Exodus 8

If Moses and Aaron had been privileged to listen to Jonathan Edwards preach his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” they probably would have shouted “Amen!” when Edwards said: All the kings of the earth, before God, are as grasshoppers; they are nothing, and less than nothing: both their love and their hatred is to be despised. The wrath of the great King of kings, is as much more terrible than theirs, as his majesty is greater.

Hearing those words, Moses and Aaron would have recalled the day they stood before the ruler of one of the greatest kingdoms of the ancient world. They were sent by God to inform Pharaoh that if he didn’t release the Jewish people, Jehovah would declare war on him and his gods and wouldn’t stop attacking Egypt until the people of Israel were set free. God’s two ambassadors had one message from the Lord: “Let My people go—or else!” Pharaoh’s responses to Moses and Aaron were predictable: he rejected God’s command, disdained the miracles Moses and Aaron performed, and deliberately hardened his heart against the Lord.

Up to this point in their confrontation with Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron had simply delivered God’s ultimatum. Now the time had come for them to reveal God’s power and perform the miraculous signs that proved they were truly sent by God. Still somewhat discouraged, Moses maintained that he wasn’t a competent speaker, so God reminded him that Aaron could be his spokesman (6:26—7:2; 4:15–16). However, the Lord advised Moses and Aaron that it would take more than one or two miracles to accomplish His purposes, for He would multiply His signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.

Before we study this remarkable series of miracles, we must focus on the reasons why the Lord took this approach in dealing with Pharaoh and sent these sign judgments to the land of Egypt. The ultimate purpose, of course, was to bring Pharaoh and the Egyptians to their knees so they’d be willing for the Jews to leave the land. But at the same time, the Lord was revealing Himself to both the Israelites and the Egyptians and proving that He alone is God (7:5).

The miracles and plagues were also God’s way of judging the gods of Egypt and proving them false and futile. “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord” (12:12; and see 18: and Num. 33:4). More than eighty different deities were worshipped in Egypt, but they could do nothing to deliver the land and the people from the terrible judgments Jehovah sent. If nothing else, the Egyptians learned that Jehovah was the true and living God.

But the people of Israel also needed to learn this lesson. According to Ezekiel 20:1–9, some of the Jews had begun to worship the Egyptian gods, and when they were delivered from Egypt, they took their gods with them! Did they compromise their faith in an attempt to please their captors and receive better treatment? But how could they forsake Jehovah after seeing all the demonstrations of His power? “Our fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders; they did not remember the multitude of Your mercies” (Ps. 106: nkjv).

The sign of the serpent (Ex. 7:8–13). God gave this sign to Moses when He called him in Midian (4:1–5), but now it was Aaron who performed it in Pharaoh’s palace. The serpent was one of the special creatures in Egyptian religion, particularly the cobra, which was a symbol of immortality. Aaron’s rod became a serpent by the power of the Lord, and his serpent ate up the serpents that the magicians produced.

The three sign miracles that we’re considering—the staff turned into a serpent, the water turned to blood, and the invasion of the frogs—have in common the fact that all of them were duplicated by Pharaoh’s court magicians. Perhaps “counterfeited” is a more accurate word, because what they did was more likely deceptive sleight of hand. However, Satan can empower his people to perform “lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9–10; Matt. 24:24; Rev. 13:11–15), and that may have been the source of their power.

The apostle Paul used these Egyptian magicians to teach an important truth: in the last days, Satan will attack God’s truth and God’s people by imitating the works of God. Paul even named two of the court magicians: “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth” (2 Tim. 3: niv). As Jesus taught in the parable of the tares (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43), Satan is a counterfeiter who “plants” imitation Christians in this world. Paul called them “false brethren” (2 Cor. 11:26). Satan has an imitation gospel (Gal. 1:6–9), a counterfeit righteousness (Rom. 10:1–3), and even counterfeit ministers who spread his lies (2 Cor. 11:13–15). Satan will one day produce a false Christ who will deceive the whole world (2 Thess. 2:1–12).

Pharaoh’s magicians turned rods into snakes and water into blood, and were also able to produce frogs in the land. Satan opposes God’s work by imitating it, and in this way he minimizes the power and glory of God. Pharaoh’s attitude was, “Anything Jehovah can do, we can do better!” Of course, he couldn’t, but that was enough to bolster his pride and keep him from submitting to the Lord.

The sign of water turned to blood (7:14–25). This miracle was the first of the ten “plagues” God sent to Egypt, the last of which (the death of the firstborn at Passover) led to the departure of the Jews from Egypt. The word “plague” (9:14; 11:1; 12:13) means “a blow, a stroke,” and indicates that the hand of the Lord was punishing the Egyptians.

The longer Pharaoh resisted God, the more serious the judgments became. The first three plagues were distressful (water to blood, frogs, gnats); the second three were painful and costly (flies, death of the livestock, boils); and the last four were dangerous and destructive (hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn). The longer sinners resist God’s will and refuse to hear His Word, the “louder” He has to speak to them through His judgments.

Not only did the water of the Nile River turn into blood, but so did the other waters in the land and even the water stored in vessels of wood and stone. This was a judgment on the Nile River itself, which was treated like a god, and on Hapi, the god of the Nile, and Isis, the goddess of the Nile. The Nile River was the nation’s major source of life-giving water for the people and their crops, so taking away their water supply was a devastating judgment. The people dug wells near the river in order to get pure water, but the fish in the river died and their decay produced a terrible stench. The plague and its consequences lasted a week (7:25).

The magicians used some of the pure well water and duplicated the miracle. But if they had true magical powers, why didn’t they reverse the miracle? That would have shown them to be more powerful than Jehovah and would have endeared them to Pharaoh and the people. The answer, of course, is that they didn’t have the power to reverse what Moses and Aaron did; the magicians achieved their results by legerdemain and not by any supernatural power.

The sign of the invasion of frogs (8:1–7). Once more Moses and Aaron commanded Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” and warned him that another plague was coming. “Their land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of their kings” (Ps. 105:30). In Egypt, the frog was a fertility symbol, and Heqet, the goddess of resurrection, fertility, and childbirth, had the head of a frog.

The Lord’s warning was very specific. He told Pharaoh that the frogs would go into their houses, beds, ovens and cooking utensils, and would even cling to the bodies of the people. Of course, the magicians again counterfeited the miracle, when the smartest thing they could have done was to nullify it.

Pharaoh began to harden his heart when Moses and Aaron performed the first miraculous sign before him, just as God said he would do (7:3, 13–14). He hardened his heart further when his magicians counterfeited the signs (v. 22) and even when they couldn’t duplicate what Moses and Aaron had done (8:19). When Moses succeeded in stopping the plague of frogs, Pharaoh’s heart again hardened (v. 15). This hardening continued throughout the entire series of plagues (v. 32; 9:7, 34–35; 13:15).

What does it mean to harden your heart? It means to see clear evidence of the hand of God at work and still refuse to accept His Word and submit to His will. It means to resist Him by showing ingratitude and disobedience and not having any fear of the Lord or of His judgments. Hardhearted people say with Pharaoh, “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice?” (5:2).

But the narrative also makes it clear that by sending these various judgments, God was hardening Pharaoh’s heart (4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8, 17). Does this mean that God was unfair and that Pharaoh shouldn’t be held responsible for what he did? No, for the same sun that melts the ice also hardens the clay. It all depends on the nature of the material.

To the very end of the contest (14:5ff.), Pharaoh was a proud, unrepentant sinner who refused to hear God’s Word, do God’s will, or even keep his own promises to the Jewish people. The Lord gave him more than enough evidence to convince him that the gods of Egypt were false and the God of the Hebrews was the true and living God. Pharaoh sinned against a flood of light, and though God used him to accomplish His own purposes, Pharaoh made his own decisions and hardened his own heart against God.

He hardened his heart to God’s mercy (vv. 8–15). Life was miserable for the Egyptians because of the invasion of the frogs, so much so that Pharaoh asked Moses and Aaron to remove the pests. He even admitted that the frogs had been sent by the Lord. So anxious was he to be rid of the frogs that he offered to let the Jewish people go on their worship trip if Moses and Aaron complied with his request. This was only a stratagem to remove the plague, but Moses and Aaron cooperated with him.

Why did Moses let Pharaoh select the time for the frogs to leave? To prove to him and the nation that Jehovah was the living God who heard their words and responded to the prayers of His servants. The plague wasn’t a freakish accident; God was in control. But why didn’t Pharaoh ask for immediate deliverance from the frogs? Why postpone recovery until the next day? Perhaps he was gambling on the chance that the frogs would leave of themselves, and then he wouldn’t have to keep his bargain and release the people for their journey. Or, he may have wanted the word to spread that deliverance was coming so that the expectation of the people would be high. The next day the crowds would be waiting and watching, and if Moses failed, Pharaoh was the winner and Jehovah and His servants were discredited.

But Moses wasn’t about to fail, for he and Aaron prayed to God that the plague would end. God answered, not by causing the frogs to return to the rivers and ponds, but by killing the frogs and thus forcing the people to carry away the dead bodies and dispose of them. But how do you get rid of piles and piles of dead frogs? It wasn’t easy, and the stench only reminded the Egyptians of their king’s rebellion against God.

Moses and Aaron kept their promise, and so did the Lord, but Pharaoh refused to keep his word and let the Jewish people go. He really wasn’t interested in helping the Israelites; he only wanted to get relief from the awful plague of frogs. Many sinners aren’t interested in repenting and receiving God’s grace; they want only to be delivered from God’s judgment. However, this was only a temporary respite; the greatest judgments were yet to come.

In my pastoral ministry, I’ve met people who were in trouble in one way or another, who begged me to pray that the Lord would deliver them. They made all kinds of promises to me and to the Lord, telling what they’d do if He would help them. But when He did graciously help them, they forgot their promises and even forgot the Lord. I never saw them again. They were quite unlike the psalmist who wrote: “I will come to your temple with burnt offerings and fulfill my vows to you—vows my lips promised and my mouth spoke when I was in trouble” (Ps. 66:13–14 niv).

He hardened his heart to God’s power (Ex. 8:16–19). In stopping the plague of frogs, God was merciful to Pharaoh, but instead of surrendering to God’s mercy, the king only further hardened his heart. So, the Lord sent a third plague and caused the dust of the ground to become gnats. Pharaoh’s court magicians couldn’t duplicate this miracle and had to admit it was “the finger of God.” But even in the face of this evidence, Pharaoh refused to submit to the Lord and only hardened his heart even more. Neither God’s mercy nor God’s power caused him to repent and obey the Word of the Lord.

The fact that the desert dust became gnats was a judgment against Set, the Egyptian god of the desert. Jehovah was so great that He could give life to insignificant dust and use that life to punish the people who revered Set. But something else was involved. The Egyptians in general, and the priests in particular, were fanatical about cleanliness, and the priests frequently washed and shaved their bodies in order to be acceptable to their gods. Imagine the chagrin and discomfort of the priests when their bodies were invaded by unclean gnats that made life miserable for them! And their gods could do nothing to deliver them!

The defeated magicians saw “the finger of God” in this miracle when it was actually God’s “strong hand” (6:1) and “outstretched arm” (v. 6). In Scripture, the “finger of God” is also associated with the giving of the law (31:18; Deut. 9:10), the creation of the heavens (Ps. 8:3), and the casting out of demons (Luke 11:20). All of these are demonstrations of God’s authority and power.

But God wasn’t through with speaking to Pharaoh or judging the gods of Egypt. Jehovah had seven more plagues to send, and when they were finished, the nation of Egypt would be bankrupt.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).

God is gracious and longsuffering, but there comes a time when He will no longer tolerate the disobedience and arrogance of defiant sinners. “To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd” (Ps. 18:25–26 niv). If we walk contrary to Him, He will walk contrary to us (Lev. 26:23–24).

“God shows Himself to each individual according to his character,” wrote Charles Spurgeon, and no individual in Scripture illustrates this truth better than the king of Egypt. For months, Moses and Aaron had dealt with Pharaoh, but the king was unwilling to obey God’s command or even acknowledge God’s authority. The water courses in Egypt had been turned into blood, slimy frogs had invaded the land, and swarms of pesky gnats had irritated the people, but Pharaoh had refused to bend.

What did God do? He declared all-out war on both the ruler of Egypt and the gods of Egypt. The Lord sent six painful and destructive plagues to the land, and then a seventh plague which brought the death of every firstborn son. As you study Pharaoh’s responses to these plagues, you see the moral and spiritual deterioration of a man who wouldn’t submit to God and paid a terrible price for his rebellion.

Let’s consider Pharaoh’s responses to the judgments of God but, at the same time, let’s examine our own hearts to learn whether or not we are responding positively to the will of God.

At certain times of the year, Pharaoh would go to the sacred Nile River to participate in special religious rites, and it certainly must have irritated him on that particular holy occasion to see Moses and Aaron waiting for him. In Pharaoh’s eyes, these two men were national nuisances. Actually, Pharaoh was the cause of the nation’s troubles, but he would not admit it. God was dealing with Pharaoh in mercy, wanting to bring him into submission, for it’s only when we obey God that we can truly enjoy His blessings. With one blow, God could have wiped out Pharaoh and the nation (9:15), but He chose to give them opportunity to repent.

God’s warning (vv. 20–21). We’ve already noted that before sending seven of the ten plagues, God warned Pharaoh what was coming but, of course, he refused to believe the Word of God and persisted in his disobedience. The fact that each plague occurred just as God described it, at the time announced, should have convinced Pharaoh and his officers that the God of Israel was in control of these spectacular events. They weren’t caused by Pharaoh’s magicians, who could neither prevent them nor reverse them, nor were they mere coincidences. The hand of the Lord was against the land of Egypt.

God’s grace (v. 22). The Lord added a new feature to this plague by announcing that the Jews in the land of Goshen would escape the plague completely. Only the great God of Israel could control the flight pattern of tiny flies and keep them from entering the land of Goshen. But God’s providential care of Israel was evident in all these seven last plagues, because the Jews escaped each one of them (vv. 22–23; 9:4, 11 [“all the Egyptians”], 26; 10: [“all the Egyptians”], 23; 11:7).

Often in Scripture, the land of Egypt symbolizes the world system with its pride and bondage, while the Exodus of Israel from Egypt pictures the deliverance of God’s people through the blood of the lamb (John 1:29; Gal. 1:4; 1 Peter 1:18–19). During the time when Joseph was in Egypt, Pharaoh had given the land of Goshen to the Jews, and now God set it apart for His people. In this way God made a “division” between His people and the Egyptians. The word translated “division” in Exodus 8: means “a redemption, a ransom, a deliverance.” Because they belonged to God in a special way, the Jews were “different” from the Egyptians, but Pharaoh wouldn’t acknowledge this fact.

God’s wrath (v. 24). Just as God promised, the next day great swarms of flies invaded the land, entering the homes of the people and even the palace of the king. But the flies were more than just an immediate nuisance to the people, for their coming caused some long-range problems as well. The swarms of insects no doubt carried disease germs that affected the people, and it’s possible the insects deposited their eggs on the vegetation and the larva that came out ate the plants and thus ruined the land. Some students think that the fly was especially sacred to the Egyptian god Uatchit, so the plague was also God’s way of dishonoring another one of the false gods of Egypt.

Pharaoh’s offers (vv. 25–32). During the time of the plagues, Pharaoh offered four compromises to Moses and Aaron. The first two are recorded here, during the plague of the flies (vv. 25, 28); the third came during the locust plague (10:7–11); and the fourth occurred during the three days of darkness (vv. 24–26). The fact that Pharaoh even thought he could bargain with God is another evidence of his pride. What is mortal man, even the king of a great nation, that he should dare to negotiate the will of God? These offers were all part of Pharaoh’s hypocritical scheme to outwit Moses and Aaron, for his heart was still stubborn and unyielding. He wasn’t interested in either the will of God or the welfare of the Jews; all he wanted was to stop the plagues.

God’s people face similar “Egyptian compromises” today as we seek to serve the Lord. The enemy tells us we don’t have to be separated from sin because we can serve God “in the land.” God’s reply is found in 2 Corinthians 6:14–18. “Don’t go too far away,” the enemy whispers, “or people will call you a fanatic.” James 1: and 4: demolish that proposal. True service to God means giving Him authority over all our possessions and all the people in our family for whom we’re responsible. Not to do so is to disobey Mark 10:13–16; Ephesians 6:4; and Deuteronomy 6:6–13. Once we start to negotiate the will of God and see how close we can get to the world, we have already disobeyed Him in our hearts.

In his first proposal, Pharaoh offered to let the Jews hold their worship feast in the land of Egypt (Ex. 8:25), an offer Moses and Aaron rejected. They knew that some of the animals the Jews would sacrifice were sacred to the Egyptians, and what began as a meeting for solemn worship would quickly turn into a riot. The Jews were a separate people, living in Goshen, a land that had been set apart by God, and they had to separate themselves a three days’ journey from Egypt in order to please the Lord.

Pharaoh’s second offer was that Israel leave the land but not go too far away (v. 28). The appendix to his offer (“Now pray for me!” niv) shows that his real concern was to get rid of the swarms of flies. On the surface, it looks like Moses and Aaron accepted this second offer, because Moses promised to get rid of the flies. Perhaps they thought they could travel farther once they got out of the land, but surely they both knew that Pharaoh wouldn’t keep his word. Pharaoh had a habit of begging for help when he needed it (v. 8; 9:28; 10:16–17) and then changing his mind once the plague was removed (8:15, 32; 9:34–35; 10:20). God answered Moses’ prayer and removed the flies, but Pharaoh only hardened his heart even more.