I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 7-9.

When Moses and Aaron performed the first three signs from God before the Pharaoh, he refused to take them seriously because his court magicians were able to duplicate them.  As a result, Pharaoh refused to take these signs seriously.  I have always understood this to mean that since his magicians could duplicate these signs, Pharaoh rejected Moses’ requests because he did not think that God was any more powerful than his own gods.   However, it occurred to me today that Pharaoh did not believe that his magicians had any real powers, that he thought they were charlatans.  Therefore, since they could reproduce Moses’ signs through sleight of hand and trickery, Moses was also using sleight of hand and trickery.  Even when Moses performed signs which his magicians could not imagine any way to duplicate, Pharaoh was convinced that Moses was a fraud.. 

Now one might be tempted to say that by starting with signs which could be imitated by charlatans, Moses made a mistake.  But Exodus tells us that God instructed him to start this way because God had a plan.  We can even make sense of God’s plan if we pay close attention to what goes on here.  First if Moses had gone first to one of the lesser plagues which Pharaoh’s magicians could not imitate, Pharaoh would have agreed to the Israelites going for three days to sacrifice, and probably would not have agreed to allow them to take all of their possessions.  Certainly, they would not have left Egypt with all of the wealth which they did take with them when they finally left., wealth which was necessary for them to survive the journey.  On the other hand, if God had gone directly to killing the first born, people throughout history would have said that He was unnecessarily cruel.