Bible Summary:

God sends Moses and Aaron to speak to the king of Egypt several times with successively harsher punishments against the Egyptians, but the king is very stubborn and will not let the Israelites leave to worship God in the desert. The punishments are:

• Aaron makes a snake with his walking stick. The king’s magicians do the same, but Aaron has his snake eat theirs.
• Aaron turns the Nile River into blood. All the fish die and begin to stink. The king’s magicians also turn water red so he refuses to listen to Moses.
• Seven days later God sends a plague of frogs, but the magicians make frogs come on land too. The king asks Moses and Aaron to pray the frogs away. The next day all the frogs die and the Egyptians pile them in heaps, but the king becomes stubborn again.
• God sends a plague of gnats, but this time the magicians fail to match His power. The king still remains stubborn.
• God sends a plague of flies and all of Egypt is brought to ruin, except for the land of Goshen where the Israelites live. The king tells Moses to sacrifice animals to their God right there. Moses rejects him saying the Egyptians would be offended and stone them to death, so they must travel three days into the desert to worship God. The king agrees but reneges after the flies are gone.
• God sends terrible disease on the Egyptian animals and many die, but He spares the Israelite animals. The king still remains stubborn.
• God sends ash that creates boils on the Egyptians. The magicians do not even show up this time since they are covered in boils. The king still will not listen to Moses about releasing the Israelites.
• God sends a heavy hailstorm on Egypt but spares the Israelites in Goshen. The king agrees to set them free, that is, until the hail stops.
• Moses warns the king of impending locusts. The king’s officials complain to him about letting the Israelites go since Egypt is already in ruin. The king only agrees to let the men leave to worship, so Moses leaves the king and God brings on the locust to eat all the remaining plants. The king asks Moses to take away the locust but again will not let the Israelites go.
• Then, God sends darkness over Egypt for three days, though the Israelites have light. The king now agrees to allow the people to leave, but not their animals, so Moses asks the king to provide animals for sacrifice. The king becomes angry and sends Moses away with a warning that he will die if he shows up again.

My Thoughts:

Nature’s Role with the Israelites: It sounds like nature got the Israelites into slavery, due to the seven-year famine of Joseph’s time, and nature got them out. These chapters read like a huge volcano erupted near Egypt, which could explain the blood red river and dead fish, followed by gnats and flies, the death of the animals from drinking the diseased water, boils on the people from ash, and even the hail as the volcanic emission caused dramatic weather changes.

Read about similar results from Mount Tambora exploding in Indonesia in 1815 and the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816 from Wikipedia.  Makes you pause at how destructive nature can be.

Justice: It is easy to get on the side of the Israelites in this story since they had been in bondage for hundreds of years, but it is hard to believe that God would kill so many innocent Egyptians because of their tyrannical, unbending king. This is why I am leaning towards the natural disaster explanation, though I have not searched for any historical proof of this theory.