Plagues

Monday, September 16, 2024

Memorial of Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Plagues

I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.

Our pastor likened the Exodus confrontation between Yahweh and Egypt’s pharaoh to a 10 round boxing match. In advance, the Yahweh camp provided supplements for the pharaoh, to strengthen his resistance, to harden … his heart.

In this corner, for the first time, YAHWEH! How do you pronounce that? Who ever heard of Yahweh anyway?

And in this corner (great cheers from around the arena), King Pharaoh! Son of Ra!

Moses delegates Aaron to begin the contest, speaking the words of the Lord. The bell sounds. Round One!

1. Water turns to blood. The Nile River, source of life for all of Egypt, suddenly runs free with blood, this the river where male Hebrew babies were thrown to drown, and where the one soon to be called Moses floated free in a basket until he was found by the pharaoh’s daughter. There is no water left.
2. Frogs, frogs everywhere. Frogs in Egypt were sacred and could not be killed without consequences. Now they overran the kitchens and beds and courtyards, until God spoke and they all died. Hard to forget the stink!
3. Lice. Dust of insects instead of air. On my body, in my eyes, in my ears. My ears! They scream inside me!
4. Flies. The buzzing worse, they bite my face, spread their filth all over food and babies and cattle and bread. At last God removed the flies, but the supplements kept working, and Pharaoh’s heart hardened more.
5. Livestock killed. Horses, donkeys, camels, cows. Sheep and goats. All gone, all dead, no meat. But the pharaoh doesn’t care.
6. The Lord tells Moses to throw soot in the air. Watch it fall on people and animals, watch boils break out on all their skin. The pharaoh will not listen. So … how is the wrestling match going so far? Well, Yahweh does have something to say: “By now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the face of the earth.” Ah!
7. Hailstorms, worst in history. Moses warns the Egyptian court to bring everything and everyone inside, because if left out, this hail will kill them. It does. And every head of barley and flax are destroyed.
8. Still nothing changes, and in the eighth round, Yahweh calls out flocks of locusts, which destroy everything left after the hail, filling every corner of every house and field.
9. “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt – darkness that can be felt.” For three endless days, like a cave, then deeper in the cave, air black and then blacker yet. The locusts are gone but now the Son of Ra (Ra is god of the sun and sky), no longer sees the light. Nearing the end of the wrestling meet, Moses says to Pharaoh, “I will never appear before you again.”
10. The tenth round belongs to God. Death visits Egypt’s sons. Pharaoh’s son and every firstborn male, human and animal, destroyed utterly in the depths of night, suddenly all dead. Pharaoh hardened his heart nine times, but he now falls broken and defeated on the mat, and Yahweh gathers up the Hebrews to leave Egypt, walk into the sunrise on the First Day of the First Month of this new history marked by the angel’s Passover, toward the Promised Land. All hail King Yahweh! Crown him Lord of all. His people will never forget this day.

To do your will, O my God, is my delight, and your law is within my heart.

 (1 Corinthians 11, Psalm 40, John 3, Luke 7)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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