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...

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 (...