God vs. Egypt

Hello everyone.

As I continue my study of the book of Exodus, I wanted to share some things I have been learning in my study. When Moses first appeared before Pharaoh in Ex. 5:2, Pharaoh says, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?"  Pharaoh is going to learn the answer to that question, the hard way.  God is going to bring the plagues against Egypt, and bring that powerful nation to its knees.

Hapi

In Exodus 12:12 and Numbers 33:4, the Bible says that with the tenth plague, God brought judgment on all of the gods of Egypt. As I have been reading about this, one could make a case that all of the plagues were judgment on the gods of Egypt, and at times, judgment was made on specific gods of Egypt. This judgment is what I want to examine today.

In the first plague, God turns the Nile River into blood.   There were many Egyptian gods associated with the Nile River, but this plague could be judgment against Hapi, god of the Nile.  God turned the Nile to blood. Egypt's magicians were able to duplicate the miracle.  But it would make more snse to counteract the miracle and turn the blood back into water.  The magicians and their god, Hapi, were powerless to do that.  Winner: God.

Heqet

The second plague was the plague of the frogs. This was possibly a judgment against the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Heqet.  Frogs were associated with fertility and Heqet had a frog's head. The magicians of Egypt were able to duplicate this miracle of God as well and add frogs to the overwhelming population of frogs.  But they could not get rid of the frogs.  In God vs. Heket, the clear winner was God.

The third plague was the plague of gnats.  If God had a specific target in mind for this plague, it is not as easy to see.  Some Bible scholars have hypothesized that the target here was Geb, the god of the Earth.  The reason for this, is that God had Moses strike the dust of the ground and the dust turned into gnats.  Egypt's magicians could not duplicate or counteract this miracle.  In fact, they began syaing things like, "This is the finger of God," (Ex. 8:19) differentiating The God, for Egypt's many gods.

The fourth plague was the plague of the flies.  This plague was significant because, this plague only happened to the Egyptians.  The land of Goshen, were the Israelites lived was free of flies.  God began to distinguish between those people who were His, and those who were not. (Ex. 8:23)  Of all of the plague, this one was the most difficult to find one god or goddess that was an obvious target for God's judgment.  I read a few different ideas from different writers.  Personally I like Khepri, but only because he had a dung beetle for a head.  It was Khepri's job to move the Sun across the sky. 

The fifth plague was the death of the livestock.  Like the fourth plague, this happened only to the Egyptians.  Afterwards, Pharaoh had it investigated to see if indeed only Egyptian livestock had died.  His investigators confirmed that this was true.  This could have been an attack on the Hathor, and Egyptian goddess, who is often depicted having the head of a cow.

At this point, after five destructive plagues on his nation, Pharaoh may have wanted to take back his arrogant question, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?"  He, his magicians and his gods are failing miserably against the one and only true God.  In fact, they never had a chance.

I'll finish this story in my next post, real soon.
Tom