Gunfight at The OK Corral, Part 1

Lesson #5
Gunfight at the OK Corral, Plagues 1-5

(Exodus 7: 8 9: 7)
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 Pharaohmeeting 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.

Whats 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)

After being tossed unceremoniously out of Pharaohs 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.

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 Gods 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.

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.

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

Story

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 Pharaohs 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.

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)

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.

Prologue (7: 8-13)
1
st
Plague, Water Turned to Blood (7: 14-24)
2
nd
Plague, Frogs (7: 25 8: 11)
3
rd
Plague, Gnats (8: 12-15)
4
th
Plague, Flies (8: 16-28)
5
th
Plague, Pestilence (9: 1-7)
6
th
Plague, Boils (9: 8-12)
7
th
Plague, Hail & Fire (9: 13-35)
8
th
Plague, Locusts (10: 1-20)
9
th
Plague, Darkness (10: 21-29)
10
th
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 Pharaohs 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 doesnt;
hence, Aarons serpent swallows
up the priest-magicians
serpents.

Prologue (7: 8-13)
1
st
2
nd
3
rd
4
th
5
th
6
th
7
th
8
th
9
th
10
th

Sunset on the Nile River, Egypt.

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

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.

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.)

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 ones 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), 22
nd
dynasty.
Louvre Museum, Paris.
Thus, Gods opening salvo against
Egyptturning the waters of the
Nile into bloodstrikes 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.

Prologue (7: 8-13)
1
st
2
nd
3
rd
4
th
5
th
6
th
7
th
8
th
9
th
10
th

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
Queen
Ahmose
(seated)
Heqet

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas
What begins as a funny scene, with comical frogs
hopping everywhere into peoples bedrooms, beds,
ovens and kneading bowlsturns 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 Pharaohs 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:

Prologue (7: 8-13)
1
st
2
nd
3
rd
4
th
5
th
6
th
7
th
8
th
9
th
10
th

March/April Sandstorm in Egypt.
On the ground in Cairo.
3
rd
Plague
Strike the dust of the earth,
and it will turn into gnats (8: 12)

The 1
st
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 1
st

plague was frighteningly ominous, portentous,
suggesting much worse things to come.

The next three plagues, howeverfrogs, gnats and
fliesbring 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 gods 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 Egypts 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 1
st
and 2
nd
plagues the Egyptian priests-magicians
replicate the plagues in a limited, rather anemic way. They
cannot replicate the plague of gnats, howeverand
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 Gods hand or arm in the previous
plagues. Here, what the Egyptians couldnt do with all their effort and
might, God accomplishes with his finger.

Prologue (7: 8-13)
1
st
2
nd
3
rd
4
th
5
th
6
th
7
th
8
th
9
th
10
th

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 Novemberthe
approximate time of this plagueand 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 mans body and
a scarabs head.
Khepri
The 4
th
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).

Prologue (7: 8-13)
1
st
2
nd
3
rd
4
th
5
th
6
th
7
th
8
th
9
th
10
th

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 fieldyour horses, donkeys, camels, herds and flockswith 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 2
nd
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), 30
th
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!

1. When Aarons staff turns into a serpent, how do the
Egyptian priests-magicians do the same?
2. Aarons 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 followfrogs, gnats and fliesare
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 plaguethe gnatsthe 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 courseaudio, video,
photography, maps, timelines or other mediamay 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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Lesson #5

Gunfight at the OK Corral, Plagues 1-5

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