Exodus 9:1–7
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We live in an age that prides itself on its sophistication, an age that looks back on the account of the plagues in Egypt as a collection of primitive fireside stories. At best, they are moral fables for children; at worst, they are the mythological ramblings of an ancient tribe. The plagues are not a random assortment of unfortunate natural disasters. You either bow to Yahweh or you declare yourself His rival. Pharaoh, puffed up in his own imagined divinity, chooses the latter. He does so by dismantling the Egyptian pantheon, god by god, pillar by pillar. The plague on the Nile was an attack on Hapi and Osiris, the gods of the river. The plague of frogs was an attack on Heqet, the frog-headed goddess of fertility. And now, in our text, we come to the fifth plague, a direct assault on the bedrock of Egypt's wealth and worship: their livestock.