Plagues (Exodus 5-10)

[Exodus 5]

So Moses and Aaron approach the Pharaoh and say, "Let my people go." They aren't asking for the Israelites' freedom; they just want to be allowed to head three days into the wilderness for a devotional festival and to sacrifice to their god.

No way, says the Pharaoh: you're just a bunch of slackers. And from spite, he orders that the Israelite laborers stop being given raw material - straw - for the bricks they bake, without any diminution in the daily quota they're required to produce. When the Israelities fail to make enough bricks, their Egyptian taskmasters up their own quota of beatings.

The Israelites are not happy with Moses. Moses is not happy with God. God says, wait and see how this thing plays out.


[Exodus 6]

God then goes on to repeat himself in full Biblical style: I am the god of your forefathers, and I made a covenant with them, and I will now lead my chosen people into the land I have sworn for them, etc.

Moses gets into the repeating act himself. "Don't make me go to the Pharaoh again," he says, "for I am a poor public speaker."

"Go to the Pharaoh again," God says.

And then, some genealogy. We are given the names of the various Hebrew clans.


[Exodus 7]

God carries right on repeating himself. "You will now go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go; I will harden his heart so he will refuse; and then I will smite him with 'extraordinary chastisements.'"

The text chooses this moment to mention that Moses is 80 years old, Aaron 83. Wow-ee. Moses evidently spent a lot more time tending his father-in-law's sheep out there by Midian than I'd have guessed.

Well, Moses and Aaron appear before the Pharaoh again, and this time they bust out the magic tricks. They do the snake-rod routine - and the Pharaoh calls out his own "wise men and sorcerers" to have them turn their rods to snakes. Granted, Aaron's snake-rod eats the sorcerers' snake-rods - but be honest, I think it really takes the thunder out of M & A's schtick that the Pharaoh had guys on hand who could do the same thing.

On God's instructions, Moses and Aaron approach the Pharaoh the next day as he heads to the Nile for his morning constitutional. Aaron strikes the water with his rod, and the river, along with all stored water in the kingdom, turns to blood (this is not quite the water-to-blood trick God described to Moses originally, but what the heck, consistency of detail is not exactly a Biblical strong suit.).

All the fish in the Nile die. "The Nile stank so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile; and there was blood throughout the land of Egypt. But when the Egyptian magicians did the same with their spells, Pharaoh's heart stiffened and he did not heed them...." (Exodus 7:21-22, emphasis mine)

Oh do please come on now. How can the magicians turn a river into blood, and make it stink, and kill all the fish in it, when these things had already just been done? (Now, the blood-ness of the water apparently wasn't a permanent thing, but how short or long it lasted is far from clear. What does seem clear was that it lasted awhile - like, a week.)

And whatever happened to Moses' really cool make-your-hand-leprous-for-a-few-moments trick? He never gets to use that one.

The Egyptians have to resort to digging new wells for water: a week goes by with things in this unpleasant condition. On God's next instructions, Moses comes to Pharaoh again (visit #4) to warn that unless he relents, there's going to be a major frog infestation throughout the land.


[Exodus 8]

And lo, there is a major frog infestation throughout the land. Aaron swings his rod at the river again and frogs-a-plenty come up from the Nile. Of course, the Pharaoh's magicians do the same, which is - well, that's a little self-defeating, isn't it, for them to double down on a plague of pests? There's something very Yosemite-Sam about it, tricked by Bugs into harming himself to prove how tough he is.

And indeed, things get so bad with these frogs leaping around in everyone's chariots and bedrooms and wardrobe chests that the Pharaoh says, okay, Moses, if you'll call off the frogs I will let you Heebs go do your three-day festival thing. Moses asks God to call off the frogs, which all die, and are so numerous that they have to be heaped up in great reeking frog-corpse haystacks around town.

But the second the frogs are gone, Pharaoh renegs. So this time - watch out - Aaron smacks the dust of the earth with his magic rod, and a significant portion of that dust turns into lice, rendering man and animal alike considerably miserable.

The royal sorcerers actually try to make more lice out of dust, but this is the point when they fall short in their powers. Thank god for that, eh? And what's wrong with these lunatics? But still, the Pharaoh remains hard-hearted against Moses, even in the face of this evidence that he's up against something greater than court magicianship.

And so we pretty much repeat the frog incident now, with insects. They proliferate everywhere, creating famine (except where the Israelites live in Goshen). As before, Pharaoh promises to let Moses' people go sacrifice if he calls off the infestation; Moses does; Pharaoh renegs.

Something interesting is mentioned on the way, which is that the reason the Israelites need to go into the wilderness to sacrifice is that, "what we sacrifice to the Lord our god is untouchable to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice that which is untouchable to the Egyptians before their very eyes, will they not stone us!" (Exodus 8:22)

Ach, I'm not even going to try to understand why that is.


[Exodus 9]

Next God kills all of the Egyptians' livestock - all of it - while sparing the Israelites' animals - all of them. Which does nothing to move the Pharaoh. So M & A come to him with handfuls of kiln soot and throw it up into the air: the dust becomes a cloud across the entire kingdom which causes boils and inlammation in "man and beast". No immunity of the Israelities to these boils is mentioned, but we do know that the only "beasts" still around are theirs, so this particular plague does not seem terribly well-targeted. Of course, most of them haven't been. God would do well in the Pentagon.

Moses is sent up to see Pharaoh again - at first, I'd been of a mind to count these visits, but they seem more like daily conferences by now and I don't see the point. He delivers a strange message this time. The crux is that the next plague will be of hail, coming the following day. Which is hardly surprising. But beforehand, he conveys this on Yahweh's behalf: "I could have stretched forth my hand and stricken you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been effaced from the earth. Nevertheless I have spared you for this purpose: in order to show you my power, and in order that my fame may resound throughout the world. Yet you continue to thwart my people, and do not let them go!" (Exodus 9:15-17)

A strange complaint from someone who announced from the get-go that he planned to make the Pharaoh all recalcitrant-minded. Also, note here again how these are clearly not the sentiments of an omnipotent being.

Okay, so along comes the hail the next day; and people who "feared the Lord's word" brought in their livestock and slaves underneath shelter (note how slaves aren't people); those who didn't saw all their slaves and livestock killed by fiery hail. Except in Goshen.

What I want to know is, after a good month of this crap with the frogs and blood-rivers and locusts and boils, who are these people who don't fear the Lord's word? Say what you like about the guy, but by this point I would imagine that if he says he's going to bring down a plague on you, you may want to take that seriously.

So the Pharaoh relents again and says the Israelites can leave. Moses tries to take a wiser tack this time, saying he'll call off the hail only as he leads his people out of town. But yet the minute the hail subsides, the Pharaoh has them rounded up and dragooned back in. He reasons that yes, all of his livestock may be dead, and the crops in the field have been burned down by fiery hail, but what the heck - wheat and emmer ripen later on in the season, so they can still harvest that much. Meaning that he's still sitting pretty and may as well hang onto his Israelite slaves? Sure, makes sense.


[Exodus 10]

We're moving on toward the championship round here, with plague following on plague and Pharaoh's hard heart following on the heels of his forgiveness and so on. This time, a plague of locusts more terrible than the previous insect infestation, eating all the Egyptians' stored food and laying waste to the grass and trees of all the land around them. When Pharaoh begs pardon for this one, and agrees to let the Israelites leave, God blows all the locusts off into the Sea of Reeds with a mighty wind.

However, negotiations with Moses fall apart over the question of who gets to leave: Pharaoh says it can only be the men; Moses insists it be everybody.

And so the plague brought down on Pharaoh's head the next day is one of perpetuated darkness. After three or four days of that, Moses is once again told he can leave, but this time there's a spat over whether they can take their livestock with them or not.