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In Exodus, God says that he will not let the destroyer enter houses marked with blood, yet the text never says who the destroyer is. Jubilees names this killer of the firstborn as the forces of Mastema, the demonic prince.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 12:23
Hebrew Bible
22 Take a branch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply to the top of the doorframe and the two side posts some of the blood that is in the basin. Not one of you is to go out the door of his house until morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike Egypt, and when he sees the blood on the top of the doorframe and the two side posts, then the Lord will pass over the door, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24 You must observe this event as an ordinance for you and for your children forever.
Jubilees 49:2
Pseudepigrapha
1 Remember the commandments which the Lord gave you regarding the Passover so that you may celebrate it at its time on the fourteenth of the first month, that you may sacrifice it before evening, and so that they may eat it at night on the evening of the fifteenth from the time of sunset. 2 For on this night — it was the beginning of the festival and the beginning of joy — you were eating the Passover in Egypt when all the forces of Mastema were sent to kill every firstborn in the land of Egypt — from the pharaoh’s firstborn to the firstborn of the captive slave-girl at the millstone and to the cattle as well. 3 This is that which the Lord gave them: into each house on whose door they saw the blood of a year-old lamb, they were not to enter that house to kill but were to pass over it in order to save all who were in the house because the sign of the blood was on its door.
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Notes and References
... As explained in the commentary above, the writer of Jubilees attributes to the forces of Mastema the actual execution of the tenth plague. He may have had various motives for making the assignment, but a factor in the decision was the ambiguity left by Exodus 12, where in some verses (12, 27, 29) the Lord carries out the destructive plague and in others (verses 13, 23 [verse 23 is the clearer of the two]) someone termed ‘the destroyer’ performs it. The identity of ‘the destroyer’ (in verse 23; in verse 13 the form, as vocalized in the Masoretic Text, lacks the definite article) naturally attracted interest in the exegetical tradition. Jubilees understands it to refer to the forces of Mastema, a being who is associated with destruction in the book ...
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