?

Well, if you were Israelites who believed in and obeyed the Lord, neither of you would have died. It is however generally believed that in Egyptian families it was the firstborn son of every father that died. But the correctness of this answer is not quite as simple as it looks at first glance. There is some disagreement about whether this answer is correct, so we have to look at the question a bit more carefully.

The statement that the firstborn in every family would die could be understood in one of three ways:

• It refers only to firstborn sons. If there was no firstborn son in a family, the family did not lose a child.

• It first of all refers to firstborn sons, but if there was no firstborn son, the family lost its firstborn daughter.

• It refers to the firstborn child of a family whether that child was male or female.

• The situation, of course, is more complicated if a man has more than one wife or a wife has more than one husband. Does the rule apply only to the firstborn son of a man’s first wife to give birth? It seems that the answer is “Yes.”

The majority of commentators believe that the first option (the firstborn son of every father) is correct, but there is disagreement about this. It is generally agreed that when applied to people, the rule refers to the firstborn son of fathers, not necessarily to the firstborn sons of mothers (the situation is more complicated with animals). If Pharaoh had more than one wife and he had “firstborn” sons of more than one wife, only the firstborn son of the first wife to give birth was lost.

Here are the main passages that are relevant:

Exodus 4:22, 23

²²You will then say to Pharaoh, ‘The Lord says: Israel is my son, my firstborn, ²³and I have said to you, “Let my son go to serve me,” but you have refused to let him go. Watch out. I will kill your son (your ben), your firstborn (your bechor).’”

Here it seems clear that it is Pharaoh’s son that is involved.

Exodus 11:5

Every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, to the firstborn of the female slave who is behind the hand mill, even all the firstborn of the livestock.

Here a mother is mentioned, but this passage includes animals too. The point seems to be every firstborn from the highest to the lowest.

Exodus 12:12

¹²For on that night I will pass through the land of Egypt. I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both people and animals. Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.

Exodus 12:29

The Death of the Firstborn and the Exodus

²⁹At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, even all the firstborn of the livestock.

Exodus 13:1-2, 12

The Lord spoke to Moses: ²“Set apart all the firstborn for me, the firstborn of every mother* among the Israelites, both people and animals. The firstborn belongs to me.” …  ¹²then you must dedicate the firstborn of every mother to the Lord. Every firstborn of your livestock, the ones that are males (zkr), will belong to the Lord.

This is perhaps the passage that raises the most questions.

Firstborn of every mother is literally the firstborn, the opener of every womb among the sons of Israel. At first glance this would seem to refer to the firstborn offspring of every woman, but verse 12 makes it clear that it is the male offspring that are in question. Verse 2 seems to be a general statement of a principle: dedicate every firstborn, without clarifying details of how to apply this rule to animals, and this ambiguity has left the door open for much debate. With animals it is possible to determine the first lamb of every ewe. It is not possible to identify the firstborn of every ram. That is why the mothers are brought into the picture in identifying the firstborn of animals. With people it is assumed that the first son born to a man by his wife is his firstborn.

There is considerable debate about this in Jewish law, but the rite of redemption of the firstborn focuses on the firstborn sons of fathers. In some Jewish traditions, a father’s firstborn son, whose mother had given birth to sisters before him, does not need to be redeemed. There is also no unanimity in Jewish tradition whether both the female and male firstborn of the Egyptians died in the last plague or only the males.

Exodus 22:29, 30

²⁹You shall present the firstborn of your sons to me. ³⁰You shall do the same with your cattle and with your sheep.

Exodus 33:19

¹⁹The Lord said, “I will make all my goodness pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord in your presence. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.”

Same as Exodus 13.

Numbers 3:12, 13

¹²“See, I have taken the Levites from among the Israelites instead of every firstborn that opens the womb among the Israelites. The Levites are mine, ¹³because all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I set apart for myself every firstborn in Israel, both human and animal."

Only males are involved in levitical service.

Numbers 3:40-43

⁴⁰The Lord said to Moses, “Register all the firstborn males of the Israelites one month old and up, and make a list of their names. ⁴¹You are to take the Levites for me―I am the Lord―instead of every firstborn among the Israelites, and take the livestock of the Levites instead of every firstborn among the livestock of the Israelites.” ⁴²So Moses registered all the firstborn among the Israelites as the Lord commanded. ⁴³All the firstborn males listed by name, one month old and up.

Numbers 18:16-17

¹⁶In place of every firstborn from the womb, the firstborn of every Israelite, I have taken the Levites for myself. ¹⁷For all the firstborn among the Israelites are mine, both human and animal. On the day that I struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I set the firstborn of the Israelites apart for myself.

Deuteronomy 21:15-17

¹⁵If a man has two wives, and one is loved and one is not loved, and both the loved one and the unloved one have borne children for him, and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved wife, ¹⁶then on the day that he bequeaths what he owns to his sons, he cannot declare the son of the loved wife as his firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved wife, who is the true firstborn. ¹⁷He must acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double portion of everything that is recognized as his. Because that son is the beginning of his father’s virility, the legal right of the firstborn belongs to him.

Here it is the firstborn son of the father that determines who is dedicated.

Deuteronomy 25:5, 6

⁵When brothers live together and one of them dies without having children, the wife of the deceased brother is not to marry a stranger from outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to come and take her as his wife and perform for her the duty of a brother-in-law. ⁶The firstborn that she bears will be recognized as a son who carries on the name of his deceased brother, so his name will not be erased from Israel.

It seems that there is clear evidence that the rule for humans is that the firstborn son of a father is the firstborn. There is no direct statement of females being included. The evidence for including females is ambiguous. The Hebrew word translated firstborn is בכור (bekor).  The word is masculine, but the expression does not specifically include the word son. However, the conclusion that the word bekor in this context refers to sons does not just depend on the masculine gender of the word but on the passages that specifically refer to sons and males.

Evidence for including Egyptian women in the last plague is at best ambiguous. Israel as a nation is called God’s son, and the nation of Israel included men and women, but the nation as a composite is thought of as God’s only son among the nations. The plagues were provoked by the Egyptians killing sons of Israel. Egypt’s oppression of God’s one son was punished by the death of one son of Pharaoh.

In the Old Testament the duties and privileges of the firstborn were to receive a double portion of the inheritance and to be the head of the family, also to provide priestly service (in this they were replaced by the Levites). The rights of the firstborn could be lost or transferred to another son by God’s decision or by misconduct by the physical firstborn (Esau to Jacob; Manasseh to Ephraim; Reuben to Joseph because of Reuben’s sexual misconduct) (Gn. 35:22; 49:4; 1 Ch. 5:1-2). Where there were no sons, the inheritance of the family property could pass through the daughters, but it had to pass through their husbands who in effect became adopted sons of their wife’s father (Zelophehad’s daughters—Numbers 27 and 36)

It seems that the term firstborn in regard to Egypt referred to firstborn sons of fathers. How this applied to determining the firstborn of animals is not clear. How this was applied on the Passover evening does not concern us because we are not Egyptian, and the Passover was a one-time event. On Passover evening the only person who had to know how to apply the rule was the Angel of Death. How to apply the rule to the dedication of firstborn animals and crops may have been a difficult matter for the Israelites. How blessed we are that we are no longer burdened by such intricate laws.