Moses Confronts Pharaoh
After a myriad of excuses that Moses makes, he finally relents after God tells him not to worry and that he will be God to Pharaoh. And, thus, when Moses is doing what God has given him to do, Pharaoh is to see God behind Moses, not Moses the man.
Through a series of plagues, God begins to dismantle before Pharaoh–and the people of Israel–the gods of Egypt. That is clear. What isn’t clear are two of the plagues that afflicted the Egyptians. The Hebrew words are not specific, so the various translations of the Bibles we use have to guess. We will see this with the third and fourth plagues, which the ESV translates as “gnats” and “flies”; the Septuagint translated these plagues as “small flies” and “dog flies” (or “shameless flies”). So we also see the translators of the Septuagint also had to guess.
Read Exodus 7:8-13
The snake was an emblem of Egyptian power embodied in the Pharaoh, whose royal headpiece featured a cobra representing the 
serpent goddess Wadjet.
– What did both Aaron and Pharaoh’s wise men and magicians able to do?
– What did Aaron’s staff do? What was the point of that?
– But what does Pharaoh do?
The First Plague: Water into Blood
With the plagues, we find the plagues separated in a series of three plagues each before coming to the final, climactic 10th plague.
- For the first three plagues, Moses warns Pharaoh “in the morning” (7:15, 8:20, and 9:13).
- Before the each plague in the second cycle, God tells Moses: “Go in to Pharaoh” (8:1, 9:1, and 10:1).
- The third cycle of three plagues take place without any warning.
Within the plagues as a whole, there is a progression, an increase in severity. These last three are especially severe and destructive.
Read Exodus 7:14-25
– What becomes of the water in the Nile?
– Are Pharaoh’s magicians in some way able to repeat what Moses did?
– Discuss the implication of this in Pharaoh’s mind.
Reread Exodus 1:22
Wisdom 11:5-7: For through the things by which their foes were punished, they [the Israelites] received benefit in their need. In place of the fountain of an ever-flowing river, troubled and defiled with blood in rebuke for the decree to kill the infants…
– What does the Old Testament Apocrypha book of Wisdom say is the significance of the Nile turning to blood?
The Nile turning to blood also showed to Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and the Israelites that Yahweh was stronger than the Nile god, Hapi. The Egyptians considered the Nile to be “the giver of life to the two lands [upper and lower Egypt],” “the lord of sustenance,” and the one “who causes the whole land to live through his provisions.”
The Second Plague: Frogs
Read Exodus 8:1-15
– What invades the land of Egypt?
– Are Pharaoh’s magician’s able to repeat this in some way?
– Yet, what does Pharaoh agree to do?
– Does he keep his word? Why or why not?
Here we see Yahweh showing that He is the true God, not the Egyptian goddess, Heket. She was the Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility and was depicted as a frog, or a woman with the head of a frog. In Egypt, frogs were sacred and could not be killed–a crime punishable by death. Yet, because of the many frogs, the Egyptians ended up walking on them and seeing them all die and rot.
The Third Plague: Lice
In the Hebrew, the insect for this plague was kinnim. This word comes from a root word meaning “to dig”; so, the insect in question would’ve most likely dug under the skin. That’s all we can say from the Hebrew. So, in this case, we cannot get dogmatic about what this plague was. Your pastor thinks it was lice, not flies as our ESV translates.
Read Exodus 8:16-19
– What strikes the land of Egypt this time?
– Are Pharaoh’s magicians able to repeat this?
– What do Pharaoh’s magicians concede to Pharaoh? [Note, the reference is to Elohim, not Yahweh]
– Yet what does Pharaoh do or not do?
If plague this plague was lice, then God was undermining the Egyptian god Geb, who was the earth god for the Egyptians. Egyptians gave offerings to Geb for the bounty of the soil. Yet, this plague originated from “the dust of the soil,” showing that Yahweh was God even over Geb.
This plague would have been especially alarming to the priests of Egypt, for they were required to shave their hair off every day and have pure bodies. No lice were permitted on their bodies. That would have made it impossible for them to carry out their daily rituals.
Geb was usually represented in the form of a man whose body formed the earth. In this picture, he is the one lying down.
The Fourth Plague: Scarab Beetles [Swarms]
For this plague, Moses didn’t use the phrase “flies”; he simply used the word “swarms.” What is unclear is what made up these swarms. Your pastor thinks these “swarms” consisted of scarab beetles, for the god they represented loomed large in the mind of the Egyptians. The scarab was a dung beetle, an insect that fed on the dung in the fields. Swarms of scarabs, with mandibles that could saw through wood, would have been destructive, much worse than termites.
Read Exodus 8:20-24
– What now infests Egypt?
– Whom does God begin to single out for special protection during these plagues?
Read Exodus 8:25-32
– What does Pharaoh agree to do? Does he keep his word?
In this plague, and the ones that follow (not including the last), we start to see Pharaoh’s resistance weaken. He grants tentative permission to let Israel worship God–but he always imposes restrictions! The people may celebrate their festival of sacrifice, so long as they remain in the land (8:25). They must stay within a short distance (8:28). They can go if they leave behind their families (10:10-11) or their livestock (10:24). Pharaoh always gives his tentative, reluctant “yes” to keep control over the Israelites.
With this plague, God was undermining the Egyptian god Amon-Ra, pictured above. To the Egyptians, he was the creator and king of the gods who had the head of a beetle. Ra, the Sole Creator, was visible as the disc of the sun, but they also knew him in many other forms. He could appear as a crowned man, a falcon or a man with a falcon’s head and, as the scarab beetle pushes a round ball of dung in front of it, the Egyptians pictured Ra as a scarab pushing the sun across the sky.
Fifth Plague: Death of Livestock
Read Exodus 9:1-7
– What plague afflicted the land of Egypt?
– Who again received special protection to be spared this plague?
– What again takes place with Pharaoh’s heart?
In this plague, Yahweh undermines the Egyptian god, Apis, and goddess, Hathor. For the Egyptians, slaughtering flocks and herds for sacrifice was unthinkable. They revered these animals as living images or representations of 
the gods, such as the bull god, Apis (above), and the cow goddess, Hathor (to the right). Insisting that Israel conduct its sacrifices and liturgy in the safety of the wilderness prevented outraged Egyptians from inflicting violent reprisals against the Israelites.
Yet, this plague was not only to undermine Hathor and Apis to the Egyptians, but also to the Israelites. Having lived in Egypt for 400 years, the Israelites have also attached themselves in some ways to the idols of Egypt (Joshua 24:14 and Ezekiel 20:8). So, Yahweh also needs to break the Israelites’ affections for these false gods.
Next week: plagues 6-9 and the beginning of the 10th.
