Chapter 7:17-8:32

‌7:17- The 10 Signs are very purposefully structured. There are 3 triads and then the 10th plague, with organization apparent in several forms. The 1st , 4th , and 7th signs begin with Moses out for a walk when he meets Pharaoh. The 2nd , 5th , and 8th begin with Moses’ warning Pharaoh in the palace. And the 3rd , 6th , and 9th happen without any warning. The first three also happen in the morning. Aaron is the main character in the first triad, then he and Moses split the activity in the second, then it’s all Moses in the third.

‌“Only in the first triad is Aaron with his outstretched staff the executor of the plagues. . . . Cassuto also observes that the plagues are equally arranged in pairs: two involving the Nile, two plagues of insects, two epidemics affecting beasts and humans respectively, two plagues devastating the crops, and the final darkness paired with the death of the firstborn.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

Isn’t it fascinating how blood can represent life or death, and the difference is entirely on whether it exists in the body or out of the body. Why do you think God chose this first sign? I know God is God and He can do whatever He wants, but He’s dealing with humans. A sign has to make sense for it to be a sign. Why would He do this? Was it just a cool party trick? Was it a cruel joke so they couldn’t get a morning bath? I believe there were three primary reasons. First, He’s doing to Egypt what Egypt did to Israel. The water being blood was a horrifyingly vivid picture of all the blood of the Israelite babies sent to their deaths in the river. God is doing to Pharaoh what Pharaoh did to Israel, but He’s giving Egypt chances to change. Second, the priests needed to bathe to stay ritually pure. These signs will consistently gnaw away at the priests’ abilities to serve their gods. Third, this sign would have had significance within Egyptian mythology.

‌“The event has three analogues in Egyptian texts. Tale of Ipuwer: The Tale of Ipuwer (ca. 1650-1550 B.C.E.), which laments the chaos that has engulfed Egypt, claims: “The river is blood. If one drinks of it, one rejects it and thirsts for water… Foreign tribes have come to Egypt.” As in the biblical text, the Egyptian story describes a bloody Nile and a defeat at the hand of foreigners. A Demon of Bastet: A ritual text that identifies one of seven demons of the goddess Bastet (here a manifestation of Sekhmet) as “The one who is in the Nile-flood who makes blood” (924-889 BCE). As Thomas Schneider observes: “This could be understood as a demon who creates carnage in the Nile, and thus turns the Nile into blood ( Exod 7:17-20 ).” 4

Tale of the Heavenly Cow: “[The Egyptians] had a story called the Cataclysm of Ra in which Ra’s daughter, the goddess Hathor, was called on to punish humanity for not worshipping Ra like they were supposed to. So, she decided to wipe out all of humanity, but Ra didn’t like that because he still wanted people to rule, so With the help of his faithful followers, Ra arranged for large quantities of beer to be mixed with red dye or pomegranate juice so that it would look like blood. Then they brought seven thousand jars of beer and poured the contents on the fields, flooding the fields where Hathor would return to continue her slaughter. The next day, when Hathor returned to eliminate the rest of the humanity, she saw the large pool of blood. She started drinking from it until she became so drunk that she couldn’t remember why she was sent there, and when she returned to her father, Nun, she slept for many days.” ‌

‌“As a result of this myth, during the festivals of Hathor and Sekhmet, people would drink beer blended with pomegranate juice in celebration of the salvation of mankind. The festival was also linked to the flooding of the Nile, which every year would turn the color of blood as silt was carried upstream.” ‌ 5

‌Whether or not this was actual blood is debated. Some suggest the water was just turned red. (I have read from some that the ancient Egyptian word for red could also mean blood, but I haven’t been able to verify that.) But that likely wouldn’t explain why the water was undrinkable. Others have suggested the red coloring was some sort of poisonous algae that colored the water. I bring this up here because some people try to explain each of the signs as natural phenomena. While I do believe God can and does use natural phenomena to work, these signs are specifically called miracles. To me, that means God likely stepped in and do some supernatural. There could be some connection like bloody water sending the frogs on land which allowed the insect population to increase which led to the burning rash. But I don’t usually build out those connections too much. For a perspective on how the plagues could have been natural occurrences, read https://www.livescience.com/58638-science-of-the-10-plagues.html.

‌7:18- Consider how traumatizing this would be for the average Egyptian who had no clue what was going on.

‌7:19- “Many construe this as a reference to wooden and stone vessels or receptacles, but the plural form ‘etsim suggests trees rather than wood. In any case, trees and stones as objects in nature accord better with the catalogue of bodies of water that precedes than would household utensils. It has also

been noted that the Hebrew pairing here, ‘etsim wa’avanim, is often used to refer to the material out of which idols are made.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

7:22- The author of the text assumes that the sorcerers actually did the same sign as Moses here without feeling the need to explain how exactly they did it. We don’t know how they created the same sign. We don’t even know where they got the pure water to do it. On that note, where did Egypt get water at all? Humans can go roughly 3 days without water, but we’re going to see in a few verses that this sign lasted a whole week. I highly doubt every single Egyptian had a week’s supply of water stored in their houses. Did they have large vats, like an ancient water tower that the government rationed out? We have no clue. Verse 22 seems to imply all water in Egypt turned to blood, but verse 24 suggests water found from wells could be safe.

‌7:23- At this point, Pharaoh can just retreat to his house to escape reality. That’s about to change in the next sign.

‌7:25- This verse makes it sound like it took 7 days for the Nile to return to normal. God gave the Egyptians a week to get the picture. Also, seven days? Don’t miss the Genesis 1 language here. Just as God worked for 6 days at Creation and rested on the seventh, so He works this sign of de-creation for 6 days and offers rest on the 7th . It’s worth noting that if you’re reading in Hebrew, the chapter continues through verse 4 of the next chapter. Exodus 8:5 is Exodus 8:1 in Hebrew.

8:1- Up until this point, the Israelites had been serving Pharoah. Now they’d serve Yahweh. It’s the same verb.

‌8:2- Why frogs? Frogs are amphibians. They blur the lines between land and sea. They “represent the undoing of this ordered separation. Yahweh is returning Egypt to a state of disorder and chaos in judgment for their evil.” -The Bible Project

‌8:3- “The verb in the Hebrew is transitive (“will swarm frogs”). Several commentators have noticed that this word choice echoes the “swarming” of the proliferating Hebrews in chapter 1. There, the orgy of propagation seems to have struck the Egyptians as repellently reptilian; here, they are assaulted with a nauseating plague of amphibians. In this, as in other details of the Plagues narrative, the allusions to the Creation story, initially sounded in the first chapter of Exodus, turn into a network of reversals of the original creation. It would be excessive to insist that every detail of the narrative, or even every plague, confirms this pattern. Nevertheless, the allusions to early Genesis that are detectable trace a possibility that much exercised the imaginations of the biblical writers: if creation emerged at a particular moment in a process with discriminated stages, one could imagine an undoing of this event and this process, apocalypse being the other side of the coin of creation. The benign swarming of life in Genesis turns into a threatening swarm of odious creatures, just as the penultimate plague of darkness, prelude to mass death, is a reversal of the first “let there be light.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

‌Remember how Pharoah could escape to his home during the last plague? Not anymore. Now the frogs are in his palace as well.

‌8:4- This literally reads, “into you.” Whether that’s literal or a quirk of grammar, it’s gross.

‌8:5- Did Moses and Aaron have to do this once or over multiple bodies of water? The text isn’t 100% clear on that.

8:8- This is the first concession of Pharoah in the story. How desperate he must have been to ask for intercession before Yahweh! The last time someone interceded to Yahweh in the Biblical narrative, it was Isaac because his wife Rebekah was infertile.

‌8:9- “The Hebrew ‘vaunt over me’ is a little odd. The construction of the consensus of commentators, medieval and modern, which seems plausible, is that Moses is offering Pharaoh the limited ‘triumph’ of choosing the moment when the plague will cease. This choice, of course, in fact demonstrates God’s absolute power and Moses’s perfect efficacy as intercessor. . . . It is a bit surprising that Pharaoh does not choose to have the plague ended at once. Perhaps he is trying Moses’s powers: can Moses really stipulate a given moment of cessation in the near future and make it come about?” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

Verse 8 just said “take away,” but now we’re getting the idea that the frogs are not going away. They’re going to die and stink.

‌8:10- It’s also possible to translate this as “before tomorrow,” possibly rectifying the illogical request for the frogs to be removed after another day.

‌8:13-14- Imagine how graphic this would be! We tend to overlook the perspective of the Egyptians since they’re painted as the bad guys, but consider how traumatic these experiences would be for the average Egyptian who had no idea a cosmic fight was going on around him.

‌8:15- “The hardening (lit. making heavy) of pharaoh’s heart tendentiously alludes to the Egyptian belief that pharaoh’s heart must be weighed against the feather of truth, to grant him entry to the afterlife.” 1

8:16- While all the plagues are pretty rough, it’s worth noting that these next 3 are not life-threatening per se, at least not as much as a water shortage. It’s like Yahweh is pulling punches, stalling for time, giving Egypt chances to repent. Genesis 2 says that humanity was created from the dust. This sign is like a zombie death plaguing the creatures that came from dust in the first place. Some have suggested the Egyptians priests shaved their bodies to prevent lice or anything else unclean from being on their bodies. This sign would have made the worship and care of their gods impossible for a time.

‌8:18- Basically every translation makes it as if the magicians were trying to produce more lice, but that would cause the next sentence to not make much sense if it is a “so” clause as the KJ translates it. Per the below quote, it seems better to read the verse as saying the magicians were attempting to stop the infestation but couldn’t.

‌“The syntax directs us to a kind of comic discovery: at first we imagine that still again the soothsayers are engaged in their own pathetic imitation of Moses and Aaron’s destructive act, bringing forth their own lice; then we realize that this time they are attempting to get rid of the plague, but to no avail.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

‌8:19- The author of Exodus seems to present the concept of “God of the gaps,” only needing God where technology (magic)/science doesn’t have an answer, as being distinctly pagan. The magicians were only willing to concede to the power of Yahweh when their answers no longer sufficed.

1 https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-egyptian-magicians

“Numerous extended ‘Horus’ forefinger amulets have been recovered from ancient Egypt, and extending the forefinger was an apotropaic ritual gesture used alongside spells, especially by shepherds, to ford dangerous waters with their herds. To ensure safe passage the herdsman pointed his hand over the water, and those nearby were commanded to stop talking. Such a practice calls to mind the account of the shepherd-priest Moses extending his arm over the Reed Sea. “ See https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-egyptian-magicians for pictures of the Fingers of Horus.

8:20- The narrative provides no indication as to whether the plague of lice comes to an end, like the previous two, or whether the Egyptians simply continue to live with the infestation as God proceeds to launch the next blow.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

‌8:21- “if you do not send off…I am about to send. Although the two verbs are in different conjugations, the pun, with its measure-for-measure emphasis, is quite explicit in the Hebrew.” - Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

“Similarly, the plague of flies (Exodus 8:20-32) inverts God’s blessing to humanity in Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and multiply and ‘fill the land.’ Now, flies (which like to hang out on dead things) fill the land.” -The Bible Project

‌8:23- Literally, redemption. “Most interpreters understand the Hebrewפְדֻ֔ת to mean something like ‘separation’ or ‘distinction.’ Everywhere else, however, this root means ‘to ransom,’ ‘to redeem,’ ‘to rescue from danger,’ including the three other occurrences in the biblical corpus in this form of a verbal noun. It seems wise to retain the semantic force of ‘ransom’ and assign the indication of separation to the preposition ‘between’ that follows—that is, God will grant ransom or rescue from the horde to the Israelites, and that saving act will set them apart from the afflicted Egyptians.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

‌8:24- Corruption, a word meaning destruction is the same word from the Gen 9 flood. The signs are now riffing off de-creation flood imagery.

‌8:25- This concession is a step back from his last one. Now he’s only allowing sacrifice in the land.

‌8:26- We’re not exactly sure what “abomination of the Egyptians” means, but one of the better guesses is that the Israelites would be sacrificing animals the Egyptians considered either holy or possibly unclean. Doing so within the land of Egypt would have been offensive, like sacrificing a cow in most parts of India today.

‌8:28- “The desperate Pharaoh now uses a new turn of urgent speech, prefacing the first-person imperfective verb with an emphatic, ‘I myself.’” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

Pharaoh is trying desperately to grasp onto whatever shred of control he can pretend to still hold.

8:29- The KJ reads “but let not Pharaoh.” But is the same word translated “only” in Pharaoh’s offer in the previous verse. “Moses’s ‘only’ clause is a clearly marked formal rejoinder to Pharaoh’s ‘only’ clause in the previous verse. The verb here is rendered as ‘deal deceitfully’ by the King James Version and some modern versions, but elsewhere it means ‘to mock,’ ‘to toy with,’ and, from Moses’s point of view, that would be a reasonable representation of Pharaoh’s repeated reflex of seeming to yield and then reasserting his intransigence.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary

Suggested Meditation:

The way God make His case to Moses was different from how He handled Israel as a whole which was different from His approach with Egypt. Our familiarity with the plague passages can cause us to miss how each one was purposefully tied to Egyptian culture. God tends to speak to people in ways that make sense to them. God didn’t stop speaking after Bible times. His methods may have changed, but His activity has not. He doesn’t sound like King James English. He gets your attention in a way that will stand out to you. How might God be trying to speak to you in your life this week through your personality, preferences, and hobbies? How can you make sure you’re open to His leading and not resistant like Pharaoh was?

Next Week:

Signs 5-7, the first plague, hyperbole and Biblical literalism, and the final appearance of the magicians? (question mark intentional)

4 https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-egyptian-magicians

5 https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-africa/cataclysm-of-ra-00159