Exodus 7 Footnotes

7:9-10 Did the Egyptians really turn their rods into serpents (see v. 12)? Another translation of the Hebrew word rendered “by their occult practices” (v. 11) is “by their flames.” The Egyptian sorcerers, like modern magicians, seem to have used a bright distraction to conceal their substitution of serpents for the sticks. (The NT in 2Tm 3:8 gives their names as Jannes and Jambres.) The activities of these sorcerers foreshadow those of a “lawless one” who will come at the end of the age and perform pseudo-miracles (2Th 2:9).

7:20 Did the Nile River actually turn to blood? The OT uses the Hebrew word translated “blood” in two different senses—in the literal sense to refer to the life-giving fluid in the circulatory system of human beings and animals (Gn 4:11), and in the figurative sense to refer to the color of blood (see Jl 2:31). Either interpretation is possible here: the Nile could have become literal blood, or it could have turned the color of blood due to the presence of some toxin within it. In either case, the Bible is describing a true miracle. God produced the results he said he would, and he did it when he said he would.

7:20-21 Were the ten plagues natural occurrences, not miracles? According to the Bible they were true miracles—signs and wonders performed by God (6:6; 7:3-4; 8:19).

Theologically, a miracle can be defined as God’s working at just the right time, in just the right place, in just the right degree to produce a redemptive outcome. Miracles are acts of God, but God can make them happen in various ways. As Creator of the universe he can work miracles through nature or outside the natural order when it suits his purposes.

The biblical description of the events associated with the ten plagues allows for the possibility that God used natural processes to bring judgments on Egypt’s gods (Ex 12:12) and set his people free from Egyptian captivity. Some have suggested that bacteria turned the waters red, and the poisoned waters killed the fish and forced the frogs to seek cool, moist places away from the Nile. When the frogs died their corpses were a breeding ground for two types of small insects. These, in turn, spread communicable diseases among both animals and humans, resulting in death to the livestock and boils upon the people. A well-timed locust plague followed by a spring hailstorm devastated Egypt’s crops. Shortly thereafter a desert sandstorm or dust cloud darkened most of Egypt. Finally a devastating plague, perhaps one caused by the insects, killed both humans and beasts among the non-Israelites. God was at work in the entire sequence of events, making them occur in the appropriate location, at the designated time, and at the prescribed intensity level.

If God chose to work outside the natural order, it is reasonable to assume that the waters of the Nile were transformed for a time into actual blood. No causal chain would be needed to link the events of the first plague with those that followed up through the sixth, and possibly the tenth, as described above. God could bring small insects into existence directly from the dust of the earth (8:16-17) without resorting to natural causes. He made these ten events take place in response to Pharaoh’s stubbornness.

7:22 The Bible suggests it was human cunning, not miraculous powers, by which the Egyptian magicians turned the water from the Nile into blood. The same Hebrew expression, “by their flames,” occurs here as the explanation for what they performed (see note on 7:9-10).