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Throughout my ministry I’ve often heard people say that they believe that the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament are not the same God. Their line of thinking goes that if Jesus is the clearest self revelation of God that God has given and Jesus is so loving, then how does one square that with a God who plaques people as we see here in Exodus with the ten plaques against Egypt. Did God not care about the innocents of Egypt who suffered as he set about the utter destruction of the Egyptian economy and its ability to be a world power that culminated with the death of the first born of everything in Egypt, people and livestock.
I’m not going to deny the validity of that critique of the way God conducted himself in ancient times as attested in the Old Testament. It is a difficult thing to square to say in one breath that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whomsoever follows him faithfully will have a life-giving relationship with God and not perish and then in the next breath say that this same God so loved his people that he delivered them from those who oppressed them by means plaques and even killing their firstborn children. There is some dissonance there. It’s like expecting a proper chord on a musical instrument and winding up with a sound that would even make a jazz aficionado wince.
But there are times when we just need to step back, take off the sandals of our sense of righteous indignation and our desire to pass judgement on God, and realize that we are standing on the holy ground of the fact that God is God and we are not. After all, let us humbly admit that when we ourselves start pretending to be gods, it is authentic human community suffers and things like slavery, economic oppression, and pandemics result. So, let’s just let God be God and have a deeper look at what was going on with these plagues other than just saying God is an evil ogre who plagues people.
Well, at the heart of the account of the plagues is an observation that we today will have difficulty seeing because we don’t live in ancient Egypt and are unfamiliar with the gods of Egypt. If we lived back then, we would appreciate that by these plagues the God of Israel was disarming some of the most powerful gods that the Egyptians believed in and worshipped to ensure their economic stability and national identity and preserve their way of life. In order to set his people free from Egyptian oppression, God had to demonstrate to the Egyptians who the true God is because their idolatry, particularly their devotion to the man Pharaoh, was the cause of oppression in Egypt. Let us not forget that as a result the political genius of an Israelite forefather named Joseph, Pharaoh actually owned everything and everybody in Egypt. Everybody in Egypt was under obligation to Pharaoh. God was putting an end to that. So, let’s have a look at Moses’s confrontations with Pharaoh and how theses plagues were the means by which God disarmed and defaced the gods of Egypt.
Moses went to Pharaoh and the first thing he did was to demonstrate his God-given authority by having Aaron throw his staff down on the ground where it became a serpent and then be able to pick it up again. This was actually an affront to the Egyptian goddess Wadjyt. She was the patroness, the protector, of Pharaoh and the Nile Delta. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of a cobra jutting out of Pharaoh’s headdress. That’s Wadjyt. She protected Pharaoh and the most fertile part of Egypt. That Aaron could throw down his staff, have it turn into a serpent like Wadjyt, and then pick it up again demonstrated Moses and Aaron and their God had power over her. Pharaoh’s magicians could do that too. When they did, Aaron’s staff/serpent ate theirs. The end result is that great goddess Wadjyt wound up looking like a magician’s plaything. Everybody had power over her especially the God of Israel. Pharaoh and the Nile Delta now had no patron goddess to call on for protection.
So came the first plague. Moses turned the water of the Nile, literally all the water in Egypt, into blood. The Egyptians relied on the waters of the Nile for fish and as their agricultural lifeblood. It’s flooding restored fertility to the land and they used its water for irrigation. No Nile meant no agriculture, no fish, no drinking water. God turned the very life of Egypt into blood, all the fish died, and the place began to stink. By this plague, the LORD obliterated the Egyptian god Hapi, who was believed to control the Nile. Yet, Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he would not let God’s people go.
Next, God plagued Egypt with frogs. Frogs were the symbol of the goddess Heqt, whom the Egyptians believed to be the protector of women in childbirth. Usually, an abundance of frogs was believed to be a good sign of human fertility, but in this case things got extremely weird. The LORD covered the Egyptians with frogs. Frogs were in their courtyards, in their houses, in their beds. Pharaoh begged Moses to pray the LORD to take them away. Moses did and the land and houses were full of dead frogs and it stank – so much for the power of Heqt. Again, Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he would not let God’s people go.
Next, depending on your translation God plagued Egypt with lice (or gnats) and then with flies. He covered the people and animals with lice and then covered the land with flies. By these two plagues of insects God showed his power over the Egyptian god Khepri, whom they believed made the sun cross the sky. The Egyptians pictured Khepri as a dung beetle rolling the sun across the sky. (If it were me, I would have skipped the bugs and just covered the land in poo, but I’m not God.) Again, Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he would not let God’s people go.
God then struck the livestock in Egypt with disease; horses, cattle, donkeys, camels, sheep. All the livestock died. By this plague God defeated the Egyptian god Apis. Apis was always pictured as a bull, which was the symbol of strength and fertility, particularly the power and virility of Pharaoh. Again, Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he would not let God’s people go.
God’s next plague was to afflict both humans and animals alike with boils that could not be healed by the medicine and magic of the Egyptians. By this, God showed his power over the Egyptian gods that people called on for healing – Sekhmet, Imhotep, and Isis. Again, Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he would not let God’s people go.
Then God showed his power over the god of the sky, Nut and the god of the crop, Seth. God sent down hail that flattened trees and everything growing in the fields. Then, he covered the land and filled their houses with locusts who ate up everything the hail didn’t destroy. Agriculture in Egypt was obliterated. Again, Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he would not let God’s people go.
God then covered the land in a thick darkness that lasted for three days. The darkness was so thick the people could not move around and were in essence frozen in place. By this, the LORD removed light from Egypt and showed himself greater than the greatest of the Egyptian gods, Ra, the sun God. Still, Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he would not let God’s people go. It is amazing how ego – believing oneself to be a god – and addiction to wealth and power can get a hold on a person. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be the billionaire President of the United States. The temptation to act like a god must be incredible.
The last plague, the death of the firstborn of Egypt. To kill the firstborn son in a family, particularly the firstborn of a national leader, was to declare that their dynastic line was cut off. This is why it was so often the case in the ancient world that when one king conquered another he so often killed the sons particularly the firstborn in front of the decimated king. In the case of Pharaoh this meant he could not pass his “Pharaoh power” on to another generation. Moreover, the Pharaohs believed themselves to be the earthly representation of the god Horus, the strongest of the earthly gods, the god who gave kings their power. This plague ended any political power Pharaoh had and brutally ensured this particular Pharaoh’s dynasty would end. Finally, Pharaoh’s hard heart broke with the death of his firstborn son and he let God’s people go. Yet, Pharaoh’s heart hardened one more time and he pursued the Israelites with his army of chariots to the Red Sea and God drowned him and his army, all the military power of Egypt there in the Red Sea.
So, these plagues were how God disarmed and debunked Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. This was necessary because idolatry, the worship of false gods and particularly devotion to the man Pharaoh who believed himself to be a god, was the source of oppression in Egypt, particularly of God’s people Israel. Political power, economic power and wealth, and military power are so often if not always rooted in idolatry. The consequence of worshipping the idols of wealth, economic power, political power, and military power will always be human community, that is supposed to in the image God, being marred by poverty, disease, debt, and slavery.
You know, since this COVID-19 pandemic began, I have occasionally had people bring up to me their musings that this might be a plague sent from God to punish humanity for its sins. I have generally sidestepped the question because in my experience people are not willing to sit and be my captive audience for about an half an hour as I ramble out my thoughts as I am doing to you folks today. I usually just say that as far as I understand it, this pandemic is 100% the product of human lifestyle. Human lifestyle has been and will continue to be factor number one in the origination and spread of this virus.
The lifestyle components I look to, that I blame, as the main factors are our idolatrous unconstrained pursuits of wealth and power. To those I would add the sub-components of human disregard for and encroachment upon wild environments for economic gain, the jet-set lifestyle, human pride reflected in leaders believing themselves all-knowing and all-powerful, a general citizenship also believing themselves to be all-knowing and all-powerful, a global information system readily used for propagating lies, and a pervading religious-like belief that gaining wealth is why we exist. Put all that together and you have a pandemic.
One of my New Testament professors in seminary, Dr. Paul Achtemeier, used to say, “The consequence of sin is having to live with the consequences of sin.” Applying that to our situation, it is obvious that we humans cannot go about in an uncontrolled pursuit of wealth all the while aspiring to a god-like status for ourselves without it coming back to bite us on the ass. I think that’s what the Apostle Paul meant in Galatians chapter six when he wrote: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers” (Gal. 6:7-10).
I don’t think we need to blame God for this pandemic. We should not say God is plaguing us us. We’ve only ourselves to blame for this. We’ve made idols out of wealth and power and continue to aspire to be gods ourselves. We may ask why doesn’t God wave his almighty hand and make it go away before the global death toll reaches into the billions. I could answer that question bluntly by saying we can tell a two year old child not to pull the cats tail, but its not until that cat has drawn blood that the child will understand why. But that’s simplistic and totally ignores how God really is involved in all this in a very hands-on way.
It’s better for me to say that I believe, indeed I know, that God is waving his almighty hand in the midst of this pandemic through people who are sowing seeds of hope through acts of compassion; like wearing a mask where and when asked. God speaks through moments of insight and inspiration to the intuition of scientists working on a vaccine and medical workers innovating new means of treatment. There are a lot of people taking advantage of this opportunity to do good in the midst of this world that has turned on us like an angry cat because we have indeed been pulling its tail with our selfish pursuits. I believe a harvest of good can result from this pandemic. God is waving his hand to make it go away but God is doing so in cooperation with us through Spirit-given inspiration and human ingenuity and compassion. A better world can and should result from this, but…we humans need to lay aside our idols. Therein lies the challenge. Amen.
