Exodus 7:8–13
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We come now to the first great confrontation in the court of Pharaoh. We must disabuse ourselves of the modern, sanitized notion that this is a simple morality play about freeing an oppressed people. This is a collision of pantheons, a war of gods. On one side stands Pharaoh, the incarnate god-king of Egypt, the supposed master of the cosmos, surrounded by the full might of his state-sponsored religion. On the other side stand two elderly Hebrew shepherds, armed with nothing but a wooden stick and a word from the one true God, Yahweh. This is not a fair fight, and that is precisely the point. The modern secularist, if he bothers to read this at all, sees a contest of primitive superstitions, a magic show in the Bronze Age. He smugly assumes he has outgrown all this nonsense.