The Plagues

Many of us have heard the story of the plagues of Egypt but most of us miss what God is teaching the Israelites and the Egyptians about himself. More importantly, there are lessons for us today about who God is and how he relates to humanity.

---

The Message

The early chapters of Exodus read like an epic adventure; and today we begin the climax of the story – the final encounter between the hero and the villain, God and Pharaoh.

From the beginning, Pharaoh has set himself up as a god, demanding that the Israelites worship him. Now God, in His righteous justice, can no longer stand idly by. The cries of His people have reached His ears, and it is time for Him to set His people free.

Today we will consider Exodus chapters 7 through 10, which describe the plagues of Egypt. We won’t have time to read the entire text, but I hope to help you see some key themes and understand what they mean for each of us.

Before the plagues begin, Moses and Aaron show Pharaoh the sign God gave Moses at the burning bush. Aaron throws down his staff and it becomes a snake. This is meant to prove that the God Pharaoh insists he “doesn’t know” has sent them; but Pharaoh is not impressed. He has his magicians do the same trick. However, Aaron’s staff (still a snake) swallows up all the magicians’ snakes.

This sign is interesting because the snake is an important symbol of Egyptian power. The ancient pharaohs wore headdresses decorated with images of snakes to depict their power.  While this seems like a nifty miracle to us, even the fact that Aaron’s staff defeated Pharaoh’s magicians’ staffs doesn’t impress Pharaoh. His heart is so hard he does not acknowledge God’s power. This sets the scene for God to show beyond any doubt that His power far exceeds Pharaoh’s!

The Plagues

1. Water to Blood

Moses and Aaron stand with Pharaoh beside the Nile, and God tells them to strike the river with Aaron’s staff. As a result, the water turns to blood, becomes undrinkable, kills all the fish and creates an awful stench. The Nile always has been the lifeblood of Egypt’s culture and economy. Its annual floods have kept the land fertile. Many of their gods are connected with the river. Now the true God turns their lifeline into death.

2. Frogs

A week later Moses and Aaron meet Pharaoh in his courts and ask him to let their people go. The brothers warn him that if he doesn’t obey, frogs will overrun their country. Pharaoh refuses, and God unleashes the plague of frogs. 

The Egyptians believed in Heqet, goddess of childbirth, who was depicted with a frog’s head. The theory was that if you found a frog in the desert, you knew you were near water, the source of life – hence making Heqet, the source of life, have a frog’s head. The Egyptians believed Heqet protected the mother throughout pregnancy and so women often wore amulets of Heqet to insure pregnancy and to protect the child during its development.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these first two plagues point to death in the Nile and power over the goddess of childbirth. God’s righteous justice is pointing to the Egyptians’ sin of killing Israelite baby boys 80 years earlier.

3. Gnats or Lice

This time God tells Moses to have Aaron strike the ground with his staff to bring a plague of gnats (or small biting bugs). Little bugs everywhere! Completely annoying and frustrating!

Up to this point, the magicians in Pharaoh’s court have been able to duplicate God’s miracles – staff to snake, water to blood, and frogs. This time, however, their magic can’t keep up! They are powerless to recreate the plague of small biting bugs, and they tell Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.”

Like described in the previous 2 plagues, this plague and all to follow can be connected with the Egyptian gods, who were numerous and who might change from one dynasty to another. In all of them, however, the God of Abraham shows that His power exceeds that of any and all Egyptian gods.

4. Flies

Next God sends flies to cover the land. This plague (and several more to come) are different from the previous ones in that God specifically tells Pharaoh that it will affect the area where the Egyptians live but not the area where the Israelites live. God not only starts and stops the plagues, but He defines their geographic boundaries.

5. Disease of Livestock

Again, Moses goes to Pharaoh and asks him to release the Israelites. He warns him that if he doesn’t do this, all the Egyptians’ livestock will sicken and die. Again Moses says this will not impact any of the Israelites’ livestock.

Again Pharaoh refuses, and the next morning he wakes to find all their livestock dead. Doubt creeps in. He sends servants to see if the Israelites’ animals are still alive. Of course they are.

6. Boils on Skin

God has Moses take soot from a furnace the enslaved Israelites are forced to use to make bricks and throw it into the air. As it spreads and settles, it becomes boils on everyone’s skin. The magicians cannot stand before Moses because of their painful sores, and they leave Pharaoh’s side.

7. Hail

This plague is unique because God tells Pharaoh to send people to safety before the hail arrives. “Send my people out or I will send a hailstorm; so send your people under shelter.”

It’s as if God is trying to see if Pharaoh will send anybody anywhere – Israelite or Egyptian. He doesn’t. Those who don’t take shelter or take animals inside pay the price. However, some of Pharaoh’s people do hear Moses’s warning and protect themselves and their servants and livestock.

Not only is there loss of life for people and livestock, but most of the crops are destroyed. The wheat and spelt are spared because they ripen later, until the next plague.

8. Locusts

God sends locusts as the eighth plague, finishing off the crops that remain. By the death of livestock, the hail, and the locusts, God completely destroys the food source of the Egyptians, causing the country’s economic collapse. This is ironic when we remember that 430 years earlier, the Israelite Joseph helped them overcome seven years of drought and set the country on the road to prosperity.

9. Darkness

For the penultimate plague, God tells Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt – darkness that can be felt.”

We take light for granted. Our homes are brightly lit. Our car headlights have mirrors to intensify their light. On most nights we have moonlight. But have you ever been in a place totally without light? Disorientingly black? No sun, no moon, no stars?

This lasts not just for hours, but for three straight days! It must have caused fear among the people – a lack of safety and security. They have no ability to move around or go anywhere. It must have led to depression and a sense of doom with people wondering if it will ever end or if their lives are over.

One of the Egyptian “creator gods” was the sun god, Re. Egyptian kings were sometimes referred to as “sons of Re.” By removing all light, God is making sure Pharaoh understands that his god Re is no match for the God of the Israelites!

One plague remains. We will save that for next week. Today I want to look at patterns we find within the plagues and what they mean to us today.

Patterns through the Plagues

1. Increasing Severity

The water-to-blood plague makes everything stink, but with effort and digging they get clean water. The frogs bring disruption and smell but do not impact the Egyptians’ lives like the loss of livestock and crops in ensuing plagues.

God slowly turns up the heat on Pharaoh because He has a plan and a purpose to bring total destruction on Egypt. Each plague is a little more severe than the last, and Pharaoh’s heart becomes firmly set against God. Proverbs 21:1 tells us, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will.”

2. Miraculously Beginning or Ending with a Word or Action

Some Christians and scholars try to attribute all these plagues to natural causes that build off one another – that the gnats appear as a result of the rotting frogs, for example. However, the fact that they begin instantly and end just as quickly proves the miraculous power of God! Also, God controls the boundaries of the plagues, having them affect Pharaoh but not the Israelites in Goshen.

God can do the miraculous! People who try to remove the miraculous from the Exodus story or from the life of Jesus remove one of the primary characteristics of God – His almighty power! God can do whatever He wants whenever He pleases!

3. A Shrinking Cast of Characters

These encounters begin with Aaron speaking for Moses while Pharaoh is surrounded by his magicians. Eventually Aaron no longer speaks for Moses; and the magicians, covered in boils, leave Pharaoh. The battle is ultimately between God and Pharaoh. This is not a war of nations. This is God fighting for His children and defeating Pharaoh, who has set himself up as a god.

4. Pharaoh’s Bartering

“Pray to make it stop, and I will let you go.” Then: “I changed my mind.”

We can be a lot like Pharaoh. When we want something from God, we barter with Him; and when our pain or trouble stops, we go right back to our old ways. We promise to change “if only,” but we turn back. It’s easy to throw stones at Pharaoh, but through this whole story we see that we are a lot more like him than we would like to admit.

“You can go, but stay in Egypt . . . You can go, but only the men . . . You can go, but you can’t take your livestock.

Many of us probably have played this game with God. We submit to what He wants us to do, but on our terms. We say, “I’ll do THAT , but only if You do THIS for me.” Truly submitting to God’s complete and sovereign control is a struggle for us. We like to think we have a semblance of control; but why would we think that when we compare ourselves to the Lord God Almighty?

Why All the Plagues?

After walking through these four long chapters, I’m sure at least a few of you wonder why God went through the complexity of all these signs and wonders. Why not just smack them once and get it over with? Even God recognizes this is a possibility when he says in Exodus 9:15, “For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the face of the earth.”

1. To Prove to the Israelites – God is Faithful

Remember all the times God points back to His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob leading up to the story of these plagues. The plagues specifically deal with the oppression of the Israelites while in Egypt, the death of their children in the Nile, and their hard labor for the Egyptians’ economic gain.

The increasing severity of the plagues is to fulfill the promise that the Egyptians will give them silver and gold as they leave the country. In every way, God is fulfilling His promise to the Israelites, and not just them, but their children and grandchildren as well. He wants to be sure none of them will ever forget His faithfulness.

Exodus 10:1-2 – Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them, that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD.

We see in Psalms 78 and 105 that the Israelites DID tell this story.

2. To Prove to the Egyptians – God is Greater

Exodus 9:13-14 – Let my people go, so that they may worship Me, or this time I will send the full force of My plagues against you and against your officials and your people,  so you may know that there is no one like Me in all the earth.

The entire passage can be taken as proof that the God of the Israelites is greater than all the Egyptian gods. The Egyptians made gods to represent creation, but our God is the Creator God.

The Apostle Paul describes many humans, including these Egyptians, when he writes: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever present (Romans 1:25).

3. To Prove to the World – God is Glorious

Exodus 9:15-16 – For by now I could have stretched out My hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you My power and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

I use the word “glorious” because in Exodus 14, as the Israelites leave Egypt, God describes how He did all this to receive “GLORY” through Pharaoh’s downfall. As the world witnesses this incredible defeat of the mighty Pharaoh, all they can do is stand amazed at the incredible power and glory of God.

Each of us who hears about this glorious God must make a decision – will we submit to Him and worship, or will we be like Pharaoh and stubbornly do our own thing? Ultimately, our response to this utter destruction of Egypt should be to worship the God of Glory, the God of Majesty, the Faithful One.

It’s All About Jesus

This is an epic story. For Israel, this was their big story they made sure to pass down from generation to generation. It showed God’s great concern for them and His unimaginable power.

Psalm 105 is a lenthy story retelling the entire saga of the Israelites’ Exodus, including all the plagues. It begins with these words:

Psalm 105:1-3 – Give praise to the Lord, proclaim His name; make known among the nations what He has done. Sing to Him, sing praise to Him; tell of all His wonderful acts. Glory in His holy name.

In the same way, we Christians on this side of the cross have our own story to tell. We worship the same God. He saved us from oppression. He has power over everything in all creation. He defeated our enemy – sin and the grave. We have a new story for ourselves, yet our “new” story is an extension of the one in Exodus.

Jesus Christ, God in flesh, came to this earth and brought us freedom and victory. He showed the same power over the natural world as God showed to Pharaoh. Jesus changed water to wine. He healed skin diseases. He calmed storms. He faithfully fulfilled all the scriptures about the coming Messiah.

Jesus is greater than the religion and legalism offered by Judaism. The whole world needs to know that He is glorious. He is the light of the world – the One who forever defeats darkness.

Our response to Jesus in our day must be the same as the responses of the Israelites and the whole world when they saw God’s mighty acts against Egypt – we must worship. Our God and King is faithful, greater than anything this world can offer, and glorious.

“Sing to Him, sing praise to Him; tell of all His wonderful acts.”