The Tenth Plague

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

And that night at midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn son of the prisoner in the dungeon.  Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed.  Pharaoh and all his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt.  There was not a single house where someone had not died.  Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron during the night.  “Get out!” he ordered.  “Leave my people—and take the rest of the Israelites with you!  Go and worship the Lord as you have requested.  Take your flocks and herds, as you said, and be gone. Go, but bless me as you leave.”  All the Egyptians urged the people of Israel to get out of the land as quickly as possible, for they thought, “We will all die!”  Exodus 12:29-33

Over the course of time from Moses’ first meeting with Pharaoh to deliver God’s message to let my people go, the Egyptian monarch moved from dismissive stubbornness to defeated sadness.  He was Pharaoh over the most powerful dynasty in the world, and he conceded defeat to the slaves he owned.  Considering the events of the 10 plagues, who could remain fixed in his own glory?  Pharaoh was pushed into the most uncomfortable tenuous corner.  There was no command he could issue with his own firstborn on the mortician’s table.

Most of the plagues are not uncommon, even in our day.  Pestilences and plagues are something every human faces in every era; we’ve just come through Covid-19, and what other age hasn’t dealt with similar challenges.  Famine caused by pests and weather are common also.  But the first and last of the plagues are the most pointed; the first should have been enough, and the last, too much.

Of the ten plagues (Blood, Frogs, Lice, Flies, Pestilence, Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness, Killing of the firstborn), the first plague of blood in the Nile, struck at Egypt’s religious beliefs.  The Nile river was Egypt’s source of food.  Turning it into blood was a horrifying demonstration of how vulnerable they were to having life crumble before them.  Pharaoh thought he was a god, but God was demonstrating how little divinity flowed through Pharaoh’s human veins. 

The next eight plagues were nuisances to Pharaoh, because they only affected Egypt’s people and resources.  But with each step closer to the tenth plague, Pharaoh’s stubbornness brought his people closer to the kind of unspeakable judgment which no Egyptian citizen could even imagine.  And then it happened!

The tenth plague, the death of firstborns in each Egyptian household, was connected to the first plague in the sense that there was blood.  Life is in the blood[1] according to Scripture, and blood in the Nile was a threat to the lives of Egyptian food sources, and the emptiness of their religious superstitions.  But it was a foretaste of the tenth plague, the lifeblood of their heritage.  As attested by the pyramids, the afterlife, and continued heritage of Pharaohic divine rule was as important to those people as their next breath.  In the instant Pharaoh refused God’s 10^th invitation to let His people go, the Egyptian king became the murderer of Egypt’s firstborn population – including his own household!

For You Today 

God’s recorded Word is there to help us understand how to live in His Kingdom, and how to understand His ways:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.  2 Timothy 3:16

So, do what Pharaoh refused; when God speaks…listen…and obey!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library. 

Title Images:  Wikimedia.org   Images without citation are in public domain. Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

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[1] The life of every creature is in its blood.  Leviticus 17:14