The Ten Terrible, Terrific Plagues

“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.”  Exodus 10:20

I got personal with the plagues in the fifth grade. 

The project was a poster depicting the ten divine disasters brought on Egypt when Pharaoh refused to release God’s people.  The instructions insisted I divide a large piece of paper into the appropriate number of squares and illustrate each affliction.  Just as Moses received help from his brother during the exodus adventure, my sister aided her artistically-challenged sibling by outlining the gnats, flies, frogs, and locusts. (I did color the square portraying the darkness all by myself!)  As I admired my finished work showing the many horrors in ordered succession, I remember thinking, “Why didn’t Pharaoh just let them go?”

You would think he would have when the river churned with blood, frogs filled his bed, gnats matted in his eyes, flies buzzed in his ears, his cattle died and rotted, his skin blistered with painful boils, and trees, houses, and inhabitants were beaten and battered by hail followed by crawling, chomping locusts that infested his land before all was pitch-black dark for three whole days.  But he didn’t.  You would think that before the Lord struck down his firstborn son, Pharaoh would have gotten the hint that he was dealing with someone bigger, stronger, and better than he could ever fathom, but he didn’t.  Why?  Why didn’t Pharaoh just let them go?

It’s a very good question with a very clear answer—God.  Stated repeatedly in Exodus, we find the words, “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go”(Ex 10:20).  Pharaoh didn’t let the Israelites go because God wouldn’t let him.  God had a plan and purpose in the plagues, and nobody was leaving until He was done.

He let Pharaoh know such was so with a message—“By now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power”(Ex 9:15).

God wanted Egypt to know that “there is no one like me in all the earth”(Ex 9:14).  He wanted Israel to know that “I am the Lord”(Ex 10:2).  He wanted the kids and grandkids of those being delivered to know “how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them”(Ex 10:2). And wanted all alive to know of His glory and power “that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth”(Ex 9:16).

As a later and even more powerful king named Nebuchadnezzar would inform the world, “God does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the people of earth”(Dan 4:35).  And as if he knew we would wonder if such is fair and fine, he continued with the assuring reminder, “Everything God does is right and all his ways are just”(Dan 4:37).  So the next time a frog hops by or a gnat gets in your eye, don’t be afraid—be amazed by a God who uses all kinds of things in all kinds of ways to help us and others know who He is.

The Ten Plagues are much more than a story of a stubborn Pharaoh.  They are the truth of a sovereign God, and though that can be hard to show (especially on a poster), it’s delightful to know!