The Plagues Reveal Who is in Control-Exodus 7-10

Exodus, Sermons

Who‘s in control of the world? Pharaoh [ruling authorities / politicians]? Moses [Christians]? God [duh!]? The plagues [pandemic]? The magicians [scientists/ “experts”]? Vaccines? [Can anything guarantee you won’t die from covid?] Government mandates? [Can the government eliminate covid?] What can/should we learn from “plagues” happening in the world?

The knowledge that matters most is to know Y–H–V–H. Pharaoh said, “I know not Y-H-V-H” (Exo 5:2). The Israelites too turned a deaf ear to Y-H-V-H’s promise of deliverance (Exo 6:7-9). The world also needs to know that there exists a higher and mightier power than the mightiest human civilization and its “gods,” and that this power cares for and fights for human beings and keeps His promises to a down-trodden, oppressed and despised people. The world needs to learn that ignorance of the Lord is the deepest cause of depression, oppression and despair. Perhaps the ultimate purpose of the contest of the plagues are the theological, moral and political teachings. Thus, the question of truth [correct knowledge] is central to the contest that God, through Moses, will wage against Pharaoh/Egypt by means of wonders, signs and judgments.

Moses himself has the greatest reason to know that “I am Y-H-V-H.” To serve God’s purpose Moses must come to know more fully the One Who said, “I Will Be What I Will Be.” [I Am Who/What/That I Am; I Will Be Who/What/That I Will Be.] He must learn to trust God’s word, learn His ways, and see how He works in the affairs of men. He must come to see His care and His justice and know His truthfulness and dependability. The “Egyptian” most in need of coming to “know that I am Y-H-V-H” is Moses himself.

Reversal and undoing. When we resist God, or when the truth is ignored, resisted or suppressed (Rom 1:18), the creation which is good (Genesis 1) reverses and turns into an undoing of the original creation as in the 10 plagues.

  • Our thinking becomes futile and our hearts become foolish and dark (Rom 1:21) and hardened (Exo 7:22; 8:15,19,32).
  • Instead of reflecting the glorious image of God we look more and more like birds, beasts and reptiles (Rom 1:23).
  • We live based on a lie that we are like God (Gen 3:5) when we are not [or that we are like our very own little Pharaoh].

3 different verbs describe Pharaoh’s heart. The force of all 3 idioms is to be stubborn, unfeeling, arrogantly inflexible [and there’s not much differentiation of meaning among the terms]. In none of their primary meanings do these verbs mean “to make stubborn” or “to make obstinate.” Even when translated as “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart, the hardness does not mean callous, or cruel or pitiless, or heartless. It is Pharaoh being himself and refusing to budge no matter what.

  1. chazaq [12x] – “to toughen,” “to strengthen,” “to be strong,” “to encourage.”
  2. kaved [6x] – “to be heavy,” “to make weighty”  [rendered “harden”].
  3. qashah [1x] (Exo 7:3) – “to harden,” “to toughen,” “to be dense.

Basic pattern in the administration of the plagues:

  1. Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go.
  2. God tells Moses and Aaron to deliver a warning about an impending hit should he continue to refuse, which warning Pharaoh does not need.
  3. The plague arrives as predicted.
  4. Pharaoh at first obdurate/stubbron but then moved to relent while the plague is upon him.
  5. He promises to let the people go if the plague is removed.
  6. The plague is reversed, but…
  7. Pharaoh, his strength restored, reneges on his promise.

The plagues are organized in 3 triads [1-3, 4-6, 7-9].

  • 1st triad [1-3 {blood, frogs, gnats}] Aaron stretches out his hand/staff (7:14-8:19).
  • 2nd triad [4-6 {flies, livestock, boils}] God acts without using any staff (8:20-9:12).
  • 3rd triad [7-9 {hail, locusts, darkness}] is by Moses’ hand/staff.

The plagues are also equally arranged in 5 clear pairs of growing disorder and increasing misery. The chronological sequence across the first 9 plagues moves cosmically upward (1) from the waters, (2) to the earth, (3) to living things, (4) to the heavens, (5) to the sun itself:

  1. 2 involving the Nile [blood, frogs]–emerging from the river.
  2. 2 plaques of insects [gnats, flies]–thought to come from the ground.
  3. 2 epidemics affecting beasts and humans [livestock, boils]–central pair.
  4. 2 devastating crops [hail, locusts]–come from the sky to wreck havoc.
  5. Final pair–3 days of total darkness paired with the death of the firstborn–betoken the end of the regime.

1. The Plague of Blood (7:14-24).

  • “Look, he will be going out to the water [river]” (Exo 7:15). Egyptian royalty regularly went down to the Nile to bathe, or to check the level of the Nile. Pharaoh’s encounter with Moses by the riverside looks back to the discovery of Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter when she went down to the Nile (Exo 2:5).
  • “Send off my people [Let my people go], that they may worship me … you have not heeded [listened]” (Exo 7:16). This prose narrative expresses the solemn, emphatic reiteration of refrainlike phrases and entire clauses, both in the language of the narrator and in the dialogue.
  • “…water of the Nile … will turn into blood” (Exo 7:17). The Nile with its fresh water is literally a lifeline for Egypt. Blood in the Bible is imagined in radically ambiguous terms as:
    1. the source and substance of life.
    2. an apotropaic [power to avert evil] or redemptive agent.
    3. violence and death. It is the meaning here in the first plaque, which symbolically anticipates the last one.

2. The Plague of Frogs (8:1-15)

  • “the Nile will swarm [teem] with frogs” (Exo 8:3a; 1:7). The Plague narratives, with allusions to the creation story, turn into a network of reversals and undoing of the original creation. The apocalypse is the other side of the coin of creation. The benign swarming of life in Genesis turns into a threatening swarm of odious creatures, just as the penultimate plague of darkness, prelude to mass death, is a reversal of the first “let there be light” (Gen 1:3).
  • “…into your house … your bedchamber … your couch … your servants’ house” (Exo 8:3b). The all-powerful Pharaoh should protect his people. Instead, the fearful catalogue of penetrations conveys an absolute, helpless exposure of all Egypt, from king to slave, from intimate place of sleep and procreation to places where food is prepared, in the face of God’s onslaught.
  • Currently the whole world is at the mercy of the pandemic, where the coronavirus is going to do what the coronavirus does. We may mitigate against it to some degree but not a single person in the world is 100% safe.
  • “…upon [on] you…” (Exo 8:4). The Hebrew would normally mean “into you.” This amplifies the idea of grotesque penetration where the frogs would croak from inside the guts of the Egyptians.
  • “You may vaunt over me as for when [I leave you the honor of setting the time]…” (Exo 8:9). Moses offers Pharaoh the limited “triumph” of choosing the moment when the plague will cease. Yet it demonstrates God’s absolute power and Moses’ perfect efficacy as intercessor. It is surprising that Pharaoh does not choose to have the plague end at once. Perhaps he is trying Moses’ power: Can Moses really stipulate a given moment of cessation in the near future and make it come about?
  • “…and the land stank [reeked of them]” (Exo 8:14). The stench of the putrefying dead frogs provides another link with the preceding plague, in which the stench was produced by the dead fish from the Nile (Exo 7:21).

3. The Plague of Gnats/Lice (8:16-19)

  • “gnats [lice]” (Exo 8:16). The plagues began with a profoundly ominous, symbolically portentous and life-threatening transformation of water into blood. The next 3 plagues [frogs, gnats, flies] are afflictions of maddening or disgusting discomfort rather than actual threats to survival, showing the Egyptians squirming before they are exposed to destruction.
  • “God’s finger is in it [This is the finger of God]!” (Exo 8:19a). After trying futilely to get rid of a plague or replicating it (Exo 8:18), they were forced to recognize that they are contending with a greater power, for the plague is not through magic but from the Deity. The narrative speaks repeatedly of God’s hand or arm, but the soothsayers/magicians conceded a lesser trace of divine action in mentioning God’s finger.
  • “And Pharaoh’s heart toughened [was hard]” (Exo 8:19b). The repeated mention of Pharaoh’s stubbornness takes on added meaning here because he wilfully ignores the testimony of his magicians. The narrative doesn’t indicate whether the plaque ends, like the previous two [blood, frogs], or whether the Egyptians simply continue to live with the infestation as God proceeds to launch the next blow.

4. The Plague of Flies (8:20-32)

  • “…detestable to the Egyptians” (Exo 8:26). The Hebrews will sacrifice cattle or other beasts considered taboo by the Egyptians and so infuriate them.
  • “only you must not go far away” (Exo 8:28), for Pharaoh is unwilling to contemplate the permanent loss of this population of slave workers.
  • “Only let not Pharaoh continue to mock [does not act deceitfully]” (Exo 8:29). “Only” is a rejoinder to Pharaoh’s “only” (Exo 8:28) for his repeated reflex of seeming to yield and then reasserting his intransigence and hardened heart.

5. The Plague of Livestock (9:1-7)

6. The Plague of Boils (9:8-12)

  • “And the Lord toughened [hardened] Pharaoh’s heart” (Exo 9:12). For the first time, it’s not Pharaoh, or his heart, that is the subject of the verb but God. Biblically, this is the same thing because God is presumed to be the ultimate cause of human actions, while Pharaoh’s stubborn arrogance is still his responsibility, for he persists in his resistance even as his afflicted magicians/soothsayers, the experts upon whom he has been depending, could not stand or have fled (Exo 9:11).

7. The Plague of Hail (9:13-35)

  • “I am about to [will] send” (Exo 9:14). Contrast the 2 senses of “send”–the sending off [let my people go] that Pharaoh repeatedly refuses to do (Exo 5:2) and the dire sending by God of plague after plague.
  • “so as to show you My power, and so that My name will be told through all the earth” (Exo 9:16). This is an emphatic summary of the theological rationale for the elaborate and excruciating sequence of plagues. The God of Israel is a God of history. His unrivaled supremacy as God is manifested for the Hebrew writers by His powerful acts in history. Exodus establishes the credentials of the God of Israel for all mankind. YHWH’s mighty acts in Egypt confirm his reputation as omnipotent deity throughout the world.
  • “Only in the land of Goshen … was there no hail (Exo 9:26). It’s like a kind of protective canopy [umbrella], shielding the Hebrews from the destructive wrath pouring down from the sky.
  • “I have offended [sinned] this time” (Exo 9:27). The terrifying display of celestial violence triggers a confession of wrongdoing from Pharaoh for the first time. But “this time” is as though Pharaoh suggests that he did nothing to offend or sin until now.
  • “spread out my hands” (Exo 9:29a) [literally “palms”] is a gestture of prayer or supplication.
  • “the earth is the Lord’s” (Exo 9:29b). The scope of the theological argument reaches beyond the confines of Egypt: the God Who has wreaked such inconceivable destruction on the great empire of Egypt is surely the God of all the earth.
  • “And as for you and your servants, I know that you still do not fear the Lord God” (Exo 9:30). Likely Moses read the grudging nature of Pharaoh’s admission (Exo 9:27), and his repeated reversal after each of the previous plagues suggests that he has not had a change of heart and that he is far from fearing the Lord. He does fear God’s destructive power–that’s why he’s pleading with Moses–but not enough to prevent him from his arrogant stubbronness.
  • “and he continued to offend [sinned again]” (Exo 9:34). After confessing “I have offended this time” (Exo 9:27) as the thunder and hail rattle down, he finds blue skies again and directly proceeds to offend [sin] again by reneging on his promise to send of the Hebrews [let them go].

8. The Plague of Locusts (10:1-20)

  • “for I Myself have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants” (Exo 10:1). This is the first time God informs Moses before meeting Pharaoh that He has hardened [made heavy] his heart. Pharaoh is showing himself ever more fiercely recalcitrant, and the plagues are becoming more fearful as we draw near the last plague which will break Pharaoh’s heart.
  • “so that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son’s son” (Exo 10:2). The rationale of establishing God’s enduring fame shifts from the global scope of Exo 9:16,19 to educating the future nation. The Exodus story is to be the foundational narrative for the nation [and the church].
  • “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?” (Exo 10:3). The language God directs to Pharaoh through Moses and Aaron has become more confrontational. Pharaoh is not only blocking Israel for leaving to serve and worship God but for failing to humble himself before God–humble submission is the last thing the supreme monarch would imagine he would ever do.
  • “it will cover the eye of the land [face of the ground]” (Exo 10:5). The Hebrew ‘ayim has the meaning of “eye,” which suggests “surface,” “aspect” or “look.” Linguistically the object of the organ of perception shares a designation with the organ of perception. The cloud of locusts is so thick [“very heavy’ (Exo 10:14) answers the heaviness/hardness of Pharaoh’s heart] that it covers the whole surface, or eye, of the land, in effect blinding Egypt. This looks to the next plague, darkness (Exo 10:15).
  • “the like of which your fathers did not see nor your fathers’ fathers” (Exo 10:6,14). Such grand drumroll of pronouncements declare that the catastrophe about to descend is unequaled in their long entire history.
  • “How long will this fellow [man] be a snare to us?” (Exo 10:7a). Though Pharaoh persists in his arrogance, the Egyptian united front against Isreal is visibly coming apart. They believe the direness of Moses’ latest threat and try to tell their king that Egypt is on the brink of total disaster. “This fellow” express contempt.
  • “Do you not know that Egypt is lost [ruined]?” (Exo 10:7b). Pharaoh appears to concede to his courtiers/officials rebuke, and either issued the order to bring back Moses and Aaron (Exo 10:8), or he merely acquiesced as his courtiers sent after them.
  • “Just who is going?” (Exo 10:8). Pharaoh’s agreement to Moses’ request is immediately followed by this question that clearly implies that he’s not prepared to have all of them leave.
  • “With our lads and with our old men [young and old] … with our cattle [flocks and herds] we will go” (Exo 10:9). At this point, Moses is fully confident that God has dealth him the stronger hand, and he responds uncompromisingly.
  • “May the Lord be with you the way I would send you off with your little ones” (Exo 10:10a)–is sarcasm.
  • “For evil is before your faces [Clearly you are bent on evil]” (Exo 10:10b). It likely means, “You are headed for mischief,” or “Harm is going to befall you.”
  • “I have offended [sinned] … forgive, pray, my offense [sin] just this time … take away from me this death [deadly plague” (Exo 10:16-17). Pharaoh’s confident, imperious, aristocratic speech has now broken down into contrite confession and short urgent please. He could only say “this death” from encountering the dense layer of consuming locusts, blinding the eye of the land and penetrating every crevice.

9. The Plague of Darkness (10:21-29)

  • “the Lord said to Moses” (Exo 10:21a). As in each 3rd plague in the 3 triads that make up the sequence of 9 (Exo 9:22; 10:12), this plaque is implemented without warning. The ominousness of 3 days of total darkness, suddenly enveloping Egypt without advance notice, prepares for the climactic 10th plague.
  • “a darkness one can feel (Exo 10:21b). The force of hyperbole beautifully conveys the claustrophobic palpability of absolute darkness, making naturalistic explanations unlikely. All the plagues are emphatically presented as extraordinary interventions by God that demonstrate His power over the created world.
  • “but all the Israelites had light in their dwelling places (Exo 10:23). The contrast between light in Goshen and terrifying darkness in the rest of Egypt sets the stage for the distinction between life for the Israelites and death for the Egyptians in the 10th plague.
  • “Only [leave] your sheep and your cattle [behind] will be set aside” (Exo 10:24). Pharaoh now concedes that the children and implicitly the women may go, but he still wants to keep back the livestock as a material guarantee for their return.
  • “You yourself too shall provide” (Exo 10:25). Moses is as uncompromising as in his previous encounter with Pharaoh, stating that the monarch himself will provide the sacrifices.
  • “Do not again see mhy face … I will not see your face again” (Exo 10:28-29). This is the final squaring off between these adversaries. No further negotiations are possible. The scene is set for the unleashing of the terrible last plague.

Reference:

  1. Leon R. Kass. Founding God’s Nation. Reading Exodus. 2021. Overview of Exodus by Leon Kass.
  2. James K. Bruckner. Exodus. New International Bible Commentary. 2008.
  3. John Goldingay. Exodus & Leviticus for Everyone. 2010.
  4. Robert Alter. The Hebrew Bible. A translation with commentary. The Five Books of Moses. 2019.
  5. Dennis Prager. Exodus. God, Slavery, and Freedom. The Rational Bible. 2018.
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