Exodus 7-11

1. Exodus 7-11 Judgment on the gods of Egypt “The Plagues”

2. The Plagues

3. Eleven Signs of Yahweh’s Sovereignty • The term “the ten plagues” is a traditional, but not strictly biblical, expression. • It derives both from the translation “plague” for a variety of Hebrew words such as deber in 5:3 and negaʿ in 11:1 and from God’s reference in 15:26 to “the diseases I brought on the Egyptians.” • Even though the expression “ten plagues” refers in summary fashion to both disease plagues and nondisease signs of sovereignty, as does “diseases” in 15:26, the term “plague” is not a misleading term as long as it is understood properly in the context of Exodus. • The Hebrew term most often used in what we call the plague accounts is ʾot, a word usually connoting “miraculous sign.” • What Moses recorded in the book of Exodus is actually a series of eleven miraculous signs having in common their indication of God’s sovereignty over Egypt, the Egyptians, and their Pharaoh—the final one in the series being an especially great sign both of his sovereignty and of judgment: the imposition of death upon the firstborn of people and animals among the Egyptians.

4. Eleven Signs of Yahweh’s Sovereignty • Of these eleven signs of sovereignty, the first (7:8–13) is a demonstration rather than a plague since the only harm it involved was the loss of a small number of things, that is, the loss of magicians’ staffs and the death of some snakes (7:12), not a general annoyance or harm to the human or animal population as a whole. • Nevertheless, it, like the other ten, was designed to show Pharaoh and the Egyptians Yahweh’s superiority to them and their gods through the miraculous transformation of an inanimate object (staff) into a living being (snake) and the superiority of that snake to any others. • The last ten, on the other hand, were both signs of sovereignty and, in the terminology commonly but loosely employed for them, plagues. • They caused death (mainly of animals until the tenth) or miseries of various sorts (on both people and animals in most plagues) even if some of them had nothing to do with illness per se (notably nos. seven [hail], eight [locusts], and nine [darkness]). • All eleven signs humiliated the Egyptians and proved Yahweh’s power over them. • All shared certain formal features and a basically similar outline, moving from a very simple first sign account (7:8–13) through closely related (similar to one another) sign accounts (the first nine plagues), which vary in length but build in intensity of misery caused, to culmination in a compound-complex account of the death of the firstborn that is much longer and much more a matter of final judgment than any of the others (11:1–12:30).

5. Eleven Signs of Yahweh’s Sovereignty • All eleven signs led inexorably to the great mighty act of God around which the book of Exodus centers, the exodus from Egypt, which also involved a great sovereign act of humiliation of the Egyptians, the destruction of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. • The signs of sovereignty must not be understood as ends in themselves but as lead-ins to God’s great deliverance of his people from bondage to the greatest superpower of their day, a deliverance that was completed only when the Egyptian army was destroyed and Pharaoh’s power broken (14:21–31; 15:1–21). • The overall 1:9:1 pattern of the eleven signs of Yahweh’s sovereignty may be schematized as follows. Note how the first sign already contains most of the typical elements that will be found in the remaining sign stories. • First Sign of Sovereignty: Staff to Snake (7:8–13) • Elements, also typical of all eleven accounts: • God’s instruction to Moses (and Aaron) before they encounter Pharaoh; the encounter with Pharaoh itself “just as the Lord commanded” • A symbolic action (throwing down the staff); resulting action taking place in the presence of Pharaoh (and his officials); duplication of the sign by Egyptian magicians (first three sign accounts only • Magicians’ impotence described in two other sign accounts as well) • Pharaoh hardens his heart and does not give in, “just as the Lord had said.”

6. Eleven Signs of Yahweh’s Sovereignty • Second through Tenth Signs of Sovereignty: Plagues One through Nine (7:14–10:29) • Typical elements: • God’s instruction to Moses (and Aaron) before they encounter Pharaoh; the encounter with Pharaoh itself “just as the Lord commanded” • A symbolic action taking place in the presence of Pharaoh (often: “and his officials”) • Duplication of the sign by Egyptian magicians (first three sign accounts only) • Resulting action (plague); Pharaoh hardens his heart and does not give in, “just as the Lord had said.” • Eleventh Sign of Sovereignty: Tenth Plague, Death of Firstborn (11:1–12:31) • Elements: • God announces this plague as final • How the Israelites are to become enriched at the expense of the Egyptians; announcement of plague itself • Provision for a permanent memorial of the event in the Passover regulations • Celebration of the first Passover • Resulting plague (death of firstborn of humans and animals) • Pharaoh does not harden his heart but rather gives in. • The first sign is introductory, limited in its effect and audience, and duplicates the final of the three earlier faith signs already shown to the Israelites (not any Egyptians) so that they might trust Yahweh. • The last sign is by far the most severe, is specially memorialized, and represents a culmination of God’s acts of humiliation and judgment of the Egyptians. • In between are the first nine plagues, displaying a special, rather elaborate [sub] pattern of their own, discussed in the following excursus.

7. Excursus: The Progression and Structure of the Ten Plagues • This section of narrative (7:8–11:10) focuses on one of the great confrontations of history: the reigning human power on earth, Egypt—and particularly its autocratic head, Pharaoh—versus the God who promised to rescue his people from that power and the miseries it had imposed on them. • The plagues built in intensity. • The early plagues (blood, frogs, biting insects) were relatively brief in duration, did not cause death, and affected mainly people’s patience and convenience—though certainly severely. • The Egyptian magicians were able to duplicate the first two plagues (though presumably on a very small scale only), but they could not duplicate the third, evidence that the “quality,” not just the quantity, of the plagues was becoming more intense. • None of the first three plagues produced a lasting willingness on the part of Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. • Plagues four, five, and six (swarming insects, animal disease, and skins sores) were much more harmful.

8. Excursus: The Progression and Structure of the Ten Plagues • The fifth killed off many livestock, and the sixth brought serious disease upon humans. • Even so, these plagues were not enough to result in Pharaoh’s relenting from his resistance to Israelite demands for freedom. • The seventh, eighth, and ninth plagues (hail, locusts, and darkness) were even more severe since the seventh plague resulted in the destruction of both animals and certain crops, the locusts ruined what crops remained, and the darkness plague was so frightening and debilitating during its three-day duration that Pharaoh was actually willing—at first—to allow all Israelites to depart if only they would leave their animals behind as surety of their eventual return (10:24). • Although the plagues built in intensity, the increase was not equally incremental. • There was a quantum leap in severity to the culmination of all plagues in the tenth plague, that of the death of the firstborn, which actually launched the exodus and which was seen as a supreme act of judgment against Egypt, in particular against the gods of Egypt. • Accordingly, the tenth plague received the greatest attention in the narrative, to the extent of its being separately and uniquely predicted and prepared for by the Israelites as described rather elaborately in the closing pericope of this section (11:1–10).

9. Excursus: The Progression and Structure of the Ten Plagues • Although it might be argued that the full story of the tenth plague should be included here along with the prior nine, our judgment is that Moses intentionally structured his narrative so as to highlight the actual imposition of the tenth and final plague as the beginning of the exodus itself (in 12:1 and following). • He did this in part by placing the rules for the Passover in chap. 12 as an introduction to what follows, that is, a distinctly new and separate block of narrative that concentrates on and links together the Passover and the exodus (12:1–13:16) since it can already be anticipated that the exodus would and should be remembered for all generations to come. • It cannot be accidental that God used ten plagues to teach the Egyptians that he is sovereign and that their gods were of no account. • At the time of the exodus, both the Israelites and the Egyptians used a decimal counting system, which meant that the number ten tended to connote a full, complete, sufficient quantity of anything being explicitly enumerated.

10. Excursus: The Progression and Structure of the Ten Plagues • A run-through of the whole decimal list from one to ten provided more than enough demonstration of God’s power over Egypt for anyone to get the message. • God brought about the plagues with a structure to their occurrences designed to hammer home to the Egyptians that he is firmly in control of the entire process, and of them and their nation, even to the extent of controlling their environment, which they so completely admired and worshiped in their pantheism. • In sharp contrast to the first nine, the tenth plague caused death to humans, was preannounced long before it or any of the others occurred through various adumbrations going back as far as the call of Moses at the burning bush (4:23), was interwoven with the initiation of the Passover memorial feast, functioned as the actual supreme judgment of God on Egypt and its gods, and produced the result originally predicted: full permission—indeed an official requirement!—that the Israelites leave Egypt. • Thus it does not itself “fit” within the chart but is rather the culmination to which the plagues that do fit within the chart all point.

11. Eleven Signs of Yahweh’s SovereigntyPattern of the Plagues

12. Excursus: Were the Plagues Merely Natural Events? • A widely held view of secular scholars is the idea that the plagues are natural ecological events. • This view, most eloquently espoused and documented by G. Hort, has gained favor in many circles and seemingly has much to commend it but falls short in many explanations and misses the entire point of God’s showdown with the Egyptian gods. • Hort argues that the plagues are in fact all natural phenomena, occurring in the order that such phenomena would occur in nature, with some of the plagues being the result of well-known periodic or seasonal Egyptian phenomena and some being the result of immediately prior plagues, with anthrax figuring prominently in several. • The following schema summarizes her approach.

13. Excursus: Were the Plagues Merely Natural Events?

14. Excursus: Were the Plagues Merely Natural Events? • Thus according to Hort’s thesis, the plagues were all natural phenomena that could and did otherwise occur in Egypt but were extremely harsh just prior to the exodus due to extraordinary rainfall at the headwaters of the Nile and the resultant environmental-biological effects. • Hort’s thesis still leaves many questions unanswered, which she simply does not address in any detail and in most cases avoids giving specifics to substantiate her hypothesis. • (1) Were the plagues merely natural phenomena later embellished by tradition and attributed by storytellers to supernatural power summoned by the actions of Moses and Aaron? • (2) Were the plagues natural phenomena that God foresaw and then gave Moses and Aaron instructions on how to be seen as summoning them by various symbolic actions? • (3) Were the plagues “natural” phenomena brought about fully by supernatural means and timed directly by God (i.e., God initiated all the plagues as natural phenomena under his control and put them in a timed sequence also under his control)?

15. Excursus: Were the Plagues Merely Natural Events? • (4) Were the plagues genuine miracles intended to replicate in extreme fashion natural phenomena that can and do occur in Egypt so as to demonstrate that God controlled both the environment and the “gods” the Egyptians thought produced the environment and that God could do with it/them whatever he wills? • More weaknesses of Hort’s thesis: • The biblical account describes the plagues as the result of commands given by Moses and Aaron and as commencing instantaneously by a gesture rather than coming gradually with the seasons. • The extremity of the plagues goes beyond what mere flooding of the Nile, no matter how unprecedented, would justify (e.g., the frogs “covered the land” according to 8:6; the very dust of the ground turns into biting insects according to 8:17). • Since the Egyptian magicians could and did duplicate the phenomena of the first two plagues of blood and frogs, they obviously were reacting to what they and Pharaoh perceived as “magic” on the part of Moses and Aaron—not some gradually occurring environmental phenomenon already well known to them as natives of Egypt.

16. Excursus: Were the Plagues Merely Natural Events? • In other words, if native Egyptian magicians could tell that the plagues were not natural phenomena, why should moderns, a millennium and a half later, try to overrule the opinion of observers on site at the time? • Add that the magicians saw the third, irreproducible plague as “the finger of God” (8:19) rather than as something that normally happens in Egypt, even if on a lesser scale. • The magician’s ability to duplicate the plagues failed completely thereafter, and they gave up trying to duplicate what obviously was something beyond their experience. • Pharaoh’s reactions to each plague suggest genuine surprise and dismay—hardly likely if the plagues were merely normal environmental phenomena experienced to a severe degree. • The plagues differentially affected the Egyptians but left the Israelites unscathed, so that natural phenomena were respecting political-ethnic boundaries, something hardly explained by recourse to the outworkings of mere natural processes. • Most significantly, the final plague, that of the death of the firstborn, has no natural explanation at all. • It was a special judgment of God (how could any natural disease strike only firstborn children and not harm others?) and is so obviously so that because of it Pharaoh insisted on the exodus of the Israelites in sudden and direct contrast to the determined prior policy not to let them go.

17. Excursus: Were the Plagues Merely Natural Events? • The view that best takes account of all the data may be summarized as follows: • The first nine plagues were special, divinely produced manifestations of God’s sovereignty over Egypt—its king, its people, its environment, and its gods—accomplished by imitations on a huge and destructive scale of phenomena thought by the Egyptians to be the province of their gods. • God turned things believed to be the specialty of “the gods of Egypt” against the Egyptians, and showed himself in control of all events and powers they would have attributed to the objects of their faith. • The tenth plague stood apart from the first nine as a decisive imposition of the death penalty on the nation that tried to enslave and mortally oppress God’s “firstborn son.” Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, vol. 2, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 105–182.