Small Group Week 21 The Plagues

Exodus Week 22 Plagues of Egypt

Q.  Can we name the 10 plaques God visited on the Egyptians?

1.  The Nile river turned into blood

2.  Frogs

3.  Gnats

4.  Stinging insects

5.  Pestilence

6.  Boils

7.  Hail

8.  Locusts

9.  Darkness

10.Death of firstborn

Plagues as Polemic

-  Plagues are answer to Pharoah’s question, “Who is YHWH that I should obey His voice and let Israel go?  I do not know YHWH.”

-  However, as we will see it is not only that, but also a direct assault on the entire belief system of the Egyptians.    We know that from Exodus 10:2 which describes God’s judgment as a mockery.  

-  The plagues are actually directed against against particular deities.  Numbers 33:4 tells us as much:

“While the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom YHWH had struck down among them.  On their gods also YHWH executed judgment.”

-  Egypt was the greatest superpower of the day.  This was right at the glory days of the New Kingdom of Egypt during the 18th dynasty.   The time period is called the Armana period because of a group of letters found in the Egyptian city of Armana that contains diplomatic correspondence between all the major kingdoms of the time.  They tell us a lot about covenants and diplomacy and also show us the power of Egypt.  

-  The reason Egypt was a such a great civilization was because of the Nile river.  Every year the Nile flooded and the inundation of the waters brought rich soil down from the mountains of Ethiopia creating an incredibly fertile environment to grow crops.  This was a regular occurrence that happened like clockwork.  It created a very ordered, stable society.  

The Concept of Ma’at

-  This order and regularity was personified in the term ma’at.  Ma’at represented the harmony and order of the universe.  It was foundational to Egyptian thought.  Ma’at was the equilibrium of the universe, it held the universe together, and it was essential for the maintenance of creation.  It is the opposite of chaos. 

-  Ma’at was not just a philosophical concept, it was also practical.  Egyptians had to preserve ma’at and adhere to its order.  Their practices were designed to be in conformity to ma’at.      

-  The supreme god Ra was thought to regulate the universe and the Pharaoh as his -high priest maintained ma’at through the performance of a series of rituals. So all of society from the common people to the Pharaoh participated in the maintenance of ma’at.   

-  The ten plagues overturn ma’at and the result is chaos.  This was a direct challenge to Pharaoh ability to maintain ma’at.  

Decreation

-  Two weeks ago we noted the similarity between the fist chapter of Exodus and Genesis.  

-  Genesis presents YHWH as the creator God.  The plagues show YHWH reversing the created order and returning to the formlessness and void of the original creation.  In the creation story there is bounding but many of the plagues are creation run amok.

-  Instead of the ordering of water we have it mixed with blood.  Instead of the creation of crops we have the destruction of crops.  Instead of the creation of animal life we have the death of animal life.  Instead of light we have darkness.  In some instances we have an overabundance of creation such as the frogs, the biting insects, the swarming insects, and the locusts.

- Genesis 1:11 says “let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees.”  Exodus 9:18-10:20 uses these same categories to describe the destruction by the locusts and hail.  

The Ten Plagues

-  The Nile was personified as a god called Hapi.  The Nile and its orderly operations were the source of life for Egyptians.  This is a quote from the Hymn to the Nile, it dates around 2000 B.C.:

Men exalt him like the cycle of the gods, they dread him who creates the heat, even him who has made his son the universal master in order to give prosperity to Egypt. Come (and) prosper! Come (and) prosper! O Nile, come (and) prosper! O you who make men to live through his flocks and his flocks through his orchards! Come (and) prosper, come, O Nile, come (and) prosper!

-  God turning the Nile into blood changed their source of life into a symbol of death with the resulting death of fish and other life.  Fish were a chief staple of the Egyptian diet.  

-  Not only is the god Hapi challenged by this plague but also ma’at which was seen as under the care of the Pharaoh.  In this first plague God strikes at the heart of Egyptian society and the regularity it depended upon as well as its leader.

-  The next plague brought a multitude of frogs.  The Egyptian had a fertility goddess named Heqet that is pictured as a frog.  She controls the multiplication of the frogs by protecting the frog-eating crocodile.  Heqet was a fertility goddess but one who held fertility in check. YHWH shows His greater power by demonstrating fertility run amok.  

-  The biting and swarming insects further reinforce this point that YHWH is the true creator and bringer of fertility.  The Egyptian had a beetle God called Kheper that represented creation.  The beetle pushed a ball of dung and new beetles emerged from this dung.  Once again we see this process out of control in the insect world.  

-  The Nile brought grain in a surplus than other ancient near eastern societies could only dream about.  Excess grain provided for livestock which became a great source of wealth for Egyptians.  Now that source of wealth is obliterated in an instant.

-  Not only was livestock valuable the bull cult of Apis was very widespread and bulls were worshipped as a symbol of potency and vitality.  In addition the goddess of joy and motherhood Hathor was viewed as a cow.  There was no more joy in Egypt.

-  The Egyptians were also the most advanced civilization in terms of medicine.  Ailments were viewed as judgment from the gods.  Only the power of gods and magic could combat these boils.  Their god of healing, Imhotep, had no answer to this plague.  

-  Hail was a direct assault against their sky god Nut.  Her role is to separate the world from the chaos that existed outside.  The hail represented a failure of her work.  The passage mentions that it was not just hail but also fire.  Note that it killed the barley.  This was serious because those are the necessary ingredients for beer.  It is probably no mistake then that this plague led Pharaoh to admit that he had sinned.

-  Anything left from the hail was now eaten by locusts.  Locusts are not a different variety of grasshopper, they are actually an abnormal increase in the number of grasshoppers.  They completely devastated the Egyptian food supply.  The grain harvest was protected by the god Neper.  

-  Darkness was probably incredibly scary for the Egyptians since their chief deity was the sun god Ra.  Here is an excerpt from the Hymn to Amon-Ra which dates to the 18th dynasty which was around the time of Moses:

The goodly beloved youth to whom the gods give praise,

Who made what is below and what is above,

Who illuminated the Two Lands

And crosses the heavens in peace:

The King of Upper and Lower Egypt; Ra, the triumphant

Chief of the Two Lands,

Great of strength and lord of reverence,

The chief one, who made the entire earth.

More distinguished than nay other god.

-  I am going to read an excerpt from a work called “The Prophecy of Neferty.”  This text is set during the reign of Snofru in the 4th dynasty so around 2400 B.C. but was written during the 12 dynasty 1900-1700 which would have been the time of Joseph.  It describes the chaos that occurred at the end of Old Kingdom and before the start of the Middle Kingdom.  Its basically the Egyptian nightmare:

The land is destroyed without any care for it, any to speak up or make lament.  What will become of this land.  The sun disc is concealed, and will not shine for the people to see, and none can live, when the clouds are covered. 

Weighing of Pharaoh’s Heart

- There is something else weird about the story of the 10 plagues.  At various points the text states that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.  This leads to all sorts of questions about free will and God’s sovereignty.  What are we to make of this?

-  I think it actually has very little to say about this subject.  Just as God is mocking the Egyptians gods, He is also showing the insignificance of the Pharaoh by making him look like no more than a puppet.  

-  In Egyptian though the heart was the spiritual center of the self and the essence of a person.  The heart thus played an important part of the after life.

-  The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which also dates from the time of Moses, describes the judgment that occurs in the after life.  

-  Anubis the jackal headed god of the dead weighs the heart on a scale.  The heart is weight against ma’at.  If the heart is light then the person is introduced to Osiris and is taken to the field of reeds.  If the heart is too heavy, the person is devoured by a crocodile named Amemit.

-  By making Pharaoh’s heart heavy YHWH was showing His power over Pharaoh.  Also by announcing the result repeatedly, YHWH is showing that He is the judge and declaring Pharaoh unworthy.  

-  The heart of Ra and Horus were thought of as sovereign over the whole universe.  Since Pharaoh was an incarnation of Ra and Horus, he was seen as sovereign over creation.  YHWH is proving that this is not true, in fact Pharaoh’s very essence is nothing but a plaything for YHWH. 

Current Gods

-  A lot of times we think of God as only acting in the past.  However, I think God is still mocking and overturning false gods.  The difference is we have different gods than the Egyptians.

Q.  What are the gods of our civilization?

Q.  How do we see God mocking and overturning them?