5. Gunfight at the OK Corral, Part 1

ExodusLesson #5

“Gunfight at the OK Corral, Plagues 1-5”

(Exodus 7: 8 – 9: 7)

Review

In Lesson #4, convinced (no, browbeaten) by God, Moses journeys back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh and demand that Pharaoh “let my people go!” Accompanied by his older brother Aaron, Moses confronts Pharaoh—meeting with utter failure and humiliation. Indeed, Pharaoh responds as a modern-day corporate oligarch might to two elderly, feeble and has-been union organizers: Pharaoh ejects them from his office and doubles the workload of his laborers.

What’s more, the Israelites turn on Moses and Aaron, saying: “The Lord look upon you and judge! You have made us [a stench] to Pharaoh and his servants, putting a sword into their hands to kill us” (Exodus 5: 21).

Understandably, Moses responds to God by saying: “Lord, why have you treated this people badly? And why did you sent me?” (5: 22)

PreviewAfter being tossed unceremoniously out of Pharaoh’s office and rejected by their own people, Moses and Aaron confer with God, who ups the ante and sends Moses and Aaron back to Pharaoh with an ultimatum: “Let my people go” or I will wreak havoc on the land of Egypt.

In Lesson #5 God unleashes the first five of ten plagues on Egypt, and with each plague Pharaoh becomes evermore stubborn and recalcitrant. As we make our way through the ten plagues we find they are far more than intensified natural occurrences; they are cumulative; and they are precisely designed to do three things:

1) teach the Israelites who God is (10: 2); 2) teach the Egyptians who God is; and (7: 3-5)3) bring judgment on the gods of Egypt (12: 12)

Joseph Turner. Plague of Hail and Fire (oil on canvas), 1800.Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana.

The Plagues

There are three views one can take concerning the plagues:

First, the plagues were literal historical events, separate and distinct acts of God, miracles used accomplish God’s purpose. Although similar plagues did occur in Egypt at numerous times in history, the plagues recounted in Exodus far exceed natural events.

1) They are greatly intensified; 2) Each targets specific gods in the Egyptian pantheon;3) Moses predicts the beginning and ending of each plague precisely; 4) Some of the plagues affect only the Egyptians and not the

Israelites; 5) There is an increasing severity to the plagues, culminating in the

death of the first born.

The Plagues

Second, the plagues were natural occurrences, albeit intensified, that were given a theological interpretation by later Israelite generations:

June The Nile becomes stagnant and red with microscopic organisms.July Frogs abound after the inundation of the Nile. Late summer and damp autumn months Lice, flies, murrain and boils.January Hail and rain. (This date is suggested by the crops mentioned.) February Appearance of locusts over green crops in early spring.March Darkness from great sandstorms that often occur in Egypt at this

time of year. April Death of the firstborn, dated by the Passover celebration.

The Plagues

And third, one can view the plagues as simply a literary device to drive the narrative action forward in our story .

Story

The Plagues

Whether the plagues were miracles, intensified natural events or simply a literary device, in our story they exhibit a high degree of literary shaping and symmetry:

•The plagues are organized into three triads (plagues 1-3; 4-6; and 7-9), culminating in the devastating tenth plague, the death of the firstborn.•Each triad follows the sequence of: 1) Moses confronting Pharaoh going out in the early morning; 2) Moses entering Pharaoh’s palace; and 3) a disaster unleashed without warning.•In addition, the plagues are neatly arranged in pairs: two involve the Nile; two involve insects; two involve epidemics; two involve devastating crops; and the final pair combine darkness with the death of the firstborn.

The Plagues

As Robert Alter observes, at a deeper level the plagues also echo the Creation story in Genesis 1, forming a network of reversals:

“The benign swarming of life in Genesis turns into a threatening swarm of odious creatures, just as the penultimate plague of darkness, prelude to mass death, is a reversal of the first ‘let there be light.’” Alter goes on to observe that “Alexander Pope, at the end of his great anticreation poem, The Dunciad, writes thoroughly in the spirit of these reversals when he announces the new reign of anarchy, ‘Light dies before thy uncreating word.’”

(The Five Books of Moses, p. 350)

The Plagues

It would be excessive, however, to insist that every detail of the plagues conforms to its antithesis in Genesis, but it is certainly intriguing to see the creation/apocalypse dichotomy mirrored in microcosm in the plagues.

The Plagues

Prologue (7: 8-13)1st Plague, Water Turned to Blood (7: 14-24)

2nd Plague, Frogs (7: 25 – 8: 11)3rd Plague, Gnats (8: 12-15)4th Plague, Flies (8: 16-28)

5th Plague, Pestilence (9: 1-7)6th Plague, Boils (9: 8-12)

7th Plague, Hail & Fire (9: 13-35)8th Plague, Locusts (10: 1-20)

9th Plague, Darkness (10: 21-29)10th Plague, Death of the Firstborn (11: 1-10)

James Tissot. The Rod of Aaron Devours the Other Rods (gouache on board), c. 1900.The Jewish Museum, New York.

A modern reader may assume that Pharaoh’s priest-magicians performed a trick, not unlike the fire-and-flash technique used by a modern-day illusionist like David Copperfield.

Our author, however, clearly believes in the efficacy of magic. His point in the Prologue is that magic has its limitations, while authentic miracle doesn’t; hence, Aaron’s serpent swallows up the priest-magicians’ serpents.

The Plagues






Sunset on the Nile River, Egypt.

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

“Egypt is the gift of the Nile”

—Herodotus, The Histories (5th century B.C.)

Lake Victoria

Nile River

The Nile River begins in the 16,000 foot mountains in the heart of Africa, and it flows north toward the Mediterranean Sea. Its 4,000-mile course makes it the longest river in the world. Each year during spring and early summer the melting snow and heavy rain in the southern mountains bring a vast torrent downstream, laden with tons of fine silt that is deposited on the banks of the Nile in Egypt. This annual inundation creates one of the most fertile regions in the world. Without the Nile, Egypt would be as barren and dry as the great deserts that lie on either side of it.

The Nile River is the lifeblood of Egypt

A poem from the New Kingdom Period (c. 1567-1085 B.C., the time of Moses) suggests something of the importance of the Nile River to the Egyptian people:

Hail to thee, O Nile that issues from the earth and comes to keep Egypt alive! ...He who makes barley and brings emmer into being, that he may make the temples festive. If he is sluggish, then nostrils are stopped up, and everybody is poor. If there be thus a cutting down in the food-offerings of the gods, then a million men perish among mortals... When he rises, then the land is in jubilation, then every belly is in joy, every back bone takes on laughter, and every tooth is exposed.

(ANET, “Hymn to the Nile,” p. 372.)

The Nile River is Sacred to the Egyptians

Osiris is a major god in the Egyptian pantheon, the son of Geb (god of the earth) and Nut (goddess of the sky). He is the god of the afterlife, who determines one’s position in eternity, and he is also the divine agency that grants all life: human, animal, vegetation, crops and the fertile flooding of the Nile River.

Metaphorically, the Nile River is the very bloodstream of Osiris, enabling life and sustaining it.

Osiris, flanked by Horus (Osiris’ son) and Isis (Osiris’ sister and wife), (gold, lapis lazuli and glass), 22nd dynasty.

Louvre Museum, Paris.

Thus, God’s opening salvo against Egypt—turning the waters of the Nile into blood—strikes at the very heart of Egypt.

The irony is stunning! The very source and sustenance of Egyptian life brings death: “The fish in the Nile died, and the Nile itself stank so that the Egyptians could not drink water from it” (7: 21).

And Osiris can do nothing about it.

The Plagues






The plague of frogs carries a strong comic element.

Frogs were common in the marshlands of Egypt, and Egyptian art is filled with them. The ancient Egyptian word for frog was qrr (pronounced krur, the sound that a frog makes). It is onomatopoeic; that is, it sounds like what it is.

The inundation of the Nile continued through mid-September, and when it returned to its normal channel, it left behind numerous pools and ponds, the breeding ground for frogs. One can imagine the chorus of croaks on a balmy Egyptian evening. To farmers, this was sweet music, for the gods of the Nile had finished their work, making the land fertile and new.

To the Egyptians the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual inundation of the Nile. Over time, the symbol developed into the goddess Heqet, wife of Khnum, the guardian of the source of the Nile and the creator of man. As an adjunct to her husband, Heqet served as a divine midwife, helping women in childbirth.

Heqet, divine midwife.

At the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, the “Birth Colonnade” portrays a very pregnant Queen Ahmose being led to the birthing room by Heqet and Khnum. Here Queen Ahmose gives birth to Hatshepsut, in our dating system the Princess who adopts Moses after fishing him out of the Nile River.

Birth Colonnade

QueenAhmose(seated)

HeqetPhotography by Ana Maria Vargas

What begins as a funny scene, with comical frogs hopping everywhere— into people’s bedrooms, beds, ovens and kneading bowls—turns to horror as the army of frogs and knot of toads grows from thousands to millions, in wave after wave.

Listen to Lewis Untermeyer:

Small green peepers, no larger than locusts, distended toads, the color of excrement. Mottled frogs like bloated vegetation, frogs that were lumps of bronze, frogs with eyes of unblinking demons, frogs subtler than salamanders, frogs motionless, frogs that leaped into the laps of screaming children, wart-breeding frogs, frogs like droppings of mud, frogs trailing their slime after them, flying frogs that built nests in high reeds, frogs that died and bred death.

(Moses. New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1928, p. 184.)

After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh’s presence, Moses cried out to the Lord on account of the frogs he had inflicted on Pharaoh; and the Lord did as Moses asked. The frogs died off in the houses, the courtyards and the fields. Heaps of them were piled up, and the land stank.

(Exodus 8: 8-10)

Once again, the sacred Nile becomes a source of death, not life, and the goddess Heket is humbled.

And, indeed, God shifts the scene himself from comedy to horror:

The Plagues






March/April Sandstorm in Egypt.

On the ground in Cairo.

3rd Plague“Strike the dust of the earth,

and it will turn into gnats” (8: 12)

The 1st plague struck at the very heart of Egypt, turning the life-giving waters of the Nile into blood, bringing death. With the humbling defeat of Osiris, accomplished with such little effort by God, the 1st plague was frighteningly ominous, portentous, suggesting much worse things to come.

The next three plagues, however—frogs, gnats and flies—bring not death, but maddening affliction and discomfort. The tone of the narrative shifts subtly to something like divine gloating as God makes the Egyptians squirm before unleashing total destruction.

In post-biblical Hebrew the word kinim means “lice,” although the traditional translation in biblical Hebrew is “gnats,” or “mosquitoes.”

Plague of Gnats

The plague of gnats targets Geb, god of the earth. Geb and Nut (goddess of the sky) are two major god’s in the Egyptian pantheon; they are the parents of Osiris. As goddess of the sky, Nut is typically portrayed in arched form with only her toes and fingers touching the earth, her body bedecked with stars; as god of the earth, Geb is typically pictured beneath her. Geb was credited with the health and plenty of Egypt’s annual crops. In the plague of gnats, rather than lush crops emerging from the earth, thick swarms of insects rise from the dust to torment the people.

In the 1st and 2nd plagues the Egyptian priests-magicians replicate the plagues in a limited, rather anemic way. They cannot replicate the plague of gnats, however—and something else is afoot.

In 8: 14 we read:

“Though the magicians did the same thing to produce (or alternatively, “to take out”) gnats by their magic arts, they could not do so.” The Hebrew word translated “produce” also has the sense of “to take” or “to draw out,” suggesting that the Egyptian priests-magicians try again to reproduce the plague, and when that fails, they try to reverse it—which also fails! “This is the finger of God,” they say.

Recall the repeated references to God’s “hand” or “arm” in the previous plagues. Here, what the Egyptians couldn’t do with all their effort and might, God accomplishes with his “finger.”

The Plagues






“For if you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of

flies upon you and your servants and your people and your houses” (8: 17).

The Hebrew ‘arov is literally “swarms,” without reference to what is swarming. Most translations add a preposition and the object of the preposition, such as “swarms of flies” or “swarms of beetles.” In Egypt, the beetle blatta orientalis, arrives in late November—the approximate time of this plague—and the Egyptian word bears a close resemblance to the Hebrew. Since each plague becomes more severe and each targets an Egyptian god, one can make a strong argument for “swarm of beetles,” or, more specifically, scarabs.

Scarab amulet given by Amenhotep III to his wife Queen Tiye, c. 1390 B.C.

Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Ra the sun god is the primary god in the Egyptian pantheon, bringing light and life into the world. Khepri is a subsidiary solar god to Ra, one who rolls the sun across the sky.

The dug beetle, or scarab, rolls dung into a ball for food and as a brood chamber in which it lays eggs, which later hatch into larvae. For this reason the scarab became a symbol of the heavenly cycle of the sun and of rebirth and regeneration, a symbol closely associated with the god Khepri.

In ancient Egypt the scarab was enormously popular as an amulet, and Khepri is most commonly depicted with a man’s body and a scarab’s head.Khepri

The 4th plague is the first that affects only the Egyptians, not the Israelites:

“But on that day I will make an exception of the land of Goshen, where my people are, and no swarms of flies will be there, so that you may know that I the Lord am in the midst of the land. I will make a distinction between my people and your people” (8: 18-19).

Once unleashed, Pharaoh begins to compromise. Summoning Moses and Aaron he says: “Go sacrifice to your God within the land” (8: 21).

When Moses objects, Pharaoh compromises again: “I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord, your God, in the wilderness, provided that you do not go too far away” (8: 24).

In the end, however, Pharaoh “became obstinate and would not let the people go” (8: 28).

The Plagues






Like the fourth plague, Moses specifically predicts the fifth, and like the fourth, it affects only the Egyptians. God says: Let my people go to serve me. For if you refuse to let them go and persist in holding them, the hand of the Lord will strike your livestock in the field—your horses, donkeys, camels, herds and flocks—with a very severe pestilence. But the Lord will distinguish between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt, so that nothing belonging to the Israelites will die.

(Exodus 9: 1-4).

The Hebrew word for this plague is variously translated “pestilence,” “murrain” or “anthrax.” Whatever the nature of the pestilence, it was highly contagious and deadly, affecting all of the Egyptian livestock—but none of the Israelites’ herds or flocks.

Actual

Apis was a bull-deity worshipped primarily in the Memphis region of Egypt as far back as the 2nd dynasty. Serving as an intermediary between humans and Osiris, Apis was the most important of all the sacred animals of the Egyptians.

On November 13, 1856 a spectacular discovery was made in the ruins of Memphis. At the end of a 1,120-foot tunnel, archaeologists discovered 64 large burial chambers, each with a huge red or black sarcophagus approximately 12 feet long, 9 feet high and 6 feet wide, weighing nearly 60 tons apiece. In each sarcophagus a sacred Apis bull had been mummified and buried, illustrating the importance of Apis in the Egyptian pantheon of gods.

Sacred Apis Bull, (limestone), 30th dynasty. Louvre Museum, Paris.

“Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go to serve me. For if you refuse to let them go and persist in holding them, the hand of the Lord will strike your livestock . . ..” (9: 1-2).

There is a delicious and subtle verbal parallel here with Deuteronomy 25: 11-12, which reads: “When two men are fighting and the wife of one intervenes to save her husband from the blows of his opponent, if she stretches out her hand and seizes the latter by the genitals, you shall chop off her hand; show no mercy.”

The Hebrew verb mahaziq, “to seize,” is the same word used for “persist in holding” in Exodus 9: 1-2, suggesting as the great medieval rabbi Rashi observes, that God has Pharaoh “by the b*lls!”

Questions for discussion and thought

1. When Aaron’s staff turns into a serpent, how do the Egyptian priests-magicians do the same?

2. Aaron’s staff/serpent then eats up all the other serpents. What does this scene suggest?

3. Why does God turn the Nile River into blood as his opening salvo?

4. The three plagues that follow—frogs, gnats and flies—are not lethal; the fifth plague of pestilence is. Why insert the frogs, gnats and flies in between two incredibly lethal plagues?

5. After the third plague—the gnats—the priests-magicians realize they are ridiculously outclassed by God. What is their response?

Copyright © 2014 by William C. Creasy All rights reserved. No part of this course—audio, video, photography, maps, timelines or other media—may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval devices without permission in writing or a licensing agreement from the copyright holder.

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5. Gunfight at the OK Corral, Part 1