Dog Verses God

Tonight I read Exodus 11 to my daughters. This is the chapter where Moses warns Pharaoh about the upcoming death of every firstborn son in Egypt.  (This was one of the many times in the Bible where it would have been preferable to be female.)  As I was reading, verse 7 popped out to me.  "But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal. Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel."

I understood the meaning.  God was going to treat the Israelites differently than the Egyptians and kill neither them nor their animals.  But what was up with the talk of dogs?  Then the picture of various Egyptian deities popped into my head.  I wondered, “Wasn’t there a dog-god or something like that.” I did a little research.

It turns out I was right.  There was a dog-headed god.  He was called Anubis.  Anubis was the god of the underworld, protector of the dead, and god of embalming.

The ancient Egyptians were very interested in death and embalming. Mummies are elaborately embalmed corpses, and the pyramids are nothing more that massive tombs.  Death was a big deal to Pharaoh and the people of Egypt, and death was represented by a dog-headed god.

In essence, it appears that what Moses was saying was, “My God is going to pass through your land and kill every first-born son.  Not everyone will be killed, just this specific subset of your people.  However, your dog-headed god will not be able to so much as bark in the presence of God’s people.  The LORD will triumph over your great god Anubis.  All of those fancy pyramids you build and the elaborate embalming processes you go through are nothing to Him.”

To this day in Egypt, the pyramids are a big deal.  Regardless of the fact that most Egyptians today are Sunni Muslims, these remnants of a pantheon gone by remain the central tourist site in their country.  Yet the dog-god that inspired their construction could not even bark that terrible night thousands of years ago.  Even death bows to God.
When you read the Bible, ask questions, and then look for the answers.  Go deeper. Doing so is like watching color TV rather than black and white.  There is so much more to see if we open our eyes and look.