Golden Emerods
“The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed.” Deuteronomy 28:27
The Bible matrix pattern brings out some interesting parallels. Step 5 is about a military multitude in unity after being tested under the Law of God. It is Deuteronomy. It is Trumpets. It is the swarms of fish and birds on Day 5. It is the step of plagues and plunder. It is the step where Jesus tells His disciples they will now need both swords and moneybags.
In Moses’ ministry in Egypt, his Day 5 was the plagues sent by God upon that nation. Just like Moses, the Ark made an exodus out of Eli’s Egypt and defeated Dagon in his own temple. The Philistines, being a high culture that, it seems, even the Israelites looked up to, were the only ones to link plagues and plunder in one highly artistic gesture — tumours made of gold! And, as Jordan observes, the Philistines were descendants of the Egyptians.[1]
So, the apostles in the first century pattern, witnessing to the diaspora Jews as Trumpets before the great atoning tribulation, were not only “glories” whom the rebellious Judaisers were blaspheming (“two” angelic witnesses to “Sodom” [2]). They were, in effect, to the hard-hearted Jewish vessels of destruction, Herod’s hemorrhoids.
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[1] James B. Jordan, Egypt in Biblical History. Peter Leithart notes that the word for “tumours” is also the word for “fortified cities” and there were five Philistine cities: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath. See A Son to Me, page 59. Leithart thinks the golden mice thus symbolised their villages. I think the mice are more likely linked to the tumours as carriers of the plague. Mice swarm.
[2] See The Two Witnesses.
