Moses: gods and kings and the 10 plagues
PLAGUES OF EGYPT . In commissioning Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt , God had warned him that this would come about only through God’s supreme power overcoming all the might of Pharaoh, whereby Egypt would be smitten with wonders or signs from God (cf. Ex. 3:19–20). After the sign of the rod that became a serpent and swallowed up those of the Egyptian magicians, which left Pharaoh unmoved, God’s power was demonstrated to him and his people in a series of ten judgments. They were so applied as to portray clearly the reality and power of Israel’s God, and thus by contrast the impotence of Egypt’s gods. The first nine of these plagues bear a direct relation to natural phenomena in the Nile valley , but the tenth, the death of the firstborn, belongs wholly to the realm of the supernatural. These first nine plagues demonstrate the divine use of the created order to achieve his ends, and recent studies tend to confirm both the reality of what is described in Ex. 7–12 and the po