Tuesday, Sept. 17
Exodus 7:14 – 8:32 Read it here
To demonstrate his power, God brings a series of plagues on Egypt.
The way readers understand the plagues also depends on some of their presuppositions about how God works and how the Bible is written.
For some, the miraculous nature of the events is critically important and is a proof of God’s supernatural intervention in human affairs.
Others go to great lengths to explain the plagues as natural phenomena, imagining a major upstream flood which washed red dirt and toxins into the river, killing the fish and sending the frogs fleeing from their usual habitat. Then all the dead fish and frogs cause a plague of gnats and flies. Ultimately the “natural” explanations offered become so complex that they are as supernatural as the miracle explanation.
Here again I like to focus on what happens rather than wandering into unproductive speculation about how it came to be.
Repeatedly Pharaoh defies God, and things happen to wear him down. God has determined that his people will be freed; when one course fails, he’s ready to use another approach.
It’s interesting that the first plague is turning the Nile River into blood. While other water is also affected, it is impossible to overstate how important the Nile is to Egypt. It is the source of Egypt’s very life and existence. To stand up to a threat to the Nile shows how committed Pharaoh was resisting freedom for the slaves.
The main point here is Pharaoh’s hardness of heart, but we also have a contrast developing between the power of the gods the Egyptians worship and the true God who is guiding Moses. Even in that day the appeal of worship a god representing something familiar (like a river or the sun), was tempting to people, as it seems more approachable than the God who can’t even be pinned down with a name or image.
-Rev. Mark Fleming
Tuesday meditation
Proverbs 6:20-35
My son, keep your father’s command and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them always on your heart; fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you.
For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, and correction and instruction are the way to life, keeping you from your neighbor’s wife, from the smooth talk of a wayward woman. Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes. For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life. Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished.
People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. Yet if he is caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it costs him all the wealth of his house. But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself. Blows and disgrace are his lot, and his shame will never be wiped away. For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge. He will not accept any compensation; he will refuse a bribe, however great it is.
Prayer focus
Pray for protection from temptation, whether it is the desire for the wrong person or the desire for someone else’s god.