Exodus 9:8-34

Hey, friends, thanks for being with us today.
Sorry about not being live.
We will be back
live tomorrow, but grateful that you would join us today as we continue through Exodus.
We find ourselves in the eighth chapter of verse 9 as we continue to look at the plagues
that are afflicting Egypt that God is sending in punishment and to kind of force the Pharaoh to relent.
Today, I think in the sixth and seventh plague,
we see the plagues themselves
are interesting, but some of the changes in the formula that the stories are being told
in is also really interesting,
Michael.
We mixed things up a little bit today,
and I think, you know, whenever we do that,
it’s always, it gives us something to kind of reflect on.
Yeah, let’s jump right in,
Clint.
All right, verse 8 here.
“Then the Lord said to Moses,
‘Erin, take a handful of suet from
the kiln and let Moses throw it in the air in the sight of the Pharaoh.
It shall become a fine dust all over the land of Egypt and shall cause festering boils on humans and
animals throughout the whole land.’ They took the suet from the kiln,
they stood before the Pharaoh,
and Moses threw it in the air and caused festering boils on humans and animals.
The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils,
for the boils afflicted
the magicians as well as the Egyptians.
But the Lord hardened the heart of the Pharaoh,
and He would not listen to them,
just as the Lord had spoken to Moses.”
So a couple of interesting things here.
This is the first plague we’ve seen that involved
something other than the staff.
Here, there is a prop of sorts,
the suet from the kiln
ashes that are thrown into the air.
They evidently multiply, and whatever it is that they land on,
festers with painful sores and boils.
The magicians show up again,
they’re back in the story after a hiatus,
and this affects them as well.
Interestingly enough, it affects the animals.
If you remember the plague before this,
all of the farm animals, stock animals,
were reported to be killed.
So this is either replenishing of the animals,
maybe this is wild animals,
or maybe at times the Bible just doesn’t keep,
you know,
it’s not really concerned about
detail at that level at times.
And so there are various ways to deal with that,
and you can choose
whichever one is most comfortable to you.
The point here,
these are painful,
these afflict
the person.
These may be, I mean, flies landed on people,
gnats landed on people.
This is the first one I think we’ve seen,
Michael, where there’s physical pain for the individuals as well.
Yeah, right.
So it’s a continuing clint of that ratcheting up as the plagues get closer
and closer to home,
you know, to use that analogy.
The thing worth noting is the magicians as
sparrrs with God has very much dropped out of the equation.
They weren’t even mentioned in the last
few plagues.
What isn’t interesting here is that they’re not recorded as speaking to Pharaoh,
but instead they’re in the room and it hits them so bad.
They’re sort of these background characters
that hits them so bad,
they can’t even stand.
They can’t even be present in the midst of the affliction that’s happening.
Once again, another form of judgment upon the wisest people in the
room, the tricksters, the one who’ve been able to,
you know, keep pace for some time,
it seemed, and then now they’re way out of field.
The other thing worth noting here is this idea that they’re
carrying in the soot that comes from the kiln,
our commentators have pointed out,
that this kiln may be exactly a reference to a byproduct of the people of Israel’s work,
that fundamentally this soot is coming off of the backs of the Israelites who are burning
and creating this industrial production group.
And so there may be some symbolism in the fact
that here carrying that right into Pharaoh’s presence,
throwing that into the errors,
in some ways an affliction that comes as a direct result of Pharaoh exacting that toll upon the people.
Whether it’s true or not,
another interesting way that the text may be
showing us of the just desserts that’s happening here.
Yeah, and skin diseases in general are treated in the community with a lot of fear.
As we get into Exodus,
we’ll see even some laws,
if you were to read into numbers in Leviticus,
you’d see lots of them about skin conditions,
about when there are these kind of sores separating
people from the community so that they don’t spread.
So not only is this a physically
painful plague,
but there is a sense of communal punishment,
there’s a sense of isolation,
there’s a sense of divine justice in this that we get echoes of in some of the legal stuff in
the rest of the Old Testament.
So this is clearly a stepping up,
a ramping up of some of the pain
that is being inflicted.
And here we go back to this formula,
Michael, we’ve seen it, we talked about it a little bit yesterday.
If you haven’t caught yesterday’s,
it may be worth picking up
on some of that discussion.
But here in verse 12,
we get explicitly told,
“The Lord hardened the
heart of the Pharaoh.” So we’ve seen this,
we’ve seen Pharaoh hardened his heart,
we’ve seen the heart of Pharaoh was hardened.
Here,
it specifically says that God does that.
And we’re going to get
some unpacking of that in the next narrative of the following plague,
but I think it is worth
pointing out that here,
the language is specifically God doing it to the Pharaoh.
So just to give you a short little aside,
clearly, if you’re going to do some research on this plague,
scholars are going to posit many guesses as to what these boils are scientifically.
If a medical doctor got dropped into the middle of Egypt,
what would they diagnose is a question that
biblical scholars have engaged with.
The short version on that is that no one knows.
Now,
I submit to you that that’s not the point.
The point is not to give us a medical diagnosis
of exactly what is happening to the people of Egypt nor how it was delivered,
you know, in what way it sort of was introduced.
That is a 21st century medical mind,
which is not unimportant
necessarily, but it’s not intended by the text.
And I think the point here is that,
Clint, you began it this way,
and I think it’s a good way to bring some conclusion to this
particular plague is just to say that we have now crossed the line from the animals.
You know, previously it was nuisances,
and now it touched the animals last plague.
Now it’s touched humans directly,
so much so that the magicians themselves are unable to even stand in the presence of Moses,
Yalom, Pharaoh, and the presence of God.
And that is this ramping up tension that we’re supposed to
keep track of as this text goes on.
Yeah, I agree 100%, Michael.
It’s always tempting to try and
imagine some natural cause involved in this and maybe God working through that natural cause, but
this is really a story about God’s supernatural intervention in his people’s struggle, in his
slavery,
and on their behalf and to their defense.
So we move then to the seventh plague.
This is long, so I’m going to jump around a little bit.
God tells Moses, “Get up and go talk to the Pharaoh.”
We are in
verse 14 here.
Let me start there.
“For this time I will send all my plagues upon you
yourself and your officials,
and upon your people,
that you may know there is no one like me in all
the earth.” And this is a very interesting verse,
verse 15.
“For by now I could have stretched out
my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence,
and you would have been cut off from the earth.
But this is why I let you live,
to show you my power,
to make my name resound
through all the earth.
You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go.
Tomorrow at this time I will cause the heaviest hail to fall that the earth has ever seen.
Send therefore and have your livestock and everything you have in open field brought to a secure place.
Every human or animal that is in the open field is not brought under shelter
will die when the hail comes.
The officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord hurried
their slaves and their livestock off to a secure place.
Those who did not regard the word of the
Lord left their slaves and livestock in the open field.” So again,
a twist on the formula.
We have the pronouncement of the plague.
Here we have an explanation of why God continues to do these plagues
instead of just dealing with.
He says, “I could just destroy all of you,
but I’ve done this so
that my name may be proclaimed,
that my people may have a reputation,
that the world, the earth may know that I work,
I go to war on their behalf,
and that you will know,
as you continue to refuse
to let my people go,
that you will know that I am the Lord.” And then the other thing we haven’t seen,
I don’t believe, Michael, is this time there’s a warning.
There’s a sort of
a clause to get out
of some of this.
So God warns them through Moses that this hail is coming,
and if they don’t hide
their livestock, which again, we don’t know where the livestock’s come from because we saw all the
livestock killed a couple of plagues ago,
but it has been replenished evidently,
and whatever it is
and whoever has it,
if they don’t hide it,
it’s going to be destroyed.
And fascinatingly,
the officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord do that,
and others, even in spite of the plagues,
don’t.
So some see the plagues as the evidence of what God continues to do,
and they respond to the warning,
others don’t,
and they of course will be vulnerable to the plague.
So, yeah, Clint, I believe now there’s just more words in this plague,
number one, so there’s more for us to really dig into.
I think one of the things that we’re finding now that we enter into
this seventh plague is some nuance thrown in about how those people who have not been mentioned in
the previous plagues, these officials who clearly are having conversations because the text goes
so far as to say that they fear the Lord.
There are some in that Egyptian circle whose ears have
been bent at this point who are willing to listen,
who have a differing opinion,
and so there’s clearly a diversity that we’ve not really seen on the Egyptian side up to this point.
I think that’s really, really interesting, and it makes it clear that God’s conflict is chiefly with the Pharaoh.
And I think another way that this is really,
really helpful is that God literally goes
out of God’s way to be explicit with us about the reasoning for that.
This idea here, verse 15, I could have struck out my hand,
struck your people,
you have been cut off.
God’s saying,
you know, this is not a contest.
How many times have we said that already in the midst of these plagues, Clint?
But then we move on with the reason,
verse 16.
I think this is just so helpful
to give us context now that we’re this far into the plagues.
This is why I’ve let you live,
okay?
Let’s sit back and explore why,
to show you my power and to make my name resound throughout all of the earth.
This is now the frame that becomes an essential tool for us to understand what’s
happening in these stories.
Things that have been implicit,
and we’ve pointed them out as we’ve gone
along about how this is a showdown between Pharaoh and God, is now explicit.
The why is to show Pharaoh
God’s power, to make it clear God is the one in charge,
Pharaoh is not, and then ultimately to make the name of God,
the name, by the way, which we should not miss,
was given to Moses in
that revelation moment at the burning bush.
This is within this story arc.
This is within Exodus.
All of these two purposes are what are intended by God’s action here between Pharaoh and between God.
And Clint,
I think it’s important that we see that so that we recognize that this pushes out
those other interpretations or those other focuses we might bring to the text.
The thing like when we were talking about the medical emphasis that you might have in the previous plague,
we shouldn’t do that.
Why?
Because this is the purpose.
The purpose is for God’s name to be made great.
The purpose is to show that Pharaoh has learned of God’s power,
and those two things
have not yet been sufficiently accomplished in the story,
so it will continue.
It’s helpful when the text literally tells us the why,
and here we have it explicit.
Yeah, and I think that becomes even more clear as we continue through this,
particularly in the aftermath of the plague.
So here we have this next section,
we see the plague.
The hail, like, has never been seen in Egypt.
Fire comes down upon the earth.
We’re 22 and following here,
and I won’t read it, but the hail strikes down everything in the open field.
The humans, the animals, it all strikes down all the plants, the crops.
And then verse 26 following,
this gets very interesting,
“Only in the land of Goshen,
where the Israelites were,
there was no hail.” We’ve seen this before,
a separation.
But listen to the aftermath here.
“Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron,
and said to them,
‘This time I have sinned.
The Lord is in the right.
I and my people are in the wrong.
Pray to the Lord.
Enough of God’s thunder and hail.
I will let you go.
You need stay no
longer.’ Moses said to him,
‘As soon as I’ve gone out of the city,
I’ll stretch my hand to the Lord.
The thunder will cease.'” It does.
We get an interesting note in verse 30 here,
“But as for you and your officials,
I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.
Now the flax and the barley
belt were not ruined,
for they were late in coming up.
So Moses left Pharaoh,
went out of the city,
and stretched his hand to the Lord,
and the hail ceased,
and the rain no longer pounded down upon
the earth.” Verse 34,
“When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had ceased,
he sinned once more and hardened his heart,
he and his officials.
So the heart of the Pharaoh was hardened,
and he would not let the Israelites go,
just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.” So
I think this is by far the most developed after report,
after incident report that we’ve seen.
So Pharaoh utters the words,
“This time I have sinned.
My people and I are in the wrong.
I will let you go.” And we get told there’s,
it’s not total destruction on Egypt.
There’s still some crops that are going to come up.
I guess in case we’re wondering what happens from here.
But again,
and the point here is,
when Pharaoh saw that the plague had ceased,
here we get this language,
“He hardened his heart.” You know,
again, we’ve talked about that.
But here, it goes back on him,
“He hardened his heart,
and he would not let the Israelites go.” Again,
he wavers in the release of the pain of the plague.
He now says, “No, I won’t do it.” Changes his mind
again, adds to his sin.
He confesses his sin.
He sins again.
The text tells us that.
“Sinned one more time by hardening his heart.” Michael,
this plague I think is interesting because
though there are some parallels of various parts of this in Genesis,
this sounds a lot like the
Genesis text we read a while back for Sodom and Gomorrah.
The idea of fire,
of punishment falling from the sky,
the idea that it only fell in specific places, punished specific people.
I don’t
know how direct the tie is,
but I think anybody who is a Scripture reader,
Scripture assumes that maybe that would ring a bell, I think.
Yeah.
Well, certainly because in that ancient mentality of the heavens stretching above you,
the idea that things
falling from the heavens are things coming from God directly, punishment raining down.
And Clint,
what I think is interesting about
Pharaoh now is that his
weakness has become painfully clear.
There’s almost,
to use modern language,
a kind of
schizophrenic multiple personality kind of thing being displayed here that the authors or writers
of this would have never used that language.
That wouldn’t have been a way that they would
have described this, but you notice how there’s so much yo-yoing here.
There’s confession even, to use that sin language is substantial.
And then at the backside,
the narrator tells us,
“Pharaoh sins again.” So right off the lips of Pharaoh is a confession of sin,
but then the narrator is reminding us as a reader,
“No, no, no, no, no.
That wasn’t a wholehearted confession,
or it wasn’t a confession that would stick.” Because look,
he sins again when he keeps the
people away from their just duty to worship God.
It is clear,
of course, with the increasing severity of these plagues that this is ramping up,
but there’s also an increasing fragility
of Pharaoh and of his ability to stand in the midst of these severe plagues.
And I just think
maybe a lesson that we can walk away from here,
because there is something, Clint,
there’s something apocalyptic about this.
And by that I mean,
there is a lesson being taught here,
and since there’s a lesson being taught,
we should remember that the increasing severity here
does show us the extreme length to prove the point,
that the extreme length that God’s going
to have to go to prove God’s power should prove the point to us that God wants it clear that God’s
power is infinite.
It’s beyond human ability to understand.
So that needs admitted.
But I will also point out that as this story continues,
we are
seeing something about the human heart.
Yes, this is about Pharaoh.
Yes, this is about God proving God’s strength.
But anyone who’s lived
for some time, and certainly anyone who’s lived through the lens of faith,
has experienced Clint moments where people double down.
They double down on their poor choice.
They double down on
their motivation, which lacks character.
They double down on the lie and not the truth.
This lives in so many ways.
One lesson that comes from this is that we as humans are prone to hardening
our hearts.
And I don’t know if we should put ourselves in the shoes of hail killing all the livestock.
Whether this would be the choice you or I make is not the point.
The point is, in the face of an all-powerful God,
there may be something deeply human in doubling down against God.
And that’s certainly what we’re seeing Pharaoh do as it continues.
Yeah, I think if anybody ever tried to mislead their parents,
or if as a parent or grandparent,
or the teacher, leader of some sort,
you had a young person who was trying to deceive you.
There is that moment where you say,
“Are you sticking with this?
You’re digging in?
You’re going to stay with it,
and the choice has to be made.” And consistently, that choice here.
And I do think,
though there is this language of the Lord acting upon the Pharaoh,
I do think the Scripture is also very clear that Pharaoh is at fault here for his own decisions.
He doesn’t get off the hook because of the idea that God is sort of toying with him or punishing Egypt.
This is on the Pharaoh that he says
these words, whether he means them or not,
whether he’s genuine or not when he says them,
they don’t ultimately express who he is and what he
does.
He backs off,
and he goes back to the stubbornness.
He goes back to the disobedience.
He goes back to this stance against God and a refusal to give in to God’s will.
And there’s something deeply human in that.
I mean, this is a tough story to mine that out of because it’s the
Pharaoh and because this is so dramatic and supernatural.
But there’s something deeply
human in here regarding our stubbornness and our unwillingness to give in when God
presents us with an opportunity or even a consequence.
Yeah, it’s my parting word here.
I’ll be brief with this.
I just want to point out,
we’ve talked about this mystery of the hardening.
I want to just make it clear as we end here today.
Verse 34,
“He sent,” he being Pharaoh,
“and hardened his heart,” so here we have the idea
of he’s doing the hardening.
But verse 35, “So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened.”
I want just within two sentences in our English translations,
it is clear that there’s a mysterious
connection between those two things.
So no matter what side you come down on,
I just want to make
it clear there’s good biblical evidence for us to not know.
And if that makes you uncomfortable,
I understand it’s sometimes challenging to come to the Bible when the Bible makes it clear there’s
a lot of things happening,
and we’re not going to understand it fully.
But I want to just push
back against any simplification of this.
I think the text goes out of its way to make it clear.
He hardens his heart,
and his heart is hardened,
and the way in which God is active,
the way he’s active, that’s kept from us,
and that’s intentional.
So I just want,
the text makes that clear, Clint.
Yeah,
and you know, Michael, I like to think in those moments that rather than giving us
maybe two sides and we have to pick one,
that maybe the Scripture is showing us
some mysterious way that both things are true,
that when we are in our stubborn moment,
we are not defying somehow and working outside of God’s control,
and yet we are still responsible
for our unwillingness to relent or to receive God’s direction.
And so I think I like the idea
that it’s not as simple as He did it or it was done to Him.
Maybe somehow in the mystery of God’s
action, both of those things are happening.
And I can’t imagine why the Scripture goes out of its
way to say it differently so many times.
Gee whiz, it sounds like a guy who’s doing a study of the Westminster Catechism,
which if you made this far,
maybe you want to go check that out.
Hey friends, thanks for being with us here today.
It’s a pleasure to be with you.
We will be with you live again tomorrow,
but until then, be blessed. Thanks.