The empire is left to grieve over its days of not caring and its gods of order and its politics of injustice

 I am going to finish this section today because something seems to be developing that may keep me from posting tomorrow, we will see. 

Curiously, the criticism of cry is intensified as the narrative develops.  In the report of 11:6 and 12: 30 the mighty empire cries out:

And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt as there has never been, nor ever shall be again.  (11:6)

And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians;  and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where one was not dead. (12:30)

Both times the cry concerns the killing of the firstborn, the ones born to rule.  That is highly ironic for now the self-sufficient and impervious regime is reduced to the role of a helpless suppliant.  The cry of Israel becomes an empowering cry; the cry of Egypt is one of dismantling helplessness.  But is too late.  History has begun and the initiative has been taken up by the new God for the new community.  The empire is left to grieve over its days of not caring and its gods of order and its politics of injustice, which are all now ended.  Criticism has reached its goal.

You hope that we won’t need to get to the last of the curses before history restarts on us but we will see.  I think it is more than somewhat believable that the United States, as it has developed in the past fifty years could well l come to a simliar denouement.  

I am reminded in all of this citation of consequences of injustice to note that Paul in Romans talks about the reality of God being shown in the order of how things work, of how life, reality, the universe makes morality and immorality obvious even to the gentiles who never knew the real God and who did not discern God from that reality they witnessed.   I can only think he meant this kind of thing,the central narrative of the Law for which he counted himself of one of the party of zealot, the Pharisees.  In Brueggemann's reading of these central texts, it is incredible how he picks up on details and threads that I never noticed in a lifetime of knowing the narrative superficially.   Or what I now know is a superficial manner of knowing them.