Exodus: The Lord and His PilgrimsSample

Evidence but no eyes

In ancient Egyptian theology, the creator ‘god’, Khnum, took a wife, a ‘goddess’, who had a frog’s head! What he created, she endowed with life. The second plague is a direct challenge to this belief. The ‘divine’ Nile, itself the basis of Egypt’s life, becomes the source of death (v. 13). Then the limitations of false religion are exposed: the magicians can replicate this plague but they cannot stem or remedy it (v. 7). Pharaoh, who did not know ‘the Lord’ (5:2) is obliged to recognise Yahweh and asks Moses to pray to him that the frogs are taken away (8:8). Moses states that this will happen as final evidence that there is no God like Yahweh (v. 10). Thus the plague ends, yet not with the frogs hopping back into the Nile (cf. 10:19), but in their death. Previously the elders had complained Moses made them stink (5:21), but now it is Egypt that stinks (v. 14). 

Like all the plagues, the plague of frogs can be seen as a hurtful exercise of power. Really, though, it is a convincing demonstration of who the true God is, and of his mercy in answer to prayer. Pharaoh’s heart hardening (v. 15) is a wilful resistance to this truth (cf. Rom. 1:20–24, 28). 

The third plague (vv. 16–19), like the sixth (9:8–12) and the ninth (10:21– 29), comes unannounced to Pharaoh, and is a direct response to his heart hardening (8:15; 9:7; 10:20). The Lord throws down a direct challenge: ‘My people … serve Me’ (8:1). Pharaoh is unwilling to yield dominance. The combat of the two begun, the third plague therefore is a direct warning to Pharaoh to submit and obey. 

It is not certain quite what the third plague was. The word has been translated gnats, lice, mosquitoes, maggots and sand flies. Certainly the unpleasantness is gruesome to imagine. This plague also marks the limit of the magicians’ powers: this time, still unable to limit or remedy it, they cannot even replicate it, and so they acknowledge that they are faced by a superior power (v. 19). But their readiness to cry ‘enough’ collides with the increasingly impervious heart of their king (v. 19). Wrong choices do that: they bring the human will closer and closer to the point of no return where the power of choice itself has died.

Reflection

Ponder the words of this hymn:

‘Take my will, and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine. Take my heart, it is thine own; it shall be thy royal throne.’ 

(Frances Havergal, ‘Take my life’)