Exodus: The Significance of The Plagues
What’d I Miss?
As we continue our look at the book of Exodus, we would be remiss if we did not talk about the freedom of God’s people and how this came to be. Many people know of the plagues that God used to ultimately lead Pharaoh into setting the Israelites free but very seldom do we take into consideration the significance of these plagues. Why did God use certain tactics that He did? How did God show Israel His glory after such trying times in this story? These are questions that aren’t often asked when looking at this amazing time in history when ironically, these aspects are the most significant parts of the story. As Scripture Central says, “Understanding the ancient Egyptian context not only explains the specific plagues and their sequence, but also their cumulative effect, which was to throw the natural order into total chaos.” Understanding these plagues and God’s intent is much more important than seeing these plagues in an action-packed Hollywood movie, as cool as this scene may seem. With this in mind, let’s break down these plagues and their meaning.
God’s Glory
For starters, we must see how God remains the God of Israel even while allowing His people to become slaves. The answer to this question is found right in Exodus 7 from God’s mouth Himself. Exodus 7:5 says, “Then the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I extend My hand over Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.” God’s intent in freeing Israel from slavery in such a dramatic fashion is to let the world know of His glory. The bigger the impossibilities, the more glory God is given when He overcomes them. Now is this the only reason why God let Israel become slaves? Of course not. A vast majority of this story can’t be told without noticing the disobedience to God from the Israelites and also the Egyptians. Although Israel is God’s chosen people, this doesn’t mean that they were sinless people. We certainly see this in the latter parts of this book as well. In fact, just one chapter earlier when God explained His intent to the Egyptians, we see God explain His intent to the Israelites. While God is speaking with Moses, He tells him in Exodus 6:5-6 “Furthermore I have heard the groaning of the sons of Israel, because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. “Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the labors of the Egyptians, and I will rescue you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.” We can clearly see that God heard His people in distress and decided to save them by remembering His covenant. However, this doesn’t answer the question of why God allowed the Israelites to be overcome by Egypt in the first place. The answer is found though at the end of this verse. God tells Moses to communicate to His people that He will redeem them with an outstretched arm and great judgments. In other words, the reason why God allowed all this to happen is the same for the Egyptians and the Israelites alike. And that reason is to show the world His glory. Of course, God could have prevented this slavery from ever happening, but then the people of God would have just become captive by some other sinful habit of their own. Rescuing Israel from one of the most evil powers that exists reveals God’s character not just to Israel, but to the very enemy as well.
10 Plagues, 10 gods
Furthermore, we ask why God chose these specific plagues. Why 10? And why so brutal? Couldn’t God have accomplished this task in a different way? Sure He could have, but then we’d miss the point of how He used these 10 plagues in the first place. One of the biggest reasons these plagues were used was to question the order and protection that Pharaoh actually provided for Egypt. If Pharaoh was viewed by his people as a god(and he was), then these plagues shouldn’t have mattered to him. If Pharaoh was a god, he simply could have gotten rid of these plagues. But he couldn’t. These plagues not only showed God’s greatness, but they exposed Pharaoh’s weakness. Even more so than this, the plagues not only tested Pharaoh’s character, but they tested the many gods that Egypt worshiped at the time as well. In fact, it has been noted that each of these 10 plagues tested the power of a particular god that Egypt served. From the insects, natural disasters, infections, and even death, many Egyptian gods were no doubt prayed to, and unable to stop what the one true God had in store. A full list of these plagues and which specific god they tested can be seen from Zondervan Academic here.
God’s glory is displayed for all of Egypt to see, not just in the might of the plagues, but in the falsehood and weakness of these Egyptian gods being exposed. This goal of God was clearly achieved when we see the response from not just Pharaoh, but from the rest of Egypt as well. Exodus 12:31-33 says, “Then he called for Moses and Aaron at night and said, “Rise up, get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel; and go, worship the LORD, as you have said. “Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go, and bless me also.” The Egyptians urged the people, to send them out of the land in a hurry, for they said, “We will all be dead.” The whole land of Egypt knew by the end of these plagues that there was truly one God who ruled over all and His glory was seen throughout each of these plagues. I pray that as you read through the rest of Exodus, you will see God’s purpose and intent in all of His actions, just as we did here with these famous 10 plagues.
Sources
[1] Blue Letter Bible. (n.d.). Blue Letter Bible. https://www.blueletterbible.org/
[2] ScriptureCentral. (2024, May 31). Why Were Particular Plagues Sent against Egypt? | ScriptureC. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-were-particular-plagues-sent-against-egypt
[3] Academic, Z. (2019, June 19). What the Bible tells us about the 10 plagues of Egypt. Zondervan Academic. https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/what-the-bible-tells-us-about-the-10-plagues-of-egypt
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