Exodus 7 Study Notes

The orderliness and consistency of the Lord and Moses as the contest progresses contrast with the vacillation in Pharaoh’s personal behavior (expressing regret, offering concessions and taking them back, angry outbursts) and the growing chaos in the realm in which he was thought responsible to maintain order. Throughout, Moses did what the Lord told him to do, while Pharaoh did the opposite, just as God had foretold; the implication is that the Lord is sovereign in human affairs. The plagues involved natural elements and events that were familiar to Egyptians—water, frogs, insects, east and west winds, storms, diseases, darkness—but they were not merely natural. The Lord, to and through Moses and Aaron, foretold the timing, intensity, and extent of the plagues, which set them apart from mere natural disasters. For example, hordes of locusts have come to portions of Egypt intermittently throughout history, but not to the extent reported in Exodus and not in the wake of the series of disasters that struck Egypt then. Likewise, all firstborn humans die, but they do not die all at once and to the exclusion of other humans. The Lord also announced the purpose of the plagues, explaining that they were intended to reveal his identity, to make him known to a wide audience (6:1,7; 7:5,17; 8:10,22; 9:14-16,29; 10:2; 11:7). Note the gradual increase in seriousness and the gradual defeat of the magicians (7:12; 8:18-19; 9:11).

Attempts have been made to identify each of the plagues as an attack on one of the many Egyptian gods. Such equivalence is not required, however, for the events to show the futility of Egyptian beliefs, the powerlessness of Egyptian deities, and the necessity of allegiance to the Lord. The events in Exodus as a whole reveal him to be trustworthy. The contest with Pharaoh displays the Lord’s sovereignty over an array of natural elements necessary for human life and over the inner workings of a man whom Egyptians believed to be a god but who was in fact just an ordinary human king (Ezr 6:22; Pr 21:1).

7:14 The word hard (lit “heavy”) represents a Hebrew figure of speech. In English to have a “heavy heart” typically means to be troubled or sad. But the Hebrew term for “heavy” could describe a mouth and tongue that did not speak well (4:10), eyes that did not see (Gn 48:10), or ears that did not hear (Is 6:10; 59:1; Zch 7:11). In both Egyptian and Hebrew, the heart (like the mind)—as the center of mental, emotional, and volitional activity—was supposed to listen and respond appropriately (1Kg 3:9; Solomon asked to be given “a receptive heart”). Pharaoh was failing to respond as he ought.

Pharaoh’s “heavy” heart registered another problem, because according to Egyptian beliefs, gods would weigh a person’s heart after death to determine his destiny in the afterlife. If it was heavy by comparison with a feather, a symbol for wisdom, then a fierce god stood by to devour the individual. Elsewhere in the OT, iniquity is spoken of as heavy and as making the heart heavy (Gn 18:20; Ps 38:4; Is 1:4; 24:20), and the Lord is the one who weighs hearts, which makes him the ultimate Judge of all, including Pharaoh and other kings (1Sm 2:3; Pr 16:2; 21:2; 24:12; Dn 5:25-28).

The Lord’s assessment of Pharaoh was also important because Pharaoh and his heart were thought to be responsible for maintaining order throughout Egypt. Order was thought to be the essential expression of wisdom (in contrast to the essence of wisdom in Ps 111:10; Pr 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; Dn 2:20). During the plagues Pharaoh could not maintain order; he failed by both the Lord’s standards and his own.

7:15-18 Suggestions about why Pharaoh was expected to go out in the morning to the river (8:20) include the possibility of a worship ritual, something about his personal habits, or to measure the river’s depth and reach during its flood stage. It is unclear whether the river became actual blood, or whether it was so polluted that the word “blood” would best describe how it looked. The Hebrew word is related to the word for the color red and is sometimes used to describe something that had the appearance of blood but was not literal blood (Gn 49:11; Dt 32:14; 2Kg 3:22; Jl 2:31). Either way, it caused the fish to die, the water to stink, and people to need something else to drink. Pharaoh had used the Nile to bring death to Israelite babies, but now it would be a source of death rather than life for Egyptians; and Pharaoh could do nothing about it.

7:19-21 The Israelite foremen had complained that Moses had made them reek to Pharaoh (same Hb verb as in v. 18; 5:21), but now there was something that truly stank—the Nile.

7:22 Douglas Stuart explains that “the magicians were able to duplicate on a small scale, by simple trickery, the changing of water into reddish water. Such a duplication (or, more technically, imitation) would have required only the ability to add something that would dye some water red through sleight of hand.” He also notes that the magicians were unable to undo the plague on the Egyptians’ water supply. So the magicians only made matters worse!

7:23-25 The Lord striking the Nile had been symbolized and enacted when Aaron struck it with his staff (v. 20).