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

We can learn an important lesson from Pharaoh.  Time and again Pharaoh refused to acknowledge God’s power and to do as God commanded.  Each time he did so, it became harder for him to reverse direction and obey God.  The same thing will happen with us.  At several points, Pharaoh agreed to do what God commanded in order to get the suffering to stop, but when the suffering stopped he changed his mind.  Another behavior which we often follow.  We bargain with God, then fail to follow through on what we agreed to do when the suffering stops.  God brings trials and tribulations into our lives in order to direct us into the path we should follow.  Those trials and tribulations will get progressively more severe until we do as God directs.  The one thing we do not see in this passage that is generally true, God gives us this direction in order for us to be better off.  Unfortunately, we do not see the benefit Pharaoh would have reaped had he allowed the Israelites to go when Moses first asked.

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

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

I first noticed that Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of Pharaoh’s advisers when they were all snakes when I watched the animated movie, “The Prince of Egypt”.  In the movie, Pharaoh does not notice this, but I believe the passage intends for us to understand that Pharaoh was aware of it happening yet chose to refuse God’s command anyway.  Pharaoh’s advisers were able to reproduce the signs which Moses and Aaron performed up until they produced gnats.  At which point, Pharaoh’s advisers warned him that he was going up against God (or, at least, against a god).   I want to note that even though God told Moses before he performed his first sign for Pharaoh that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart, the passage describes Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites go in a manner which suggests Pharaoh making a choice until the sixth plague, the plague of boils.  The Egyptian people believed that the Pharaoh was a god, or perhaps better phrased as they believed he was the incarnation of a god. Thinking about that makes me wonder if this Pharaoh believed that he was a god and that his advisers were duplicating the signs Moses and Aaron performed using his power.  Or, did he know that his advisers were performing tricks and assume that the signs performed by Moses and Aaron which his advisers could not reproduce were also tricks which his advisers did not know the secret to perform?  In any case, Pharaoh had all of the evidence he needed from when the staffs turned into snakes to know that he should listen to what Moses and Aaron had to say.  Of course, I write that as if there is no way I would have made that mistake.  And I know that there is a good chance I would have made the same mistake.  How many times have we failed to listen when God was speaking to us?

I use 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 Aaron’s staff turned into a snake, the Pharaoh’s magicians were able to do the same thing, and Pharaoh was not impressed.  I suspect that some of the magicians took the fact that Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs as a bad omen.  Then when Aaron and Moses turned the water in the Nile to blood, Pharaoh’s magicians turned some water into blood.  I have long assumed that Pharaoh’s magicians accomplished this using something that Penn & Teller would do, some kind of trick.  However, when Aaron and Moses summoned frogs and then gnats, Pharaoh’s magicians recognized that something was going on that they could not duplicate, but Pharaoh refused to listen to them.  By this point, Pharaoh had become committed to his position and was unwilling to admit that he had been wrong and his people were willing to stand with him on that.  However, when Egyptian livestock suffered, but Israelite livestock did not followed by Egyptians breaking out with boils, but Israelites did not, the minds of the Egyptian people began to change.  Such that when Moses predicted that hail would soon fall killing every animal and every person who remained outside, many of the Egyptian nobles believed him and took action to protect their possessions.   We see in the account of the Plagues a lesson in how God deals with humanity.  The Egyptians, in the form of the Pharaoh, were doing wrong.  God warned them in small ways at first, but in steadily increasing disasters.  Pharaoh could have, at any point along the way, chosen to do the right thing, but he did not.  When we do wrong, God acts similarly.  He puts minor problems into our lives to call us to change our ways.  Those problems will get ever worse, but at any point we can turn to God, away from our sin, and things will stop getting worse, but if we do not change our ways we will experience calamity.

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

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.

It seems unlikely that Moses would have expected Aaron changing his staff into a snake to impress the Pharaoh and his court.  Moses would surely have been aware that many of Pharaoh’s advisers could duplicate that.  The fact that Aaron’s snake ate the snakes of the others probably disconcerted them and Aaron bringing that staff to each successive meeting was a reminder of that.  Aaron bringing his staff to successive meetings with Pharaoh would have highlighted one of two things: either the fact that Pharaoh’s advisers no longer had their staves, or that they had clearly used sleight of hand to turn their staves into snakes if they still had their staves.

I find it interesting how Pharaoh came to view the successive plagues as bearable, after they had been lifted.  Comparing Pharaoh’s actions to other negotiators in bad faith I have seen is instructive.  Pharaoh dismissed the staff turning into a snake and the water in the Nile turning to blood as tricks of no consequence.  These were both similar to things which Pharaoh’s advisers used to show divine support for Pharaoh’s edicts.  Then, when each of the successive plagues after that occurred Pharaoh was desperate to have them end.  However, when they did end, he dismissed the idea that Moses and Aaron had anything to do with them and decided that they had merely ended on their own.  On each occasion Pharaoh became more committed to not giving in to Moses’ demands (really, God’s demands, but Pharaoh would not have seen it that way).  We can easily, and correctly, view Pharaoh as the bad guy in these accounts, but we need to learn not to make the same mistake of going back on our promises to God when our time of desperation comes to an end.