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8:10 you will know that there is no one like the Lord our God: Once more the issue is highlighted (see 7:17). These events were not primarily about rescue, but about the nature of reality. Who was rescuing these people—one of the gods, or the one true God, the Lord?
8:1-15 The second plague was the plague of frogs (8:2). The Egyptians gave special reverence to amphibians because of their ability to live in two different worlds; Egyptians were deeply concerned with survival in the next world, after death. God showed that frogs have no special hold on life. This plague is sometimes said to have been a natural result of wh...
8:1-15 The second plague was the plague of frogs (8:2). The Egyptians gave special reverence to amphibians because of their ability to live in two different worlds; Egyptians were deeply concerned with survival in the next world, after death. God showed that frogs have no special hold on life. This plague is sometimes said to have been a natural result of whatever happened to make the Nile River uninhabitable. However, the extent of the plague was more than a natural result.
8:13 had predicted: Moses predicted that the plague would stop the next day; God predicted that Pharaoh would refuse to listen (see 8:15). The element of prediction is central to God’s lordship. God sees and controls the future; he is the Lord.
8:16-19 The third plague was the plague of gnats. The word translated “gnats” is very general. Technical Old Testament dictionaries often translate it as “vermin.” The English term “bugs” would come close. The whole land was infested with insects of one sort or another.
Moses
Moses Moses was the founding leader of Israel as a nation. God used Moses at a critical juncture in the history of his people. He was the prophet who received the law and mediated God’s covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai (Exod 19:3-6). He was also the first known writer of Scripture. The younger brother of Miriam and Aaron, Moses was born in Egypt under dangerous circumstances (Exod 1:15–2:2). The Egyptian pharaoh, fearing a rebellion, had decreed that all Hebrew boys be killed at birth. Moses’ mother, Jochebed, entrusted her infant son to God and set him afloat in the Nile in a reed basket. Pharaoh’s daughter found him and took him into the palace to raise as her own child (Exod 2:3-10). Little is known about Moses’ upbringing. Jewish tradition holds that he received both administrative and military training in Pharaoh’s household. When he was about forty years old, he killed an Egyptian to rescue a Hebrew slave, and then he fled to Midian (2:11-15; cp. Acts 7:23-29). There he rescued some young women who were being harassed as they watered their flocks. Their father (Jethro) invited him home. Moses married one of the women, Zipporah, and began a family as he cared for h...
genesis 43:32
exodus 5:1
exodus 7:16
exodus 7:17
exodus 8:1
exodus 8:2
exodus 8:15
exodus 8:20
The Plagues
The Plagues Rescuing the Hebrew people from oppression by the Egyptians was not the main purpose of the plagues. If that had been the case, one climactic miracle would have been sufficient. The real purpose of the plagues was to communicate who God is—to Israel, to Egypt, and to the surrounding nations. The Israelites had likely lost sight of who God was. They had lived for hundreds of years in Egypt, one of the most polytheistic cultures the world has ever known. Whatever the Israelites may have believed about God when they arrived in Egypt, they were certainly infected with the prevailing pagan views during their sojourn there (see Exod 32). The plagues revealed the Lord’s absolute superiority over everything in creation. These cataclysmic events were specifically aimed at elements the Egyptians revered and worshiped: 1. The Nile Turned to Blood (7:14-25): The Nile, revered as a god who gave Egypt life and fertility, became a bloody representation of death. 2. Frogs (8:1-15): The Egyptians revered frogs (represented by Heqet, frog-headed goddess of fruitfulness) as having the key of life beyond death. Now frogs filled the land with the stink of death. 3. Gnats (...