Unraveling Creation: The Hidden Meaning of the Ten Plagues of Egypt
Last week we started looking at how Moses was called out of his work as a shepherd to be lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. You can read that here:
Today I want to focus on exactly how God chose to save Israel. We see that he does so through the 10 plagues on Egypt. Between Exodus 3 and Exodus 12, there is a repeating cycle: Moses would go to Pharaoh and announce that God would send a plague over Egypt. Pharaoh would harden his heart and make life worse for the Israelites. God then sends the plague, Pharaoh lets the Israelites go, but then would change his mind last minute.
This cycle is repeated for each plague, and each time Israel ends up worse off, still stuck in Egypt. But before we pick up the story in Exodus 12, we have to remember that the 10 plagues sent to Egypt weren’t just random events, or randomly chosen plagues. The account of the 10 plagues is part of a much bigger Biblical story. The 10 plagues were in fact the very undoing of creation.
Let me explain:
Plague 1: Water Becomes Blood
After God had made the heaven’s and the Earth in the creation account one of the first things he did was to separate the water. He separated the “sky water”, from the “ground water”, and gathered the ground water into the seas. Now here in the first plague, God tells Aaron to stretch out his staff over the water of Egypt. He in so doing he uses the exact same word for water as for the water gatherings given in Genesis 1. It is these gathered water bodies that will become blood. God is making a point – he is telling Pharaoh he can change the very nature of reality if he wants to. He can “ungather”" the water he had gathered, he can transform it however he wants. He is the God who made the world and he can unmake it if he wants to.
Plague 2, 3 and 4: Frogs, Gnats and Flies
Frogs are water creatures who live in rivers and water bodies. I realise of course that frogs are in fact amphibians, but they need water to live and in the thought of the ancient people they were associated with water habitats. Gnats on the other hand are creatures that teem on the land. Flies in the ancient mind were associated with the air – they teem on in the sky.
In sending these specific creatures: those that teem in the water, those that teem on the land and those that teem in the sky, God is making a point. He controls the water spaces, the land spaces and the sky spaces. The order that existed in these spaces becomes disorderly. Disorder is what happens when you stand against God. The water creatures (frogs) left their water and now infect people’s homes. The land creatures (gnats) have left the land and now infect people’s skin. The sky creatures (flies) have left the sky and now infect everything.
Plague 5: The plague of pestilence which kills off the domestic animals
In Genesis 2:18-20 God specifically gives livestock to Adam. This was part of Adam’s job – to look after the Earth and work it. That work included looking after the domesticated animals. In plague 5, God takes away the livestock he had given to humankind. The point is this: if you rebel against God, even your work will unravel.
Plague 6: The plague of boils
For us to understand this properly, we need to realise that in both the ancient Egyptian and the Israelite mind, boils on the skin make you ritualistically unclean. What this meant was that you could not go into the temple to worship God. This meant that you were cut off from God. Now when God had made Adam and Eve, he made them to be in a perfect relationship with him. In sending boils as the 6th plague, God is making the point that because Egypt was rebelling against him, they could not be in his presence. The very purpose for which they had been created, to be in a perfect relationship with him, was now impossible because of their uncleanness.
Plague 7 and 8: Hail and Locusts
Remember back in the creation account in Genesis 1, God created through a pattern: He would first create a space, and then he would fill the space with the things made for that space. So we read this in Genesis 1:12
Genesis 1:12 CSB
12 The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
In plague 7 and 8 we have the exact opposite thing happening.
Exodus 10:15 CSB
15 They [the locusts] covered the surface of the whole land so that the land was black, and they consumed all the plants on the ground and all the fruit on the trees that the hail had left. Nothing green was left on the trees or the plants in the field throughout the land of Egypt.
The very spaces that God had created in the creation were undone in the plagues he sent on Egypt.
Plague 9: Darkness
Day one of the creation account is where God made light and dark. Darkness is a direct answer to the first day of creation. He unmakes the very light Egypt needs to live.
Plague 10: Death of the firstborn
The 10th plague is the death of the firstborn throughout Egypt. When God finished creating the earth he specifically “breathed life” into Adam.
Genesis 2:7 tells us: “Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being”.
When life is taken from the firstborn in Egypt, God is contrasting the firstborn of all creation. God can breathe in life to make something a living being. Or he can take the breath of life away. He is the Lord.
The point
The 10 plagues are not just punishments that God meted out against a rebellious pharaoh. They are a lesson to everyone on Earth. Rebellion against God will never go well for you. When you sin, when you walk away from God, when you chose your own way or when you reject God as the God of the universe you will be unmade. God was still being gracious even to Pharaoh in sending the plagues. Pharaoh’s rebellion meant that God could have unmade him and Egypt altogether, but the unmaking was only partial. When you and I rebel against God, we will be unmade. It might not happen instantly, it may not happen completely in this life, but it will happen.
Unless of course, God provides a way out of our unmaking… He does – but more on that next week.