The Calamities

Have you ever felt as though God was a million miles away? Perhaps you are wrestling with some problem in your life. You’ve prayed for help, but God isn’t answering. It seems that your prayers go no further than the ceiling. You wonder if God hears your prayers, why doesn’t He answer?

The Israelites felt precisely this way in Egypt. They had been there for more than four hundred years. Although they were not originally the slaves of the Egyptians, for as long as any of them could remember, they had been in bondage. They must have cried out to God for deliverance countless times, but received no answer. As the years wore on, some of the Israelites began to conclude that their God was not powerful enough to save them. So they began to worship the gods of Egypt. After all, the Egyptians who served those gods were the masters and they were the slaves.

This was how we find them when Moses came before Pharaoh to demand that he let them go. We know from what we have studied earlier that Pharaoh was not about to let the Israelites go. As the representative of Satan, he felt that he had the upper hand. He had had the children of God in bondage for hundreds of years, and there didn’t seem to be any reason why he should let them go now.

But now was the time that God had decided upon, and when God decides it is time to do something, no one can stand in His way. He said to Moses…

Exodus 6:1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.”

The plagues were a demonstration of God’s power and authority. Each plague struck directly at some aspect of the power and authority of the Egyptian false gods. Each plague undermined Satan’s claim to authority over the people of Egypt. God said that it was His intention that, through these plagues, the Egyptians would come to know that the God of Israel was the one true God.

Exodus 7:5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”

The Bible shows us that many of the Egyptians, even some of pharaoh’s high officials, became believers and began to fear God. But Pharaoh did not. He hardened his heart continually and refused to do what God was telling him to do through Moses.

But the plagues had another purpose as well. The plagues were not only an object lesson for the Egyptian people. They were an object lesson for the Hebrews also. The plagues were to teach the children of Israel who God was.

Exodus 6:7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

You see, they didn’t really know Him very well. Four hundred years of slavery in Egypt had made them forget how powerful He was. Many of the Israelites must have thought that their God was powerless, because here they were in bondage all these years, and He hadn’t been able to deliver them.

So the Israelites needed to know that God was an all-powerful God if they were going to follow Him out of Egypt and into the desert. They needed to know that God was capable of delivering them and keeping them safe. That is why, as the plagues unfolded in Egypt, we read that God spared Israel from many of them. In the cases of the most severe plagues, the area of Egypt where the Hebrews lived was not affected. And that was to prove to the Hebrews that God had his hand of protection upon them.

But God did allow some of the first plagues to touch the Hebrews. They were not delivered from the water turning to blood, or the frogs, or the lice, or the flies. Why not? Because many of the Hebrews needed some convincing that it was time for them to leave Egypt. Many of them thought they’d rather stay in Egypt than venture out into the unknown. You know how people are. Sometimes you think that the evil you know is better than the evil you don’t know. So God allowed his people to experience just how bad life could be in Egypt in order to change their minds. After going through these first few plagues, the Israelites were ready to leave!

1. The Waters of Egypt Turn to Blood 7:14-25

I have told you in previous weeks about how important the Nile River was to the Egyptians. In fact, to this day, the Nile River defines the whole country of Egypt. If you could see a satellite photo of the land of Egypt, you would see that Egypt is nothing more than a green ribbon on a brown background. The only fertile ground in Egypt is along the Nile River. The rest of the country is an arid desert. So all of the people of Egypt live along the banks of the Nile. There is no other country in the world quite like it geographically.

In ancient times, the Egyptians worshiped the Nile. For them it was life itself. They regarded the Nile as the bloodstream of Isis, the goddess of fertility. They would regularly have great religious ceremonies on the banks of the Nile, with the pharaoh officiating.

It was at just such an occasion that Moses crashed the party, so to speak. He told pharaoh “You think the Nile is the lifeblood of Egypt? The bloodstream of Isis? Let’s see how you’ll like it when the God of Israel turns the river into blood!”

Now Bible scholars for centuries have been discussing what actually happened next. Did the Nile turn into real blood? What kind of blood was it? Human blood? Type A or B? Animal blood? While I have no doubt that God could turn the Nile River into real blood if He wanted to, I would suggest to you that this language is figurative language. It indicates that something terrible happened to the water to make it appear to be blood. The reason I say that is that 7:21 says that the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. The water of the Nile turned red and foul and undrinkable. It was still water, but it looked just like blood.

Now here is a fascinating thing. The Nile river has its source in the mountains of central Africa. In fact there are two major tributaries that flow into the Nile: the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The ancient Egyptians had no idea where the Nile came from. It was just there. They sailed upstream for several hundred miles, but the Nile river is over 4,000 miles long. It was only a hundred years ago that a missionary named David Livingston actually discovered the source of the Nile. Now the White Nile rises in Lake Victoria in central Africa, but the Blue Nile rises on the Abyssinian Plateau in Ethiopia. The earth on this plateau happens to be red in color.

Occasionally, the rainfall on this plateau will be very heavy and will wash into the Nile river a great deal of reddish sediment. This red sediment creates conditions that are ideal for the growth of micro-organisms called flagellates, which in turn take all the oxygen out of the water, killing the fish. The whole effect is similar to a red tide that we sometimes see in the ocean. The water smells bad, it is putrid and contaminated, and it looks just like blood.

What I am saying is that perhaps this is what happened in the first plague. God had ordained in his wisdom that at the perfect time, this unusual thing would take place. It was a natural phenomenon, but it was a miracle in that it occurred just when Moses said it would. The Egyptians could only get pure water by digging down into the soil along the banks of the river.

Exodus 7:24 And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.

That is because the sandy soil would act as a filter to purify the contaminated water of the river.

God was showing the Egyptians that they couldn’t depend on the Nile. If they wanted to drink, if they wanted to live, they would have to turn their backs on the Nile. The river goddess that they revered was powerless to stop this from happening. The God of Moses was more powerful than the goddess of the Nile.

It is interesting to note that although the Egyptian magicians could duplicate this feat of turning the water into blood, they could not reverse the process. In other words, they could not undo what God had done. They could only imitate it. That is because Satan’s power is a counterfeit power. He can counterfeit the works of God, but he cannot countermand them.

2. The Frogs 8:1-15

The Nile had become a putrid, stinking river full of dead fish. The next plague was a direct result of this. The frogs that lived on the river bank began to multiply greatly, perhaps because the animals that preyed on them had died. Frogs came up onto the land in incredible numbers and infested the homes and the palaces and the temples of Egypt. Look at 8:3-4

Exodus 8:3-4 The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials.’”

Now the irony of this is that the Egyptians worshiped the frog. They had a frog-headed goddess called Heqt, who they believed, helped women in childbirth. Now because the frog was sacred, the Egyptians would not kill frogs. It was as though God was saying “You like frogs? Here, have lots of them.”

Again, a natural phenomenon, but a miraculous one in that Moses predicted it and Moses stopped it. Pharaoh asked Moses to pray to the Lord to take away the frogs, and sure enough, that is what he did. The frogs all died at once. They were everywhere. The people piled them into heaps and, under the hot Egyptian sun, pretty soon the land reeked of them. Sounds pretty appealing doesn’t it?

The Gnats 8:16-19

The next plague came on Pharaoh without warning. Aaron struck the ground and the dust became gnats - again the Bible is using figurative language to indicate that the gnats were too numerous to number.

Where did the gnats come from? They probably came from the rotting frogs. Conditions were ideal for insects in such a situation.

The amazing thing about this third plague is that this was as far as the Egyptian magicians could go. They had duplicated the water into blood, they had duplicated the frogs, but they could not duplicate the gnats. And even they began to testify to Pharaoh that this was the finger of God. The finger of God is more powerful than the whole body of Satan and all his followers.

So the gnats (some translators prefer “lice”) came up on the men and animals of Egypt. But still Pharaoh wouldn’t hear of letting the Hebrews go. His heart was hard.

The Flies 8:20-32

The Egyptians not only worshiped frogs, they worshiped insects, too. One of their gods was named Uatchit, and he was represented by a fly. Moses confronted Pharaoh, again by the banks of the Nile, and promised an infestation of swarms of flies. We don’t know exactly what kind of flies they were, but there is a fly today in Egypt called the dog fly that gives people a nasty bite.

Now this plague introduced something new. This was the first plague that didn’t affect the Israelites.

Exodus 8:22-23 ”’ But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the Lord, am in this land. I will make a distinction between my people and your people. This miraculous sign will occur tomorrow.’”

There was something else new about this plague. Pharaoh had decided to change his response. He decided to offer Moses a compromise. He told Moses to go ahead and sacrifice to God, but do it here in Egypt.

This was the first of four compromises that pharaoh offered Moses. Satan is always willing to offer us a compromise if he can keep us from following God completely. “You can go ahead and worship God” he says, “but do it right here, do it in the world. You don’t have to turn your back on the world, you don’t have to be a different people. You can be a worldly Christian.”

This is, in effect, what pharaoh was telling Moses. “Stay right here and worship God.” But Moses wouldn’t have any of it.

Exodus 8:26-27 But Moses said, “That would not be right. The sacrifices we offer the Lord our God would be detestable to the Egyptians. And if we offer sacrifices that are detestable in their eyes, will they not stone us? We must take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, as he commands us.”

You cannot compromise with the world. The world is hostile to God, and is hostile to anyone who truly loves God and desires to serve Him.

But Pharaoh wasn’t through. In verse 28, he says

I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the Lord your God in the desert, but you must not go very far.

Satan may not be able to keep us from following God, but he can try to keep us from going very far. In many cases, he is successful. There are many Christians who have given their lives to Christ and begun to follow Jesus, but they haven’t followed him very far. They get a little ways out into the unknown where they have to trust God, and they just stop. They are like Lot’s wife who kept looking over her shoulder at what she left behind. They want to hold onto their old life. So they don’t progress in their Christian life; they don’t grow. They just stagnate. Even though they may have been Christians for a long time, they don’t show any signs of spiritual maturity, because they’re not willing to go all the way with Jesus.

5. Disease on the Livestock 9:1-7

As you know, the Egyptians worshiped a god named Apis, the bull. They looked upon the bull as being a symbol of fertility and life. They believed that Apis incarnated himself in the form of a real bull, which had certain distinctive markings. The priests would search all through the land of Egypt for this sacred bull with the special markings, and when they found him, there would be great rejoicing in the land. People would give each other presents to celebrate the finding of the Apis bull. The priests would dress this bull in the finest robes and put a special crown upon his head, and bring him to a temple, where he would spend the rest of his days in leisure, chewing his cud. When he died, they would embalm his body over a period of about 70 days and place him in an enormous coffin and bury him with all the pomp and splendor of Egypt. Then they would go out and search for another Apis bull.

This next plague was a direct assault on the power and authority of Apis. All the cattle of the Egyptians and the horses and the donkeys and the sheep and goats would be struck down. And there was nothing that Apis could do about it. But once again, the Lord spared the cattle of the Israelites.

Incidentally, the plague may have been the disease anthrax, which is fatal to cattle. It may have been spread by the flies and the gnats of the previous two plagues which had been biting all the people and cattle.

Once again, Pharaoh hardens his heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

The Boils 9:8-12

The next plague is really the first plague to affect the people of Egypt directly. Boils broke out on their bodies. This may have been a form of skin anthrax, which is not fatal to human beings, but causes extremely painful abcesses on the body.

Exodus 9:11 The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians.

Their powers had failed them, now their physical health failed them too. That had some pretty important implications. The result of this plague was that the whole false religious system of Egypt would have come grinding to a halt. The priests would have been unable to serve in the temples of Egypt because of the boils.

The Egyptians had strict rules for the purity of their priests. No priest could serve if he had any physical defect, any disease, any infection. Now all the priests would have been out of action. Ancient documents tell us that in Memphis, the leading city of the Egyptians, there were over 1,000 temples. They would have all had signs on the front doors that would have read “Closed until Further Notice” Of all the false gods and goddesses that the Egyptians worshiped, not one was able to prevent this epidemic of boils from happening.

7. The Hail 9:13-35

So far, all the plagues seemed to be a direct result of the first plague on the Nile River. The contaminated river caused the frogs to multiply; the rotting frog carcasses bred gnats and flies; those insects bit the cattle, giving them a disease that caused them to die, they also bit the people, giving them bacterial infections which caused painful boils.

But the seventh plague had nothing to do with the Nile river at all. God had thoroughly demonstrated his power over the Nile and the gods and goddesses associated with it. Now He would show His power in the sky. He brought a tremendous hail storm - the worst in Egypt’s long history. But he preceded it with a warning. Even in judgment, God is merciful.

Exodus 9:19 Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.’”

You may be wondering about the Egyptians having any cattle left after the plague on the cattle. Two possible explanations. Either the Egyptians purchased some healthy cattle from the Hebrews, whose cattle was spared, or some of the Egyptian cattle that had been sheltered indoors did not get the fatal disease of the fifth plague.

By now, after all this suffering, the plagues were making an impact on at least some of the Egyptians.

Exodus 9:20 Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside.

So the hail came everywhere in Egypt except Goshen, where the Israelites lived. But now Pharaoh takes a new tack.

Exodus 9:27 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.

This is wonderful. Moses must have thought “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Pharaoh repents. He admits that he has sinned. But was his repentance genuine? Only the good Lord can look into a man’s heart and know whether his profession of faith is genuine. But time will reveal it for what it is. Pharaoh’s actions after he makes this confession would be the evidence of whether he really meant it.

Exodus 9:34 When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts.

Pharaoh’s confession was a confession of convenience. When things were going badly for him, he was ready to acknowledge God. But when things improved, He hardened his heart again. There are many people like Pharaoh today.

The Locusts 10:1-20

Locusts are the scourge of the Middle East. Middle Eastern locusts look a lot like our grasshoppers, only bigger. But there’s a significant difference in their behavior from our cute little grasshoppers. Locusts like to be together. Boy, do they like to be together! They gather together in swarms which become so large they boggle the mind. In 1889, we have records of a locust swarm which appeared over the Red Sea which was estimated to cover 200 square miles. That’s a lot of locusts!

Many years ago, the National Geographic had an article which described a locust swarm that hit Palestine in 1915. It was estimated that that particular swarm contained 24.4 billion insects.

If you have the bad fortune to be around when a locust swarm hits, you can expect to find locusts inside your clothing, in your mouth and in your ears, in every nook and cranny of your house, including your sheets and blankets and your food. These locusts are relentless in their search for anything edible. When a locust swarm passes through, there is not one green plant left anywhere. I have a picture of a fig tree in full leaf, taken just before a locust swarm hit. Five minutes later, the tree is completely naked, with not a leaf on it. Locusts are like flying piranhas.

Now in the face of this plague, Pharaoh’s officials began to urge him to get rid of the Hebrews. They said “Let them go! Don’t you realize that Egypt is ruined?” But Pharaoh was so stubborn and hard that he brought back Moses and offered him another compromise. He said “only the men can go.” Of course, he was planning on using the women and children as hostages to get the men to come back. In the face of these overwhelming displays of God’s power, Pharaoh was still trying to negotiate. So, God brought the plague of locusts on Egypt.

Exodus 10:15 They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail—everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.

Once again, Pharaoh made a show of repentance in order to find relief from the plague, but once he was delivered, the Lord hardened his heart so that he would not let the Israelites go.

9. The Darkness 10:21-29

Exodus 10:21-22 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.” So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days.

What was the nature of this darkness that it would last for three days and be a darkness that could be felt? Many Bible scholars believe that it was a terrible sandstorm. Every year, to this day, there is a wind that comes up from the south of Egypt called the Khamsin. It happens every spring, right around Easter. Depending on how strong it is, it kicks up the sand into great clouds which darken the sun.

I have read accounts of the great dust storms that swept the plains during the Depression years. Huge brown clouds rolling in from the horizon and blotting out the sun. This must have been the ninth plague - a sandstorm so great that it darkened the land for three whole days. It was a darkness that could be felt. In blotting out the sun, God was showing the Egyptians that their sun god, Ra, was powerless.

In the face of this plague, Pharaoh offered a final desperate compromise. He told Moses that all the Israelites could go, but that they must leave their flocks and their livestock behind. But Moses said “not one hoof is to be left behind.” When God delivers His people, He delivers them completely. There are no deals made with the devil. Not only were the Israelites not going to lose any of their property, but they were going to be laden down with the goods of Egypt as well.

Pharaoh wouldn’t listen, and he wouldn’t let the Israelites go. So God brought about a final catastrophe - the tenth plague - the death of the firstborn. We’ll examine that plague next week.

These nine terrible plagues were a graphic demonstration that God was more powerful than the gods of Egypt. God’s deliverance of His people had taken a long time in coming, but when it came, it was right on time. We need to learn to wait on the Lord’s timing. He sees us, He loves us, He cares about each one of us. When we pray, we are praying to the God of the universe who is powerful enough to save us. But we need to learn to wait on Him, because His timing is perfect.