THE TEN PLAGUES OF EGYPT — or — Excessive Arrogance
PART THREE: Is God a Bully?
The Plagues of Egypt were an overkill example of God’s power, and the scriptures explain why God didn’t just smoke the Pharaoh to prove his point. The reason was for all to know God’s might, He who manifested His great power which would in turn be declared across the nations.
And this isn’t evidence of an ego?
“1. Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, 4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”
It sounds like a wondrous ego-feed. Mighty acts of Judgment indeed.
8 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 9 “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.” 10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials and it became a snake. 11 Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts. 12 Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. 13 Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.
Just smoking the Pharaoh apparently wasn’t enough for God. He wanted everyone to know His power. Not that the ten plagues were in fact necessary to reveal such power, unless God does in fact have an ego, in which case the overkill makes sense.
14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the river. Confront him on the bank of the Nile, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. 16 Then say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness. But until now you have not listened. 17 This is what the Lord says: By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. 18 The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.’”
And so began the Plagues. First the water was turned to blood; then there came a Plague of frogs, a Plague of gnats, a Plague of flies, The Deaths of Livestock, Boils, followed by Hail, a Plague of Locusts, Darkness, and finally Death of the First-born.
I am of the opinion that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God doesn’t have to show such theatrics or kill innocents to prove His point. However, according to scripture God did just that, even hardening the Pharaoh’s heart so that He had an excuse for the overkill.
It is for this reason that the Plagues of Egypt sound like a fictitious story, written by men who would expect a Great God to do such marvelous and terrible things, rather than one of fact. Although some would claim that the plagues did in fact happen, and that they were supposedly due to an active volcano nearby.
So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. 5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt — worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. 7 But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.’ Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. 8 All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.” Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.
And again, these do not sound like the actions of a great and wise God that I would chose to worship. Rather they are more like the actions of a megalomaniacal, egomaniacal Demiurge who wants blind adulation.
Where one Plague would have been enough had God not hardened the heart of the Pharaoh, there were instead TEN.
Killing goes against my nature anyway, but especially so when there is a suitable alternative. I can find no reason for a benevolent God to strike down the first-born of slaves, who had nothing to do with not allowing God’s people to go free. Do we punish the innocent with the guilty? It is just cruel for the sake of being cruel, in order to show great power; it sounds like the fault of man and his hubris, and I have hated man’s hubris all my life and I like blind adulation even less.
And then God makes it so the rich are separate from the poor — whether good or bad. He sets one above the other so that one is ignorant of the other. So, if there is a God He makes life so much more unfair than it ever has to be, and He slaps the face of the one who brings this to His attention, taking credit for all the good, and no responsibility for all the misfortune. And it makes me wonder why God chooses to make people that are going to grow up and do stupid or cruel things, unless again, He thrives on chaos.
And those who cry for a better life go unheard.
God makes life smooth for the others — even though they may be evil — while others — even children, have it so bad that they commit suicide. If God showed His love to those who cry out there would likely be a decline in needless suicides. But that doesn’t seem to matter to God, just as long as He is given blind adulation.
But why is it that the good should have to cry out in the first place — to beg and plead for some kind of release? Trying to get God’s attention, they are ignored, while the evil and wealthy continue to prosper.
It makes no rational sense.
It is diametrically opposed to what I would choose to believe. So it is again that God fails, and shows Himself to be nothing more than a cruel antagonist.
So why is it that I should want to worship a God that comes across as a cruel antagonist, hiding his actions behind the Devil and putting all the blame on him?
Editing by LeAnnette Goodwin https://medium.com/@leannette-goodwin
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