When Judgement 'Boils' Over

Egyptian boils

Exodus 9:8 NASB95

Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Take for yourselves handfuls of soot from a kiln, and let Moses throw it toward the sky in the sight of Pharaoh.

Proverbs 27:22 partly comes from the palace kitchen, where women would make flour for bread by grinding grain between a mortar and a pestle, but it was also based on Solomon’s experience with fools. The wise king had observed that no matter how often a fool is crushed by the consequences of his foolish mistakes, somehow his folly always manages to survive. Hence the proverb: “Though you a grind a fool in a mortar, grinding him like grain with a pestle, you will not remove his folly from him.”1

1 Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 269.

  So the rabbis wrote, in one of their ancient commentaries,

Of him [Pharaoh] and of all like him it is written: “Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, but the folly will not be driven out,” which means: if you crush and chastise the fool with the strikes of afflictions and plagues, and you give him alleviation by lifting up the pestle from the mortar, his foolishness will not depart from him, since he forgets all the plagues. Such was the evil Pharaoh. When he experienced alleviation between each plague … he forgot the plagues.1

1 Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 269.

God used these boils as part of the covenantal curse

Dt. 28:27, 35 “The LORD will smite you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed. ..“The LORD will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.

what could they be?

Leprosy?

never mentions that this plague goes away and leprosy is incurable

Smallpox?

Skin Anthrax?

Covered

head to toe. all over.

every Egyptian, even Pharaoh and this magicians

“should have been a warning that their lives were in danger.”

Exodus 9:10 NASB95

So they took soot from a kiln, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses threw it toward the sky, and it became boils breaking out with sores on man and beast.

by throwing ashes into the air, Moses was doing something that Egyptian priests often did. It was customary for Pharaoh’s priests to take sacrificial ashes and cast them into the air as a sign of blessing. But God took that ritual act and turned it into a curse. This was a matter of justice, because the soot may well have come from a furnace for making bricks, like the bricks the Israelites baked for Pharaoh. If so, God was exacting strict justice, repaying the Egyptians for their sins.1

1 Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 273.

Egyptian gods

Amon Ra

Thoth

Sekhmet

they believed their gods would heal. Sekhmet was said to both bring plagues and destroy them.

none could

Make sure we do not worship medicine or even more natural cures

It is God who heals. medicine is a tool he uses sometimes, even natural oils, but it is God who heals

when we make medicine our source of hope in healing, rather than just a tool, we make it an idol

“Medicine makes a wonderful tool but a poor deity.”

The Magicians

they took pride in purity. being covered in boils would not have allowed them to serve Pharaoh or their gods.

they could no longer stand in front of God’s prophet.

one day every knee will bow and tongue confess!

in fact!

one day there will be another judgement of boils. those who have taken the mark of the beast and worship him will be inflicted

Rev. 16:2 So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth; and it became a loathsome and malignant sore on the people who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image.

Pharaoh’s Hard Heart

this time it says God hardened his heart

Done for His glory. Pharaoh’s heart was not hardened because he had already done it, but for a purpose

God wanted all the plagues to go through.