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EXODUS: FUNCTIONING WELL IN A HOPELESS GROUP ASSIGNMENT
Part I: God's Deliverance Of Israel Amid Humanly Helpless Trials
H. God's Glorifying Himself By The Plague Of Blood
(Exodus 7:8-25)
  1. Introduction
    1. Scripture reveals five goals for the plagues of Egypt: they came (1) to deliver Israel from Egypt (Ex. 3:8, 19-20), (2) to answer Pharaoh's question of "Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice and let Israel go?" (Ex. 5:2; 8:22; 9:14), (3) to reveal God's power to Israel (Ex. 10:1-2), (4) to reveal the earth belongs to God, not Egypt's gods (Ex. 9:29) and (5) to level God's judgment on all the gods of Egypt (Ex. 12:12; Num. 33:4), R. Grigg, "The Ten Plagues of Egypt," Creation (v. 27, no. 1) Dec.-Feb. 2005, p. 36.
    2. For such goals to be reached, the plagues would have to have been seen as miracles by the Egyptians.
    3. However, naturalistic explanations for the plagues were offered by Greta Hort in 1957, a scholar of medieval English literature and religion, and her views are cited in reference works today, Ibid., p. 34, 38.
    4. Thus, we view the Scripture and the data to see if the first plague was a true miracle that glorified God:
  2. God's Glorifying Himself By The Plague Of Blood, Exodus 7:8-25.
    1. The Biblical account of the first plague is as follows:
      1. God told Moses and Aaron to visit Pharaoh again, and when Pharaoh asked for a sign that his request to let Israel go was from God, Moses was to throw down his rod for it to become a serpent, 7:8-9; 4:4f.
      2. As Moses heeded this directive, God allowed Pharaoh's servants to duplicate Moses' feat, 7:10-12a.
      3. However, Moses' serpent swallowed up the serpents of Pharaoh's magicians, indicating God was greater than the gods of the magicians, Ex. 7:12b. Regardless, Pharaoh's heart was hardened as he rationalized what he saw so as to deny concluding Moses' God was greater than his gods, Ex. 7:13.
      4. Thus, God had Moses strike the Nile with his rod in Pharaoh's presence to turn its water into blood and have its fish die and the water stink, 7:14-18. This plague would come on all of Egypt's waters, 7:19.
      5. As Moses heeded the Lord, the Egyptians were forced to dig around the river to obtain water, 7:20-25.
      6. Scripture also reports God let Pharaoh's magicians copy Moses' feat, giving Pharaoh an excuse to deny Moses' God was greater than the gods of Egypt and thus to reject Moses' request to let Israel go, 7:22f.
    2. Conversely, Greta Hort gave a naturalistic explanation for this plague to counter the view it was a miracle:
      1. Hort suggested the Nile River was plagued with red algae and red earth washed into the Nile River upstream by a heavy rainfall on the Abyssinian plateau, Ibid., p. 34.
      2. The algae "allegedly de-oxygenated the water, thus killing the fish . . ." (Ibid.)
    3. On the other hand, this naturalistic explanation is countered by viewing the scientific data (as follows):
      1. The two kinds of algae Hort suggested made the Nile red, Haematococcus pluvialis and Euglena sanguinea, are actually green when present in "turbid, flowing water" like the Nile River, Ibid., p. 35!
      2. Also, such algaes exist only in colder, sub-arctic climates, not in the warm water of the Nile (Ibid.)!
      3. The fish of the Nile River did not die from the algae, for "anoxia [oxygen lack] can only occur after an algal bloom, which cannot occur in muddy water" with the presence of Hort's Abyssianian silt, Ibid.!
      4. Then, (a) mud particles suspended in water hinders algae photosynthesis, and (b) the particles stick to the algae, causing it to sink, leaving Hort's Abyssinian-mud-and-algae-mix theory self-defeating, Ibid.!
      5. Had the Nile water been merely muddy, the Egyptians would have let the water sit so the mud could settle, not dig in the mud around the Nile for water as Exodus 7:24 reveals they did!
    4. Fulfilling God's will, "The 1st plague was directed against the Nile itself which the Egyptians worshipped as their source of life. This plague confronted the numerous river deities, including Khnum (guardian of the Nile), Hapi (spirit of the Nile and god of fertility) and Osiris (god of the underworld, whose blood the Nile was considered to be). By turning the Nile into blood and killing the fish (supposedly protected by Hathor and Neith), Moses was not only shaming all these Egyptian objects of worship, but also showing that sustenance comes only from the hand of Yahweh," Israel's God, Ibid., p. 36.
Lesson: Hort's naturalistic explanation for Egypt's plague of blood is countered by scientific facts, and the plague critiqued Egypt's idols of the Nile as a miracle, glorifying Israel's God as the One True God!

Application: May we trust the Bible's ONE, TRUE God Who ALONE SUSTAINS our lives on earth!