Exodus 09

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:20utc

Fifth Plague - The Plague among Livestock 9:1-7

Again, Moses and Aaron were sent to Pharaoh with the demand to let the people of Israel go. The punishment for disobeying was a fatal sickness among the Egyptians' livestock. The KJV uses the word "murrain" which Webster describes as a fatal pestilence among cattle. Adam Clarke says about the sickness: "The murrain is a very contagious disease among cattle, the symptoms of which are a hanging down and swelling of the head, abundance of gum in the eyes, rattling in the throat, difficulty of breathing, palpitation of the heart, staggering, a hot breath, and a shining tongue; which symptoms prove that a general inflammation has taken place. The original word 'deber' is variously translated. The Septuagint has 'death'; the Vulgate has 'pestis', a 'plague' or 'pestilence.' "

Obviously the disease was fatal. It decimated the domestic animal of the Egyptians. The phrase: "All the livestock of the Egyptians died," should be understood to mean that all the animals that died belonged to the Egyptians, since we still find cattle in the next plague.

This is the first time the horse is mentioned in the Bible. The Pulpit Commentary says: "Horses, which had been unknown prior to the Hyksos invasion, and which consequently do not appear in the list of animals presented to Abraham (Gen. xii. 16), first became common under the eighteenth dynasty, when they seem to have been employed exclusively in war. Their use for agricultural purposes, which is perhaps here indicated, was not till later."

Contagious, fatal diseases among animals like this one, were not uncommon in Egypt. The miraculous feature of this plague was not the disease but the timing and the fact that the cattle belonging to the Israelites remained untouched. Pharaoh sent a fact-finding committee to Goshen to investigate, but their report failed to make an impression upon his majesty. Now he was beyond the point where mere facts would make him change his mind. This brought him to the point of no return. From now on we will read the phrase: "But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron" (vs. 12). We find the other references in the chapters 10:20,27; 11:10, and 14:8.

Sixth Plague - The Boils 9:8-12.

Just as the dust was a most unlikely vehicle to produce gnats, so soot does not produce boils. Being the product of the fire in the furnace, it tends to be antiseptic. God used these sterile means to bring about the plagues.

Moses appeared again before Pharaoh, obviously in the open air, not inside the palace. It does not seem likely that Pharaoh was on his way to take his bath in the river, since the scene takes place in the vicinity of a furnace. We are not told what kind of furnace this was, but it could very likely be one of the places where the Israelites had to bake the bricks, a brick-kiln. This is what the Hebrew word kibshon means. We could, therefore, picture the king on an inspection tour, looking at the Hebrew slaves at their labor. If this was the scene, the means by which this plague of boils was produced has symbolic significance. No pun intended, but the furnace backfired. Thus far the result of slave labor had been pure gain for Egypt; now it became evident that Israel's treatment by the Egyptians was a festering sore. The reality of the corruption of Egyptian affluence is shown.

The seventeenth century history of Western Europe has been called "The Golden Age." Holland was one of the richest nations at this time, before it was overshadowed by England. The colonies that later became the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, brought wealth and affluence. Even more the slave trade fattened the Dutch wallets. Few people realize, even in retrospect, that what is called "The Golden Age" was a festering sore. Western Europe's Golden Century was the sixteenth centuries when Christians were burned at the stake for reading the Bible!

Nowhere is this corruption of affluence better pictured than in Revelation where John shows us the fall of Babylon, the epitome of world trade and affluence. At the destruction of the city we read: "The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more; Cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; Cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men."[ 1 ]

So the soot spread as a fine dust over the land of Egypt, like the fall-out of a volcano. Where the particles came upon the body of men or animals, festering boils broke out. One boil is enough to make the whole body sick and the word is used here in the plural. This plague hurt the Egyptians more than any of the previous plagues.

Satan knew the effect a boil would have on the human body. That is why, in dealing with Job, he says to God: "Skin for skin! … A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face."[ 2 ] And vs. 7 tells us: "So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head."[ 3 ] Satan is a master in manipulating for destructive purposes the defense mechanism God built into every living being. But here God initiated the plague and allowed the enemy to torture his victims.

Those who were the enemy's emissaries seem to suffer the most. We read that "the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians" (vs. 11). At this point they faded out of the picture. They had been present from the beginning. When Moses and Aaron first appeared before Pharaoh, they were there and changed their staffs into snakes also. They added to the misery of the first three plague by duplicating them, but they had to acknowledge defeat at the fourth one. They could not call up the gnats.

"But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses" (vs. 12). The magicians had been Pharaoh's initial support in the decision to ignore the Word of the Lord. When they produced the same miracles and plagues that Moses and Aaron caused, Pharaoh could reasonably say that there was no difference between the power of YHWH and other supernatural forces. But at the fourth plague, the magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God" (Ch. 8:19). It is true that initially Pharaoh could claim ignorance. When he said, "Who is YHWH?" he could be considered an honest agnostic. But the layers of supposed honesty were slowly stripped from his heart and mind. Pharaoh had chosen to be in the enemy camp and to remain there, not on the basis of available facts, but because he chose to remain.

The hardening of Pharaoh's heart has been a point of hot theological debate ever since theology existed. The apostle Paul seems to add more to the problem than to explain it when he says: "For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: 'I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.' Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: 'Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?' But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? 'Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath prepared for destruction?"[ 4 ]

The mystery of man's freedom and God's predestination will never be solved on this side of time and space. The limited dimension that are accessible to our finite minds do not permit us to probe the depths of it. We know, though, that man is not a robot and that God has not created man as a pre-programmed entity. Man's choice is real, although diseased. As we have seen already, the book of Exodus clearly states that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart started as an act of free choice. God made it irrevocable at a certain point, and He used it to His glory, but Pharaoh will never be able to stand before the throne of God and accuse God that He had been unrighteous. Pharaoh's heart never belonged to God; it was his own and he had surrendered it to the devil. The Pulpit Commentary says that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart was "the natural effect upon his soul under God's moral government of those acts which he willfully and wrongfully committed."

The Seventh Plague- Hail ch. 9:13-35.

This seventh plague was a strange mixture of grace and punishment. As always, the fact that God announced punishment was an act of grace. God did not threaten in a sadistic fashion, so that He might enjoy the reaction of fear among the people. His aim was repentance and restoration.

This seventh plague was, next to the tenth, the most severe of all punishments that afflicted the country. A hail storm that broke every record in the history of the country was announced. God reminded Pharaoh of the mild pressure that was exerted upon him initially and to which he did not respond. The pressure increased with plagues that were annoying, then dangerous, but never fatal. Obviously, Pharaoh had received a clear answer to his first question: "Who is the LORD?" but he refused to surrender.

God revealed Himself in this plague at the same time as the tender, loving God, who yearns to redeem His creatures and as the living God in whose hands it is dreadful to fall.[ 5 ] Whereas the previous plagues had been moderate demonstrations of God's power, the seventh one reveals God's full force. Yet God's omnipotence is covered up in this demonstration so that Pharaoh's limited mind might be able to grasp some of the immensity of it. The hail storm was only a very limited expression of God's wrath. In the book of Revelation, we get a clearer picture of people's reaction to the full demonstration of God's anger. "They [the earth's population] called to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!' " "Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them."[ 6 ] If the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki could wipe out the population of two cities in seconds, God would not need a sickness that would last several weeks to wipe a nation off the earth. But this was language that a mere man like Pharaoh should be able to understand.

Another point of wonder is God's identification of Himself with the people of Israel. In vs. 17 God says: "You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go." In the very same way Jesus identified Himself with the Christians of the early church when He said to Paul on the road to Damascus: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,"[ 7 ] And in Matthew Jesus says: "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."[ 8 ]

Moses found Pharaoh at the usual time and probably at the same place, on his way to the River Nile for the ceremonial bath. Pharaoh was an early riser. The plague that was announced was an unusual phenomenon in Egypt. Frogs had been in the river before, and gnats and flies were not uncommon. People have had boils for centuries, whether in Egypt or elsewhere in the world. But rain was a rarity in Egypt. The country obtained its fertility from the flooding of the Nile, not from rainy seasons. Hail was even more unusual, since Egypt is only about 30 degrees north of the Equator. The omnipotent God sent a hail storm that broke all the records in Egyptian history. Thus Egypt received a foretaste of the hail storm that will come upon the earth at the end of time, such as is described by John in Revelation: "From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible."[ 9 ]

The announcement of the plague and the description of it is the lengthiest, with the exception of the last plague. God announced this plague to Pharaoh as "the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people." And, yet, we know that this hail storm was nothing in comparison with the omnipotence of God. The destruction of the country and its harvest was not even a total one. We read in vs. 31 and 32, "The flax and barley were destroyed, since the barley had headed and the flax was in bloom. The wheat and spelt, however, were not destroyed, because they ripen later." Of the food for human consumption only the barley was destroyed. This plague did not necessarily mean famine.

Also the advice to bring cattle and servants inside before the storm tempered the impact considerably, at least for those who paid attention to the Word of God.

God still reveals Himself as "the LORD, the God of the Hebrews." But the implication of this plague is that God is not a local deity or a god whose domain is limited to one particular group of people. The plague gave a demonstration of the fact that there is no one like YHWH in all the earth (vs. 14). And in vs. 29 Moses says: "When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the LORD. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail, so you may know that the earth is the LORD's." After this plague Pharaoh had the acknowledge that the LORD was right and he was wrong. (vs. 27). This does not mean, however, that the king had a change of heart. Not only did he immediately break his promise, but he continued to harden himself. Knowledge alone does not change the heart.

The book of Psalms describes this plague at several places: "He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet. He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning."[ 10 ] And: "He turned their rain into hail, with lightning throughout their land."[ 11 ]

Vs. 16 presents a theological problem in that it makes it sound as if God created an evil man for the only reason that God might be made out good. We read: "But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Paul quotesd this verse in Romans: "For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: 'I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.' "[ 12 ] Paul does not try to explain the problem or even to justify God in it. He simply says that mere man cannot argue with God. This does not mean, of course, that we would not be allowed to think about it.

It is obvious that God did not create evil. Pharaoh was not pre-programmed in the sense that he had no moral choices. Initially, he was the subject of God's redeeming love, which he adamantly rejected. That is why Paul, in the same chapter of Romans refutes the argument that man has no choice. In vs. 19 and 20 he says: "One of you will say to me: 'Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?' But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? 'Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ''Why did you make me like this?'' ' "

The important word in vs. 16 is "raised up." If we interpret this as if God pulled Pharaoh to his feet and told him to stand there so He could pound on him, we run into problems. But if we understand this to mean that Pharaoh stood up against God, as we know he did, and that God allowed him to remain standing, most of the moral and theological implications fade away. The context of this whole section of Exodus corroborates this viewpoint.

We know that God did not create man for sin but for His glory. Man was created to acknowledge God, to love Him and to praise Him. We should all be able to take this verse, "But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth," in a personal and positive way, by submitting to God. The fact remains that if we resist, God's glory will in no way diminish, but He will be glorified at our expense.

Adam Clarke's comment on this portion is interesting. We quote: "Thus God gave this impious king to know that it was in consequence of His especial providence that both he and his people had not been already destroyed by means of the past plagues; but God had preserved him for this very purpose, that He might have a further opportunity of manifesting that He, Jehovah, was the only true God for the full conviction of both the Hebrews and the Egyptians, that the former might follow and the latter fear before Him. Judicious critics of almost all creeds have agreed to translate the original as above, a translation which it not only can bear but requires, and which is in strict conformity to both the Septuagint and the Targum. Neither the Hebrew, 'I have caused thee to stand'; nor the apostle's translation of it, Rom. ix. 17, 'I have raised thee'; nor that of the Septuagint, 'On this account art thou preserved,' namely, in the past plagues, can put on the words by certain commentators, namely, 'That God ordained or appointed Pharaoh from all eternity, by certain means, to this end; that He made him to exist in time; that He raised him to the throne; promoted him to that high honor and dignity; that He preserved him, and did not cut him off as yet; that He strengthened and hardened his heart; irritated, provoked, and stirred him up against His people Israel, in his obstinacy and rebellion; all which was done to show in him His power in destroying him in the Red Sea. The sum of which is, that this man was raised up by God in every sense for God to show His power in his destruction.' So man speaks; thus God hath not spoken."

The storm must have been an awesome demonstration of God's majesty. Thunder and lightning have caused men to change their minds throughout the history of the world. Martin Luther made the decision to enter the monastery instead of studying law, during a sever thunderstorm. This storm squeezes the confession of sin out of Pharaoh. In vs. 27 we read: "Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron. 'This time I have sinned,' he said to them. 'The LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.' "

Some interpret the lightning as balls of electricity that shot back and forth over the surface of the earth. Where the NIV says: "lightning flashed down to the ground," the KJV translates it with: "the fire ran along upon the ground" (vs. 23). It must have been a fearful scene. Also it was not a passing storm, but it must have hung over Egypt for several hours – it was worse than a bombardment during a modern war, causing death and destruction throughout the country.

[ 1 ] Rev. 18:11-13

[ 2 ] Job 2:4,5

[ 3 ] Job 2:7

[ 4 ] Rom. 9:15-22

[ 5 ] Hebr. 10:31

[ 6 ] Rev. 6:16; 20:11

[ 7 ] Acts 9:5

[ 8 ] Matt. 25:40

[ 9 ] Rev. 16:21

[ 10 ] Ps.78:47,48

[ 11 ] Ps. 105:32

[ 12 ] Rom. 9:17