Owing to his favored status, the firstborn was considered the most desirable sacrifice to a deity where human sacrifice was practiced. On the verge of a defeat, Mesha, king of Moab, sacrificed his eldest son and acknowledged successor (II Kings 3:27). In a prophetic passage, the sacrifice of the first-born is singled out as that offering which might be supposed the most efficacious for expiation (Micah 6:7). The importance of the bekhor is dramatized in the saga of the ten plagues God inflicted upon the Egyptians, the last of which struck down their firstborn (e.g., Ex. 11:5; 12:12). This serves as the etiology of the legal-cultic requirement that the male firstborn of man and beast in Israel were to be devoted to God. The Lord acquired title to Israel's firstborn, human and animal, by having spared them when he struck the firstborn of the Egyptians (Num. 3:13).