Once I found an earwig in my teacup, after I had drunk the tea. My kids thought that was hilarious. One time I felt the car slip sideways as we drove over a sudden thousand small frogs hopping across the highway. No one was laughing. I won’t mention our onetime Alabama apartment with wall to wall, floor to ceiling roaches. Tame stuff, of course, compared to stories I know some of you could tell. But rivers of blood? Frogs in your bed? Gnats and flies and locusts, dead goats and boils and hail? Blek. Thick darkness and death in every house? Get me outta here!

What was the point of the ten horrible plagues described in Exodus 7-12? In one of the most bizarre of the Bible stories, it’s easy to miss God’s intent among all the gory details.

Exodus 7:2 says up front that God’s first purpose was to get Pharaoh to let the Israelites go from his land. He could, of course, have accomplished this in any number of ways, say by skipping right to the tenth plague. But He didn’t. He had another goal, too.

In Exodus 7:17 God tells Moses to say to Pharaoh, “Here is how you will know that I am Yahweh. Watch.” Then Aaron stretched out his staff and turned all the water in Egypt to blood. You would think this would make an impression on a national leader, make him consider what might be a wise and politick response. But those kings. They never want to step down from the throne and yield to anybody, even God. Pharaoh, who was sort of considered to be a god himself, resisted mightily. He hardened his heart against acknowledging Yahweh, Creator of heaven and earth.

Consequently, God proceeded to trash whole categories of Egyptian gods. Several went down with the polluting of the Nile: Apis, Isis, Khnum and others were associated with the river. The second plague (frogs in your bed, and everywhere else) took out Heqet, the frog-headed goddess of birth. The gnats (or possibly mosquitoes or lice) of plague three could have been aimed at the ultra-pure Egyptian priests, or at Set, god of the desert, according to the Bible Knowledge Commentary.

If you Google “ten plagues and Egyptian gods” you’ll get pages of opinions on which gods which plagues were aimed at. Some of the search results will be kooky, of course, so watch that. The point is, the Egyptians worshiped dozens of gods—many represented by animals—gods in charge of fertility, disease, healing, crops, storms, and so on. God showed His sovereignty over every category in dramatic fashion. He is I AM. The rest were disgusting idols.

After the gnats came flies, the death of Egyptian (but not Israelite) livestock, and boils. The seventh plague, hail, destroyed the flax and barley crops, so we know it happened in January. The eighth plague of locusts would have arrived via the east winds of March or April.

The ninth plague was “a darkness to be felt.” Don’t know about you, but that creeps me out. Again, this plague affected the Egyptians, but not the Israelite neighborhoods. Pharaoh’s resolve appeared, falsely, to be weakening at this point, because he said they could go, as long as they left their livestock behind. Moses said no. Now after Pharaoh had been hardening his heart against Moses and against God’s will for probably several months, we finally read in 10:27 that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. There can’t have been much squishiness left, but God completed the job. It was time to finish this.

Picture Egypt at this point. Their river had been polluted, and all its fish killed. Perhaps it still stank months later. I don’t know how long it would take great heaps of dead frogs to decay and stop stinking. Everyone had been pestered by flies or mosquitoes at best, or infested with lice. All were afflicted with painful and disgusting boils. Most of their livestock had been wiped out by disease, then replacement animals had largely been killed by hail. The hail had also killed whatever people had been caught outside, and destroyed critical food crops, as well as broken all the trees and plants. Then locusts moved in and ate up whatever pitiful remnant of greenery was left. It must have looked like a war zone after months of bombing. The Egyptians surely were stunned and despairing. Surely they were cursing Pharaoh behind his back for his stubborn refusal to let the Israelites go!

Chapters eleven and twelve are devoted to a detailed description of the tenth and final plague: death of the firstborn. The Israelites were given explicit instructions on how to protect themselves from this devastating plague. They followed them to the letter and lost not a single person. However, as Exodus 12:29-30 says, “At midnight Yahweh struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon....there was not a house where someone was not dead.”

If that wouldn’t break the spirit of a nation, I don’t know what would. Truly, Egypt hasn’t recovered its former glory to this day. Pharaoh finally urged the Israelites to “go out from among my people…take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”

God’s first purpose, the release of His people from bondage in Egypt, had been accomplished. His sovereignty over all creation, and His superiority over Egypt’s many “gods” had been amply demonstrated. Believing and obeying the true God was an individual decision for each Egyptian to make, just as it is today. Pharaoh was soon backpedaling on his decision to let the slaves go, but Scripture does record that a mixed multitude left Egypt with the Israelites. Many were apparently glad to leave powerless idols behind and brave enough to follow a real but unknown God out into the desert, on to wherever He might lead them from there.

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