The story of Pharaoh's resistance to Moses, and of the ten plagues that built up to his final capitulation, occupy six chapters in the book of Exodus, 7-12. We consider two broad features of the story:
(1) The meaning of the plagues as a whole
(2) The hardening of Pharaoh's heart.
These are the two chief areas where the 20th century mind finds it hard to come to terms with the Biblical claim that these events reveal some real and timeless truth about God. On the face of it, the plagues strike us as being somehow barbaric, and the hardening of Pharaoh's heart somehow unfair; are we to conclude that God is cruel and mean? There have always been critics who have said so. If the record is true, they say, then God is contemptible; if the facts are not true, then the view of God held by the writers who invented them is contemptible. Either way, the Bible is not to be believed.
But it seems to me we have to accept the story as it stands, if for no other reason, because to explain Israel's faith without them would strain belief even more. The faith of Israel for centuries to come was so deeply rooted in the tradition of these events, so vigorously inspired by them, and so stubbornly shaped by them that if they had not happened, it would have been necessary to invent them, or something very like them, to account for Israel's faith at all.
And if the events recorded happened in such a framework as Immanuel Velikowsky suggests in his book 'Worlds in Collision' (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1950), then we have a situation that would sober even the most scornful of critics.
So we front up first to the question, "What does the story of the plagues mean?"
In answering the question we must first, in all fairness, let the Bible speak for itself; and second, we must let it do so against the religious background of that Egyptian dynasty.
A - THE REASONS GIVEN THAT EXPLAIN THEM
What does the Bible say they mean?
Reasons for the plagues are plainly given, not once, but repeatedly throughout the narrative. As we review them, remember the run-up to them in the story so far - the revelation given to Moses himself of the reality and character of God. The one big question that hovers over the narrative is the question "Is God there?" The experience of Moses has answered "Yes."
"Then what is His Name ?... What is He like?" it went on to ask, and the answer has been given "I am what I will show myself among you to be." Now God will begin to show Himself in His mighty acts. We know already that they will demonstrate His care for justice: "I know my people's sufferings," He has said to Moses, "and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians." (Exodus 3:8)
He is a God of compassion committed to the righting of wrong.
This is what it means when at the end of it all Moses sings, "Yahweh is a man of war." He is a man of war: He combats evil. And this is the key signature, so to speak, in which the whole epic is sung. The Lord exerts His strength to defeat evil and establish righteousness; that is how it is seen that He is love - for love that is unholy is not true love at all. If you are enemy to righteousness, you are enemy also to love.
The full extent of God's victory over the evil embodied in Pharaoh's rule is emphasised by the promise made in 6:1: "Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out; yea, with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land." Pharaoh will not merely have to comply with the will of God in setting Israel free; when it comes to the crunch he will want to, with all his heart. God will triumph morally, as well as practically, over Pharaoh. Evil in the end, by its own will, will serve the good. That is how God wins.
Some of the reasons given for God's actions as the plagues proceed are:
1. 7:5 "The Egyptians
shall know that I am God, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt and
bring out the people of Israel from among them."
It is to be known, by unbelievers and believers alike, that there is
a God of compassionate justice in the earth.
2. 7:14 "By this you
shall know that I am God, when the waters of the Nile are turned to
blood." The Egyptians worshipped the Nile River as the god that
sustained them in life.
Reliance on false gods like Egypt's is not life, but death to their
worshippers.
3. 8:10 (Plague of
frogs) "By the lifting away of the plague of frogs, you shall know
that there is none like Yahweh."
God is to be known, not only in the infliction of judgments, but in
the lifting of them.
4. 8:22 "You shall
know that I am Yahweh in the earth" when it is seen that Goshen is
exempt. (It has just been noted that though the plagues fall upon the
whole land, they will not affect the area of Goshen where the
Israelites dwell.)
In other words, "The difference between those who acknowledge me and
those who do not is marked by the redemption I apply to those who
do."
5. 9:14-16 The plague
of hail is severe, yet not so severe that God is able to say, "For
this purpose I have let you live, to show you my power, so that my
Name may be declared throughout all the earth."
God's judgments, even His most severe judgments, are never unbridled.
The marvel, in view of the record, is not that we humans are
afflicted by reason of our sin, but that we are so little afflicted -
for God would rather we were drawn on by His mercies than driven on
by His judgments.
6. 10:17 The plague of locusts at last brings a grudging acknowledgment that it is Yahweh who must be entreated to lift the curse of death from off the face of life.
7. 11:7 The final
plague, the death of the firstborn.
Let it be remembered that the Lord, the God of all flesh, the creator
and giver of life, has the right to take it, as the creature He has
made does not.
By this plague God is revealed as the Redeemer of His people by way
of faith and obedience under the protection of shed blood.
"Against any of the
people of Israel, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl - that
you may know that Yahweh makes a distinction between the Egyptians
and Israel" ... between unbelievers and believers, that
is.
It is clear from all this that the purpose of the plagues is to demonstrate that there is one God in the earth, the Lord of all creation and of history, Who alone may be trusted for justice and mercy, for life and liberty, and for redemption and salvation.
B - THE BACKGROUND SUPPLIED THAT ILLUMINATES THEM
All this must be understood against the religious background of that Egyptian dynasty. Every episode in the plague saga touched in one way or another on Egyptian religion. One by one the plagues demonstrate the powerlessness of Egypt's Gods. Whatever sphere of nature the Egyptian god is held to rule, things happen in it, not by the word or the will of that Egyptian god, but by Yahweh's Word. We must hear the saga of the plagues under the caption heading of 12:12: "Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am YAHWEH." (See Note 1 below)
To follow the plagues one by one :
1. The river Nile was venerated as the god Hapi, god of the floods, for on the annual inundation of the Nile Valley the country depended for its agriculture. Furthermore, it almost never rains in Egypt ... the Nile is the sole source of its drinking water. (Affected also, the fish goddess Hatmehyt.)
2. Hekt (Heqit) was the goddess of fruitfulness who was held to watch over women at child birth. She had the body of a woman and the head of a frog, and the frog was venerated by the Egyptians as the embodiment of the life force.
3. Seb was the
earth god, who should have had the power to free its cattle from the
murrain of lice. Lice in Egypt were held to pollute the temple; the
plague of lice was therefore an affront to every deity that was
worshipped in it.
This was the plague in which the Egyptian priests recognised the hand
of God, for it represented a blanket pollution of the whole pantheon
of deities revered in the land.
4. The scarab beetle,
almost certainly to be identified as the flies of the fourth plague,
was venerated as the god Khepra.
Because the scarab beetles were observed to stir and march in long
columns rolling balls of dung before them just before dawn, it was
they who were held to bring up the sun every morning. Khepra was the
god of resurrection.
5. Hathor was a cow headed goddess, who headed up the whole range of cattle, herds and flocks on whose fertility Egypt depended for its prosperity. She was powerless to prevent the death of her cattle. Apis, the bull god, was also challenged by this plague.
6. In the sixth plague Moses threw handfuls of ashes from the kiln into the air, with the result that sores and boils broke out on man and beast alike.
Ashes were used by Egyptian priests with which to bless the people, but now this supposed means of blessing becomes a means of cursing. Imhotep, the god of health and healing, is impotent, and Moses' action in throwing the ashes toward heaven is a gesture of defiance in the direction of Nut, the mother of Heaven.
7. Isis and Serapis, the gods of fire and water, and Shu the goddess of the atmosphere are helpless to stay the plague of hail and of fire flashing in the midst of the hail. All the forces of nature are in Yahweh's hands; He alone has it in His power to make those forces a means of blessing to men or of judgement on them.
8. Serapia was
worshipped specifically for protection against plagues of locusts.
Locust plagues are a standard Bible image of the doom that falls on
man by the hand of God when he stubbornly refuses to repent.
(Interestingly the literal rendering of v. 5 is: 'the eye of the
earth' was darkened by the locusts - 'the eye of the earth is Ra',
the sun.)
9. The darkness that envelops the land is in defiance of the sun god Ra, or Amon-ra, the patron of Egypt's throne, and it heralds ...
10. The final awesome stroke of God that cuts off with one blow the whole system of primogeniture on which Egyptian rule was founded; that is to say, that in each succeeding Pharaoh's son alone could the divinity become incarnate by which he governed. The Pharaoh was held to be divine, the son of Osiris, god of the underworld (the world of the dead) called Horus - and the Pharaoh's son was believed to be the next manifestation of the sun god Ra.
To stand back from all this and survey the panorama that has unfolded is to see that the whole land of Egypt has become a vast arena in which there is played out a contest of the gods. It is a drama of the same order that was later to be played out between Elijah and the prophets and priests of Baal. (This is the reason Moses asked leave of Pharaoh to offer sacrifice in the desert. The request was not a subterfuge or a deception. The issue was "Which God is to be worshipped?" Moses was throwing down the gauntlet.) Which is the true and living God, the Lord of Nature and Ruler of History? Yahweh, the God of Moses, or the confused jumble of pretentious images venerated in Egypt? The God of Moses has blown all the vain pretensions of the gods of Egypt, Pharaoh himself included, to smithereens.
It was necessary that it be done. If God indeed be God, how can He suffer His creatures to be deceived? Will He sit on His hands while men and women in the ignorance born of their arrogant unbelief in Him pervert all the powers God has vested in them and in the world He gave them to such monstrous evils as the brutal enslavement of their fellows ... and beyond that to their own final death and corruption? Indeed He will not. Before so fearful a threat He must not, and will not shrink from drastic measures to deal with it. When God vindicates Himself in the eyes of the world, He does a thorough job of it. This indeed is the whole point of the thing God says in 10:2, that His people are to "tell in the hearing of their sons, and of their son's sons, how He made sport of the Egyptians, and what signs He did among them, that they might know that He is God." There is a robustness in the tale that offends our milk and water sensibilities. But its whole point is that the entire religion of Egypt is from top to bottom a thumping great lie; and the only way finally to loose men and women from the mischievous hold it has over them is thoroughly to discredit it, to laugh it out of court.
The false gods can safely be mocked. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; Yahweh shall have them in derision." (Psalm 2:4)
A streak of harshness in it all there is; but it is nothing like as cruel as the fate the lie would bring upon them all if it were not exploded.
"Who is like Thee, O Yahweh, among the gods?" sings Moses at the end of the day "Thou didst stretch out Thy right hand - the earth swallowed them." (15:12).
That boisterous conviction in the sheer supremacy of the living God is the conclusion to which this saga in Exodus is told to lead us.
And would to God our faith in Him today were robust enough to laugh in the faces of the sacred cows that half paralyse us with their threatening swagger - false gods that bear such names as 'the ultimate deterrent', 'the balance of power', 'the international monetary fund', 'the management of energy resources', 'advanced technology', 'trade sanctions', 'the freedom of the press', 'equal rights for women' and all the rest at the national level, down to the private level of a 'minimum wage' and 'sexual fulfilment' and so on ... and on and on. What energy there is in our devotion to all these things - as though there were no God to trust above and beyond them all. It is time for a prophet like Elijah to rise and challenge us again, "How long will you limp between two opinions? If the Lord be God then follow Him; but if these other things be god then follow them."
"Choose you this day whom you shall serve." (Joshua 24:15)
It is with the lie at the heart of all Egypt's religion that we are still concerned when we try to understand the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Again we must pay close attention to what the Bible actually says, and again we must do so against the background of Egyptian religion.
Pharaoh believed himself to be a god. In a sense, he was hardly to blame for that; the system bred that belief in him from childhood. But believing it as he did, and believing moreover that his own and the nation's survival depended on it being true, what other response to Moses' demands could he make but the one recorded in 5:2: "Who is this Yahweh that I should heed his voice and let Israel go? I do not know this Yahweh; and moreover, I will not let Israel go." ("I'm God around here.")
But again, Pharaoh's belief in his own divinity, however sincerely he believed it, was a lie - and a thoroughly mischievous lie at that. That sort of belief gives a man unlimited power. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The sort of power Pharaoh wielded makes wicked tyrants. For the Hebrews' sake therefore, and for the Egyptians' sake, and for Pharaoh's own sake (if God had any care for his soul at all), Pharaoh must be taught what a lie it was - must be given opportunity, of his own free will, to turn away from the evil of his own pride and the evil of his wicked tyranny over those he ruled; he must have a chance to know the truth and embrace it.
Now the Bible says both that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
Pharaoh hardened his own heart when he resisted the claim of Moses' God - a claim God pressed upon him as much for his own as for His people's sake. But by putting pressure on him, God provoked Pharaoh's resistance. That is the sense in which God hardened his heart; the more God pushed, the more stubborn Pharaoh got.
It is a common human dilemma, this, as parents know. The harder you push, the harder children resist. They harden their hearts by resisting; you harden their hearts by pushing. Neither happens without the other. And so it was with Pharaoh and God. God found Pharaoh's will set against Him. He did not cast some evil spell upon him to make it so; but finding Pharaoh's heart to be hardened against Him, God hardened his heart still further by persisting in His appeal and keeping the pressure on him to forsake his wickedness and follow righteousness.
What was God to do? Leave Pharaoh alone? Stop hardening Pharaoh's heart by taking the pressure off? But to do that God would have had to call off the whole exercise - abandon the Hebrew slaves to Pharaoh's wicked will. That would have been unrighteousness in God! God must go on.
So the story runs through to its inevitable, tragic conclusion.
It is a tragedy which God Himself, if He is to remain true to His own nature, is helpless to avert. He cannot compromise righteousness, even for love's sake, or His love would cease to be love and degenerate into a feeble indulgence of our sin. No way can God do that;
... not for Pharaoh's
sake,
... not for the Egyptians' sake,
... not for the Hebrews' sake,
... and not for His own Name's sake either, for if He did, He would
in the end betray them all.
With Paul then, we should take note of both 'the kindness and the severity' of God. (Romans 11:22) Tender as it is, His love is as unyielding in its appeal as His righteousness is in its demand. Paul further reminds us that ... "these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come." (I Corinthians 10:11)
The 'instruction' this episode gives is that we cannot trifle with the appeal of God to our soul. No-one can stand still under the pressure of God's Spirit. We go forward, or we go backward. We resist, or we yield. There is no middle way that lets us off the hook. If we say "Not yet," we have not postponed decision - we have decided "No" for today; and that will take us into tomorrow already hardened in heart a little more.
And God will not ease up. He loves us - He cannot ignore us. For the love He bears us, He will push and push and push ... never so as to affront our freedom, but always so as to confront it. And the only way we can avoid the appeal of His love pushing us into perdition is to yield - now: to begin at once to yield.
Better by far the struggle to yield than the struggle to resist.
Let Moses have the last word from Deuteronomy 7:8-9: "It is because Yahweh loves you, and is keeping the oath which he swore to your fathers, that Yahweh has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that Yahweh your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep His commandments, to a thousand generations, and requites to their face those who hate Him, by destroying them; He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will requite him to his face."
"Today when you hear His voice, harden not your hearts." (Hebrews 3:15)
Note 1:
The plagues form a symmetrical scheme, the first nine divided into
three groups of three:
1. Blood
7:14-25
4. Flies
8:20-32
7. Hail
9:13-15
2. Frogs
8:1-15
5. Murrain
9:1-7
8. Locusts
10:1-20
3. Lice
8:16-19
6. Boils
9:8-12
9. Darkness
10:21-27
In this pattern the
first and second of each three is announced to Pharaoh before it
takes place. The first of the three is announced in the morning by
the river side; the second is announced in the Pharaoh's Palace. But
in each case the third judgment is without warning.
The judgments proceed with increasing severity. Egypt's magicians
compete successfully with Moses in only the first two judgments. With
the third, the lice, they confess, "This is the finger of Yahweh,"
and withdraw from the contest. In the second series a distinction is
made between the Egyptians and the Israelites; from here on Goshen is
exempt. As the intensity of the plagues increases, so does the
intensity of Pharaoh's desire to secure intervention by Moses and
Aaron. (8:8, 8:25, 28, 9:27-28, 10:16-17, 10:24) In the first three
Aaron's rod is used; no rod is mentioned in the second three; in the
third either Moses' hand or his rod is prominent. The miraculous
element is underlined by five features:
i. The element of prediction
ii. The element of abnormality
iii. The exemption of Goshen
iv. The orderly increase in severity
v. Their moral purpose
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