Exodus 5 – 8
Now we get to have some fun and understand why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart!! After being a Christian and church goer for most of my 50+ years I finally learned this year why God kept hardening Pharaoh’s heart. So now I get to share that with you!!
Chapters 5 and 6 are the “set up” to the plagues and Israel’s eventual release. Moses and Aaron ask kindly to let the people go worship in the wilderness. Pharaoh considers them lazy and ups their work. Notice even after hard labor and torment the people refuse to listen to Moses and Aaron (v6:9). Then in verse 7:3 God tells Moses what He will do:
But I am going to harden Pharaoh’s stubborn heart so that I can perform sign after sign, wonder after wonder in the land of Egypt.
I use to always think this was only for show and to prove to Israel that God was supreme, but as you will see it goes much deeper than that. God says He will do amazing things and will continue to harden Pharaoh’s heart. Before the plagues, God shows His superiority over the Egyptian mystics and gods by having Aaron’s staff turn into a snake, when theirs turned into snakes God’s snake consumed them all.
The first plague God turned the water of the Nile into blood and in turn Pharaoh’s mystics did the same to the remaining water. Now two points need to be noticed here, first is the mystics could NOT change the water back. The second is deeper and showing God’s superiority over all. God was showing he was over all, including the Egyptian God Hapi and Osiris. Hapu is the God of the Nile while it is said the Nile is the “blood stream” of the God Osiris. So God made the Nile real blood for Osiris and showed Hapi to be unable to stand to God.
The second plague was with frogs which poked the finger at Heket. The Egyptian god Heket was a frog like goddess who was the god of fertility, water and renewal. Notice again this showed Heket was powerless and although Pharaoh’s mystics could make the frogs once again they could not get rid of them.
The third plague was gnats or lice from the dust of the earth. Again this was showing the Egyptian god of the earth, Geb, to be powerless before the Eternal Almighty God. Again Pharaoh’s mystics could not repeat this plague. Notice how when their god’s have the power to repeat the plague they cannot reverse them and quickly they cannot even repeat the plague.
The fourth plague and final for this reading is the swarms of flies. For the most part I never considered this a big deal until we got horses. Flies BITE, even the small ones!! The gnats were annoying, the flies stated to inflict some pain I am sure. This was to show God’s superiority over the Egyptian god Khepri. This god had a head of a fly and was god of creation, the movement of the sun and rebirth.
Now we see why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it was not to show boat but rather to show superiority over all the Egyptian gods. As you will see over the next 6 plagues God has reason and purpose for this show. It was to humble Egypt and to show Israel their God is over all.