God displayed His power on behalf of His people, the Israelites, by sending ten plagues to Egypt. In the process, God validated Moses as His spokesman.
- In the first plague, Moses turned the water in the Nile River into blood (see Ex. 7:14-25). It’s “fish…died, and the river smelled so bad the Egyptians could not drink water from it. There was blood throughout the land of Egypt” (v. 21). Egypt’s magicians relied on their occult practices to perform a similar miracle.
- The second plague was a plague of frogs (see 8:1-15). Verse 6 says, “When Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.” The magicians also mimicked this miracle.
- In the third plague (see vv. 16-19), an infestation of gnats was horrendous: “All the dust of the earth became gnats throughout the land of Egypt” (v. 17). The magicians could not duplicate this supernatural event and tried to convince Pharaoh that Egypt had witnessed the work of “the finger of God” (v. 19).
- Flies covered Egypt in the fourth plague (see vv. 20-32). God caused “thick swarms of flies [to go] into Pharaoh’s palace and his officials’ houses. Throughout Egypt the land was ruined because of the swarms of flies” (v. 24). As he had before, Pharaoh responded in a hardhearted manner, refusing to let the Hebrews go.
- In the fifth plague, Egypt’s livestock died from a severe disease, but the livestock of the Israelites remained healthy (see 9:1-7). Again, “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not let the people go” (v. 7).
- In the sixth plague (see vv. 8-12), Moses threw furnace soot upward, “and it became festering boils on man and beast.… But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he did not listen to them [Moses and Aaron], as the LORD had told Moses” (vv. 10,12; see 4:21).”
- In the seventh plague, hail devastated Egypt (see 9:13-35): “The hail, with lightning flashing through it, was so severe that nothing like it had occurred in the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout the land of Egypt, the hail struck down everything in the field, both man and beast. The hail beat down every plant of the field and shattered every tree in the field. The only place it didn’t hail was in the land of Goshen where the Israelites were” (vv. 24-26).
- The eighth plague was in infestation of locusts (see 10:1-20). Moses and Aaron had warned Pharaoh that the locusts “will cover the surface of the land so that no one will be able to see the land. They will eat the remainder left to you that escaped the hail; they will eat every tree you have growing in the fields” (v. 5).
- Darkness enveloped Egypt in the ninth plague (see vv. 21-29). The Israelites, however, had daylight as usual.
- In the tenth and final plague, God demonstrated His power over life and death by taking the life of every firstborn Egyptian male, including the firstborn of servants and livestock. However, God instructed each Israelite family to slaughter a lamb and to smear its blood on the lentil and doorposts of their home. When God’s judgment came, God spared the firstborn in every home where the blood was displayed. Following this plague, Pharaoh finally let the Israelites go—although he would change his mind and pursue them after they left (see 11:1–14:31).
top image: 1823 painting by John Martin depicting the seventh plague, the plane of hail
Copyright © 2017 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations in this article have been taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.