As many of you know, I did a very brief series of posts on the Typology of The Exodus on the Atonement thread. Correct understanding of the visible, physical, temporal redemption of God's chosen, covenant people is critically important to the proper understanding of its antitype, which is the invisible, spiritual, eternal redemption promised in the New Covenant. The other morning I was having my devotions in the Psalms and Ps 105 strongly reinforced a few parallels I made between the types and antitypes, which I'd like to briefly share with you.
Ps 105:17-20
17 and he sent a man before them —
Joseph, sold as a slave.
18 They bruised his feet with shackles,
his neck was put in irons,
19 till what he foretold came to pass,
till the word of the LORD proved him true.
20 The king sent and released him,
the ruler of peoples set him free.
One of the types I made in my above mentioned series is that godless, pagan Egypt was a type of an equally wicked world. Verse 20 in the above passage reinforces this type by telling us, essentially, that Egypt was very likely the first world empire. The tip off to this conclusion is the term "peoples", which is just another way of saying "nations". Pharaoh was a ruler of nations, just as Satan is the "god of this age" (2Cor 4:4) and the "ruler of the kingdom of the air" (Eph 2:2) which is also Satan's kingdom of darkness (Col 1:13).
Also, as a brief aside, many conservative bible scholars understand the "seven heads and seven hills" and the "seven kings" in Rev 17:9-10 as referring to kingdoms in the context passage, which speaks of five that have fallen, one is and one is to come. So, these kingdoms or empires would have chronologically been Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Mede-Persia, Greece and Rome, with one more to come. I totally agree with this interpretation; for "heads" can be understood as individual kings or kingdoms with context, of course, being the determinate.
And we must not forget that God raised Pharaoh up to literally make him a shameful, humiliating spectacle on the world stage, and to actually diminish the Egyptian empire in the eyes of the other nations, since the God of the Israelites totally defeated Egypt's pantheon of Gods, including Pharaoh who was considered be the god of Egypt who mediated between his nation and the other gods.
Then we have this passage in the same Psalm:
Ps 105:24-25
24 The LORD made his people very fruitful;
he made them too numerous for their foes,
25 whose hearts he turned to hate his people,
to conspire against his servants.
NIV
In this passage, too, we can certainly see another strong parallel between Egypt the type and the world the antitype. Egypt hated God's chosen, covenant people just as the world hates God's New Covenant people (Jn 15:18-19; 1Jn 3:13).
We know that God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not let his chosen people go. But this passage takes to "hardening" to another level by including all Egypt ("their foes"). This passage very strongly reinforces the sovereinty of God that is found in several Proverbs, in Jer 10, etc. Tthe hearts of kings are not the only hearts that God controls (Prov 21:1) but the hearts of entire nations, as well!
Moreover, the implication to this passage is that God gave Egypt over to a reprobate mind. One of the major premises to my typology series is that God "came down" to resucue solely HIS firstborn -- only HIS chosen, covenant people -- only Abraham's descendants. God did not come down to rescue Egypt anymore than Christ came down from heaven to rescue the entire world from its sins. Christ came into this world to save his Father's elect -- all whom the Father gave to him in eternity.