CHAPTER IVThe Ten Plagues

It is a fascinating experience for the student of archeology to wend his way through the mass of evidence derived from these generations and now in the possession of the great museums of our earth. A pilgrimage begun in the British Museum, at London, continuing through the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, passing by way of Sakkara to culminate at Karnak, will enable the fascinated student to read this entire book of Genesis from the sources of antiquity. Thus in the very beginning of the convergence of the two streams, Revelation and History, we see that dead menindeedtell tales; and their stories vindicate the record of the Word of God!

Much of this evidence is, in the very nature of the case, inductive, and is valuable largely because of the light it sheds on dark places in the text of the Scripture. The customs of the people of antiquity were in many ways so different from those of our day, we have lost the comprehension of their conduct that is dependent upon mutual experience. There are thus certain obscurities in the pages of the Bible that have baffled modern man for a long time, but which are now clearly understood in the light of fresh understanding of the beliefs and practices of the times that are dealt with in the Scriptures. This is by no means the least of the benefits of archeological investigation.

One such field will be found in the recordof the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, and the manner in which God shook the power of the conquering pharaoh and devastated Egypt for the relief of the oppressed. The entire record has been repudiated point by point by the various critics and the varying schools of criticism, until their limited opinions leave no grounds for belief in the very fact of the event itself. These objections, when analyzed carefully, are all predicated upon the personal ignorance of the individual critic concerning some phase of the proceedings that climaxed with the departure of Israel from servitude.

One of the commonest objections to the credibility of the Old Testament history was the oft-repeated assertion that though the children of Israel were in bondage for a long period in Egypt and left that land in the most dramatic exodus antiquity had known, there is no record from Egyptian sources of the people or history of Israel. Such is not now the case, but had it been so this would not necessarily have diminished the value of the historical statements to be found in the record of the book of Exodus.

Very few of the races of antiquity recorded in detail their defeats! Certainly no nation that prided itself upon its greatness and power ever suffered a more complete overthrow than did Egypt in the redemption of Israel.It is only natural to presume that they would make very little reference to the crushing blow that they suffered at that time. There is even today a strong tendency on the part of the Egyptians to hush up all evidence of this event as far as it is possible to do so. In the great Egyptian Museum at Cairo, for instance, we find a record of one of these texts that does refer to the Israelites.

Exhibit 599 in this aforesaid Museum is a large stele in dark gray granite, which is beautifully engraved on both sides. On one side there is an extensive inscription in which Amenophis the Third gives a categorical list of his gifts and offerings for the temple of Amon. The other side of the stele has been appropriated by Amenpthah. He gives a highly dramatic account of his battles and victories over the Libyans, and then alludes to the assault of Ascalon, of Gezer, and of Yanoem in Palestine. In the course of this later record, the inscription reads, “Israel is crushed. It has no more seed.”

In the Egyptian Museum this exhibit is accompanied by the following ingenious statement: “This is the sole mention of the Israelites in the Egyptian texts known up to the present day.”

This is not exactly the truth. The Egyptian Museum itself at Cairo has a number of the tablets containing the correspondence betweenthe Egyptian court and the kings and governors who were vassals to Egypt in Palestine and Syria. These communications make urgent demands upon the crown of Egypt for military help against the invasion of an armed horde who are called in the text, Hebiru. The word “Hebiru” is commonly identified with the modern term Hebrew.

Again, the late Director General of the Department of Antiquity of Egypt and the great founder of the Cairo Museum, Maspero, has left us an interesting note of this monument of Menepthah. Maspero points to the fact that in comparison to Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria, Israel was a very insignificant race. If this was true when the nation was ruled by her greatest and most glorious dynasty, that of David and Solomon, it would be more so when the nation consisted of a slave company lodged in a corner of the delta.

The later ravages undergone by the temples of Egypt, when they suffered incalculable harm through the vandalism of the darker ages, makes it indeed extraordinary thatanyrecord of those earlier times has remained.

In the very nature of the case, these details could not have been comprehended by the scholars of the past generation, as they dealt with customs and ideas that were lost to our age. The insatiable curiosity of thearcheologist, combined with the care with which the Egyptians preserved their records, can be credited with the recovery of this lost information, the possession of which so wonderfully establishes our faith in this more enlightened age.

The prosecutors of the old charge of “folklore and mythology” so constantly directed against the faith of those who hold to the credibility of our present Scripture text, found some of their keenest shafts in the Biblical account of the exodus from Egypt. Scrutinizing the record of that notable event under the microscope of prejudice, the critics claimed to have found many outstanding weaknesses in the text. Particularly was this so in that section of the story which dealt with the plagues with which Almighty God smote the land and broke down the resistance of Pharaoh.

There is, therefore, a manifestation of a sardonic humor in the present situation. After denying for generations that these plagues ever occurred, the critics now seek to rob the account of any value by their new technique of acquiescence. The really modern method of discrediting the Scripture is to admit that there is some truth in the record and then subtly twist the meaning of the text out of all harmony with the general plan of revelation. As a noteworthy example of thismodern technique of criticism, we submit a leading article which appeared in theLondon Expressof Sunday, September 6, 1936.

Professing to accept the historical record of the ten plagues, the writer of this article then craftily proceeds to offer a peculiarly human and mechanistic theory to account for the disaster. In reading this news item, we are at once struck by the fact that every element of a supernatural nature is deleted from the strange series of events, and the credit for the entire victory of Israel is ascribed to the human genius of the man Moses. This news item appeared in the following form:

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPTSHOW THAT MOSES ANTICIPATED BY 3,000 YEARS THE GREATEST FEAR OF MODERN SCIENCEScience has been inquiring into one of the greatest catastrophes that befell a nation—the ten plagues of Egypt.They have found that modern theories are in accord with the Bible story.The plagues were brought upon the Egyptians by Moses in the days of Israel’s captivity. Dr. Charles J. Brim, a New York authority on public health, says that Moses must have anticipated by 3,000 years modern science’s greatest fear—the use of disease germs, water pollution and other attacks on sanitation as war weapons—in short, bacteriological warfare.Moses, states Dr. Brim,in addition to being the founder of the science of hygiene, showed that germ warfare could annihilate man and beast more effectively than arms and man power. With it he bent the mighty Egyptians to his will and thus brought about the Exodus, the release of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. With it he so undermined their man power and morale that it became impossible for them to face the hardships of war.The ten plagues, in their order, were:Changing the water into blood;The frogs;The lice;The flies;The murrain of cattle;The boils on the Egyptians;Hail;The locusts;The darkness;The death of the first-born.“The first step in this carefully planned attack,” says Dr. Brim in a newly published book, “Medicine in the Bible,” “was the pollution of Egypt’s water supply.”This had two results: First, it attacked the god of Egypt—the Nile; secondly, it sapped the very fountain of the country.Egyptian legend said that the Nile sprang from the blood of the god Osiris. Hence, “the waters of the Nile were turned into blood.”Egypt depended on the Nile for its drinking water, on its yearly inundations for the irrigation of the fields.A polluted Nile was a smashing blow at the water supply and at the crops and cattle. Nobody could wash or drink.The fish—one of the staple foods—died. Frogs were forced to leave their natural haunts in the river banks and invaded the streets, fields and houses in their millions.Swarms of frogs, with no water or food, died and rotted over the countryside. Cartloads were burned, but not before the germs of pollution had time to multiply.The air became filled with the disease germs bred in this ideal forcing-ground.People and animals became infected.Flies descended in swarms greater than people had ever seen, bringing more germs with them. Cattle died in their thousands.Dust, in a naturally dusty country, became infected, spreading more disease and death. Nature took a turn. A terrific hailstorm shrieked over Egypt. The few crops that were left standing were flattened and destroyed. Animals were killed by the force of the hailstones. Next came the locusts, dropping in their millions on the fields, eating everything the hail had left.When they passed, a dust storm, caused probably by the hot, electrical wind known as the hamsin, blew up and darkened the sky for days on end, as sandstorms still do in that part of the world. The tenth and last plague, the death of the first-born, was a natural consequence of all that had happened since the day the water became polluted.The Bible does not say explicitly that only the first-born died in this plague.What it does say is:And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne to the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon.The epidemic killed many others, but in the death of the first-born lay the greatest calamity, for the first-born son was chief in every Egyptian household.Dr. Brim does not explain how the first plague was brought about, but if Moses did pollute the Nile it must have been done when the water was low.It is certain that Moses was a medical genius, as his laws of health prove, and knew the certain effects of water pollution.Neither does the doctor explain how Moses foresaw the hail, but it is possible he could judge atmospheric conditions with precision.—V. B.

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPTSHOW THAT MOSES ANTICIPATED BY 3,000 YEARS THE GREATEST FEAR OF MODERN SCIENCE

Science has been inquiring into one of the greatest catastrophes that befell a nation—the ten plagues of Egypt.

They have found that modern theories are in accord with the Bible story.

The plagues were brought upon the Egyptians by Moses in the days of Israel’s captivity. Dr. Charles J. Brim, a New York authority on public health, says that Moses must have anticipated by 3,000 years modern science’s greatest fear—the use of disease germs, water pollution and other attacks on sanitation as war weapons—in short, bacteriological warfare.

Moses, states Dr. Brim,in addition to being the founder of the science of hygiene, showed that germ warfare could annihilate man and beast more effectively than arms and man power. With it he bent the mighty Egyptians to his will and thus brought about the Exodus, the release of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. With it he so undermined their man power and morale that it became impossible for them to face the hardships of war.

The ten plagues, in their order, were:

Changing the water into blood;The frogs;The lice;The flies;The murrain of cattle;The boils on the Egyptians;Hail;The locusts;The darkness;The death of the first-born.

Changing the water into blood;

The frogs;

The lice;

The flies;

The murrain of cattle;

The boils on the Egyptians;

Hail;

The locusts;

The darkness;

The death of the first-born.

“The first step in this carefully planned attack,” says Dr. Brim in a newly published book, “Medicine in the Bible,” “was the pollution of Egypt’s water supply.”

This had two results: First, it attacked the god of Egypt—the Nile; secondly, it sapped the very fountain of the country.

Egyptian legend said that the Nile sprang from the blood of the god Osiris. Hence, “the waters of the Nile were turned into blood.”

Egypt depended on the Nile for its drinking water, on its yearly inundations for the irrigation of the fields.

A polluted Nile was a smashing blow at the water supply and at the crops and cattle. Nobody could wash or drink.

The fish—one of the staple foods—died. Frogs were forced to leave their natural haunts in the river banks and invaded the streets, fields and houses in their millions.

Swarms of frogs, with no water or food, died and rotted over the countryside. Cartloads were burned, but not before the germs of pollution had time to multiply.

The air became filled with the disease germs bred in this ideal forcing-ground.People and animals became infected.

Flies descended in swarms greater than people had ever seen, bringing more germs with them. Cattle died in their thousands.

Dust, in a naturally dusty country, became infected, spreading more disease and death. Nature took a turn. A terrific hailstorm shrieked over Egypt. The few crops that were left standing were flattened and destroyed. Animals were killed by the force of the hailstones. Next came the locusts, dropping in their millions on the fields, eating everything the hail had left.

When they passed, a dust storm, caused probably by the hot, electrical wind known as the hamsin, blew up and darkened the sky for days on end, as sandstorms still do in that part of the world. The tenth and last plague, the death of the first-born, was a natural consequence of all that had happened since the day the water became polluted.

The Bible does not say explicitly that only the first-born died in this plague.

What it does say is:

And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne to the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon.

The epidemic killed many others, but in the death of the first-born lay the greatest calamity, for the first-born son was chief in every Egyptian household.

Dr. Brim does not explain how the first plague was brought about, but if Moses did pollute the Nile it must have been done when the water was low.

It is certain that Moses was a medical genius, as his laws of health prove, and knew the certain effects of water pollution.

Neither does the doctor explain how Moses foresaw the hail, but it is possible he could judge atmospheric conditions with precision.—V. B.

It is perhaps an inaccuracy to talk about “modern” attempts to thwart and deny the Word of God! There is nothing modern about this entire propaganda, popular as it may be in our own day. The error is ancient, as is the attitude of mind that would set aside the element of the supernatural in Holy Writ, and oppose the time-honored revelation of God’s will by the modern self-satisfaction with human learning. Indeed, this common and basic sin of our generation is so far from being modern, that the very first recorded case of denial of God’s Word comes from the Garden of Eden, man’s first and original home.

Even before sin had reared its ugly head, to shatter the sweet communion and spoil the fair harmony that was the basis of man’s fellowship with his Creator, this error appeared. It was Satan who, encroaching upon the beauty of Eden’s fair content, first said, “Hath God said?” The denial of the truth of God’s spoken word originated with the enemy of man: and it would behoove us all to remember that any man who has questioned His written word from that hour to this, is also an enemy, and an emissary of the original foe of mankind! Do we owe Satan so great a debt of gratitude for the deep and dark pit of woe into which he has lured our race, that we must lend slavish attention to the same old error when he sponsors it today?

For this “modern” attempt to discredit the Scripture is but a recrudescence of his ancient and simple strategy for the hurt of mankind. Well does he know that if he can but shake the faith of our generation in the integrity of the Bible, faith in God must soon be lost as well. Once more pedantic scoffers, professors of this and of that, arise solemnly to refute the truth of the only “map” that can ever guide men back to the Paradise we lost when the first man rejected God’s revelation.

It is interesting to see that this old error is in no new guise, in the article referred to above. This is nothing new, it is just an original approach to the same old mess of Satanic whispering. Indeed, Paul warned us of the possibility of this very article and method in II Timothy 3:8, when he said:

Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.

He introduces the very age of Egyptian history, and the events connected with the Exodus in speaking thus of the false teachers of the apostate days that should precede the time of our Lord’s return. And lo! the event transpires in this year of grace, as the press of the twentieth century casts doubt upon the Ten Plagues in this subtle manner.

Itissubtle. Also dishonest to the nth degree.Professing to accept the historicity of the events, the article then proceeds to demolish the credibility of the record, by ascribing all the plagues to natural forces, directed by the genius of a human being, namely, Moses. God is ruled out, the supernatural denied, and common sense prostituted to infidelity in a manner that the shallowest thinker could not countenance. For a man of medicine, or a scholar in any realm of science, to foster such a contemptible evasion of plain fact, passes understanding.

A few years ago it was customary for criticism to deny that these plagues ever happened. Classifying them among the reputed folklore of the Hebrews, and relegating them to the realm of the purely mythological, the critic calmly and boldly denied that they ever occurred at all. But these past years of research and study have so established the historicity of the record, that this procedure is no longer possible; so the new attack is made, on the basis of naturalism.

It is plainly stated that Moses himself brought about these plagues upon the Egyptians, and that he did so by the use of his own superior knowledge. In a word, he was a bacteriologist, three and a half thousand years before Pasteur! That in itself is a greater miracle than the plagues could ever have been! No microscope, no instrumentsof research, yet he not only anticipated the discoveries of Lister and Pasteur, but he also appliedgerm warfareto the redemption of Israel, and “bent the Egyptians tohiswill.”

More marvelous than all this, he did it by simply polluting the Nile River, the source of the life of Egypt. This of course was a simple task! The Nile is a mighty river. If we follow its course just from the First Cataract at Assuan to the mouth, it is over five hundred miles as the river twists and bends round and about.

Now all Moses had to do was to impregnate those five hundred miles of winding river with some deadly form of disease germs, that would affect the Egyptiansbut not the Israelites! Any nice germ would do! Of course, he had also tokeepthose five hundred miles of flowing stream polluted, in spite of the rushing current that swept fresh water down day by day! Let us not forget,that he did all this while Pharaoh was looking on: and that for seven days the condition continued, then to end as suddenly as it had begun. We should like to know something of his technique!

Then, after the river had cleared its waters, Moses boldly announced that the Lord would overrun the land with frogs! This was done, not as a result of a polluted river, but rather after the river was clear. Pollution withdisease germs might have driven the frogs out of the river: but how did Moses get them to goback, as Pharaoh entreated him to do?

Most conveniently, the author of the above cited article does not mention how the lice were spread over the land by Moses! Did he personally catch them and spread them all around, or had he been breeding and storing them for years in advance? The flies may have increased in the rotting piles of frogs, but what kept this pest of flies out of the small section of Egypt called the Land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were? Given the conditions that caused the flies to breed, why did they refrain from the particular portion of the land where Moses and his people were camping?

So also for the murrain on the cattle, and the boils on the Egyptians. None of Israel were affected by these disasters. Did Moses have some kind of salve or prophylactic serum that he used, he being the great medical genius that this article makes him to be? Even that will not account for the fact that when the hail came, it, also, avoided the camp of Moses and his three and a half million compatriots!

But even a great medical genius and an accomplished meteorologist could not have foreseen the coming of the locusts that darkened the sky and the land as well. Norcould this great medical genius, even had he also been an able entomologist, have seen to it that the locusts ate only Egyptian vegetation, as Goshen greenery would have been just as acceptable tohungrylocusts! And who ever saw any other kind?

Passing over the supernatural darkness with the simple observation that it wasnotan ordinary phenomenon such as a sandstorm (which left the houses of the Israelites unaffected), we will hasten to the conclusion of the matter, the death of the first-born. The article we are quoting makes a terribly strained attempt to prove that others died as well as the first-born, but the text of the Scripture does not so state or imply. Indeed, the text very clearly sets forth the fact that it was only the first-born who died. They died dramatically; all at the same hour.

At midnight, simultaneously, death smote a certain restricted class.

The prince in the palace, and the felon in the dungeon; the cattle as well.

But the first-born of Israel did not die!They were all under the blood!

But the first-born of Israel did not die!

They were all under the blood!

Quaint epidemic, was it not? It came as a result of disease germs in the river Nile, it killed all its victims out of just one class, the first-born, and it passed over any home that had lamb’s blood on the door posts!

Is it necessary for a man to believe such arrant nonsense, and accept such utterances of folly before he can qualify as an educated man, or a scientist?

Most fortunately, it is not!

To show the truth of this matter, we can indeed study these ten plagues in the light of modern science. Not by the flickering rays of the lamp of human speculation can understanding be achieved. Only in the full illumination of the sunshine of historical fact can the truth be discerned. So, we will turn to the great and truly modern science of archeology to study the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and see what the truth of the matter really is.

In the first place, thanks to the vast amount of research in the archeology of Egypt, we now know that these ten plagues were a contest between the Lord God of the Israelites, and the pantheon of Egypt.

The genesis of the contest is given in Exodus 3:18. Here Moses is instructed by God to ask Pharaoh for a three-day furlough for the entire company of the Twelve Tribes, that they might go three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to Jehovah. This initial request was to be the first step in a campaign that would result in the redemption of Israel from their long bondage,and the apparently reasonable request was made with the certainty that it would be refused. Indeed, the request was such that Pharaohcould not grant it!

As we shall later see, the Egyptians were the most polytheistic nation that ever lived. In their pantheon of deities there were more than twenty-two hundred gods and goddesses, and each of them had a particular theophany. That is to say, these gods and goddesses had certain animals that were sacred to them, and in which animal form the particular god or goddess occasionally manifested a personal presence. So very often the deities of Egypt are depicted in stone and painting as having a human body, but an animal head. Thus Thoth might be seen with the head of an ibis, while Hathor sometimes has a human head, but more often she is portrayed with the head of a cow.

So there was no animal that the Hebrews could sacrifice to their God, Jehovah, that would not be sacred to some Egyptian deity. This sacrifice would constitute blasphemy in the eyes of the Egyptian masters, and trouble would eventuate immediately! Indeed, when Pharaoh, worn out by the troubles brought upon him by the plagues, suggested to Moses that the people sacrifice to Jehovah without going to the wilderness,Moses simply replied in the language that is recorded in Exodus 8:26:

“What shall we sacrifice, that will not be an abomination in the eyes of the Egyptians? Will they not stone the people if they sacrifice in the land?”

The justice of the reply was so self-apparent that the ruler did not press his suggestion, as the text shows. Thus God forced the issue and provoked the conflict that not only freed His people from slavery and eventually established them in the land that He had promised them through Abraham, but also showed His supremacy over the gods of Egypt. Even more than that, in the resultant series of events, the Lord God brought such glory to His own Name, and showed such omnipotence that the world has never forgotten this drama, even to our own day and time. Witness the very article that is the subject of this present comment!

The clear statement of God’s attitude toward the conflict is seen in Exodus 4:23, 24. The figure of speech used there is a divine choice, therefore we use it just as God Himself expressed His own mind to Moses. The “first-born” was the chief object of interest in every Egyptian household, for two reasons. The law of primogeniture ruled in that day and land, even as it does in England and othercountries today. Also, the first-born of every species, animal or human, was dedicated to the gods, and was a sacred object, in a very strong sense of that word. So later, we hear the law of Israel as set forth by God, that the first-born of man or beast in the land is to be sacred to Jehovah:notto the gods of Egypt.

Now then, as Moses was sent to Pharaoh, to carry the demands of God for the release of the people, he was instructed to tell the ruler that Israel was, in God’s sight, as prized and beloved a group as the “first-born” was in an Egyptian household. In a figure of speech that Egypt as a whole could most clearly grasp, God said: “Israel isMyson,My first-born: And I have said unto thee, Let my son go that he may serve me; and thou hast refused to let him go; behold, I will slaythyson,thyfirst-born.”

With this introduction, we can see clearly the genesis of the conflict. It is most clearly stated in Exodus 5:1-3. When Moses said to Pharaoh, “Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in thewilderness:” the ruler of the land said, in just so many words, “Who is Jehovah? I never heard of him!” Not only did the mighty king reject the word and the commands of God, but he also denied Him in no uncertain terms.This upstart Jehovah, who wasHeto give orders to Pharaoh the mighty? He was the god of an humbled and captive people, therefore the king reasoned that his own gods must be far mightier! So the proud and haughty monarch said, “I’ll stick by the gods of Egypt; I know not this Jehovah, and I will not obey His words.”

Moses left with the clearly expressed warning that the king might not then know Jehovah, but that he was certainly destined to find out about Him! The call to arms, the challenge to combat, and the prophecy of God’s victory are all expressed in the single verse in Exodus the seventh chapter, where God tells Moses that “the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I stretch out my hand upon Egypt....” This, then, was the primary reason for the ten plagues. God would teach the Egyptians a lesson throughjudgmentsthat the land would never forget! When he finished with them, none were ever again able to say, “And who is this Jehovah? The gods of Egypt are stronger.”

Thus we see that the contest was primarily between the monotheism of Israel and polytheism of Egypt. We would emphasize the fact that the Egyptians were perhaps the most polytheistic race the world has so far known. It is impossible to say just how many deities existed to the Egyptian mind, but“their name was legion”! Two hundred separate deities are named in the Pyramid Text, and four hundred and eighty more are named in the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead. Altogether, archeologists have recovered the names of over two thousand two hundred different gods and goddesses that were worshipped by the Egyptians! Is it any wonder that Jehovah must start His laws to His people with the commandment: “Thou shalt have no othergodsbefore me!”?

A word about these objects of Egyptian worship will be necessary to clear up the necessary later references to the practices and the beliefs of the Egyptians. While these ancient folks never had the idea of an immanent, pervasive God, in the monotheistic sense, they still had a dim conception of a super-god principle, behind and over the various individual gods and goddesses. There was first of all the grouping of gods into triads, which was a widely accepted custom. Since each triad consisted of a god, a wife, and a son, this grouping is less a degeneration of the principle of the Trinity than might seem to be suggested at first thought. Rather, it was a glorification of thefamilyprinciple.

Thus we see that at Thebes, the principal triad of deities consists of Amon-Ra, the king of all the gods, Mut, his Wife, and Khons, their son.

Ba-neb-Ded, with his wife Het-mehit, and their son Harpakhrad (whom the Greeks later called Harpokrates) constituted the triad at Mendes. In like manner, the Memphis triad was composed of Ptah, Sekhmet, and Imhotep. Sometimes the greater gods were grouped into a company of nine, called the Ennead. There was also the grouping of the major deities into the “Three Companies,” being the gods of the heaven, the earth, and the Other or Under World.

All the gods had human bodies, but some of them had animal heads. Sometimes a god who customarily had a human head would appear wearing the animal head of his theophany, as in the case of Hathor, cited above. Thus when Hathor appears with a cow’s head upon a human body, she appears with the solar disk between her horns; and when she appears with the human head, she wears as a headdress the bonnet of the goddess Mut, the wife of Amon-Ra, the horns of the cow, the solar disk which shows her relationship to Horus, and the feather of the goddess Maat.

We have previously asserted that each plague was a direct blow at one of these celestial beings, and it might be profitable to demonstrate this fact with a few concrete illustrations.

Hapi

The First Plague was a direct and definite blow at a numerous company of these objects of worship. In the first place, the River Nile was itself an object of worship. It was reputed to flow from the celestial stream called Nu, and was heavenly in its origin. It brought life to the entire land of Egypt, and was worshipped with appropriate and very exact ritual. There were hymns to the Nile, prayers and offerings to and for the Nile, and the river possessed in itself a very real personality. The River is pictured in the form of a man wearing a cluster of water plants upon his head, and the idea of fertility is conveyed by giving him the heavy pendant breasts of a nursing mother! In the British Museum may be seen a remarkable papyrus, containing the Hymn to the Nile. To show the reverence felt for the power of the great River, we quote just a sentence or two from this Hymn:

... Thou art the Lord of the poor and needy. If thou wert overthrown in the heavens, the gods would fall upon their faces, and men would perish....

This deified river, then, the source of lifeand blessing in Egypt, was smitten by God, and its waters turned to blood. Frantically the Egyptians sought to dig shallow wells by the banks of the stream, as their water supply failed them for the first time in the memory of man! Truly, Jehovah was greater than the Nile! And not only greater than the River itself, there was more than this involved. There were many issues involved, and many deities suffered “loss of face” that day!

Osiris

There was the mighty Osiris, who was himself the cause and source of the resurrection and of everlasting life. Greatest of all the gods of the underworld, he has an important part in the text of the Book of the Dead. The Nile was supposed to be his bloodstream! When God smote the Nile, he laid the mighty Osiris low in the dust! With him fell Hapi—who was the Nile-god, and also Satet, the wife of Khnemu, the goddess of the annual inundation. Her divine sister, Anqet, bit the dust that day, as she was the personification of the Nile waters, which turned into an offense and a stench when Moses stretched out his staff. Time will not permit the presentation of the characters of Isis-Sothis, Isis-Hathor, Ament, Menat, Renpit and at least two score more,all of whom met defeat in the First Plague. None of them could sustain their prestige and power in the face of the action of Jehovah, and He emerged victorious in the first trial of strength.

Khnum

The Second Plague was likewise a contest between the Lord of the heavens and the earth, and certain specific ideas of the Egyptian system of worship. The plague of frogs that covered the land, making life a burden to the people, was a blow struck at Heqt, the wife of the great Khnum, whose theophany was a frog. Indeed, she was called the “frog-goddess,” and this lowly creature was sacred to her. The frog was the symbol of the resurrection, and the emblem of fertility. It was reverenced by the people, and to have one around the dwelling place was a sign of good fortune and was supposed to ensure a fertile year for farm and family alike.

They got enough of this quaint object of reverence when God flooded their land with myriads of the beastly things! They were in the bread-trough, and got tangled up in the dough, thus adding a rather quaint flavor to the bread! The bread could not be baked,however, as the baking ovens crawled with frogs, and the fires could not be lighted. They hopped all over the master of the house, and when he sought his bed in disgust they were there before him.

Like a blanket of filth the slimy, wet monstrosities covered the land, until men sickened at the continued squashing crunch of the ghastly pavement they were forced to walk upon. If a man’s feet slipped on the greasy mass of their crushed bodies, he fell into an indescribably offensive mass of putrid uncleanness, and when he sought water to cleanse himself, the water was so solid with frogs, he got no cleansing there. In sheer desperation the mighty king was forced to beg, “Call off your frogs, and I will let the people go!” Read Exodus 8:1-15.

And with that cry, the prestige of Heqt and Khnum was gone forever, drowned out in the tidal wave of disgust that rolled up in protest attoo muchof her theophany!

It is a bit difficult to imagine that generation of Egyptians ever worshipping the Frog again.

Plagues Three and Four are a bit more difficult to deal with at the present writing, because of the personal ignorance of the writer. By that he means to say that more light is required here as he does not know definitely the exact god that was meant tosuffer in the estimation of the people, with the plague of lice. There can be no question, however, that the people themselves were hard hit, as any veteran of the A. E. F. will be only too glad to testify! This unclean parasite must have been a source of misery that was well-nigh insuperable, when it became as numerous as the very dust of the ground! It must have made the Egyptians somewhat envious to see the Israelites basking in peace and bodily comfort, while they, the lords of the land, itched and scratched and suffered the misery of this vicious pest! How much better to trust the God Jehovah who demonstrated His ability to keep His followers free from even such a plague as this.

As for the flies, there is this suggestion, at least: one of them was sacred to the name of Uatchit. What variety of fly is intended in the text we cannot definitely say, as there are numerous species of flies. But theichneumonfly is a symbol of this god, and their figures in tiny statues and on papyri are well known to the modern archeologist. They are a brilliant and beautiful insect, somewhat prized by the entomologists of our day as specimens, but they can be a pest when they come in too numerous companies!

Some years ago we were encamped in Mexico, with a company who were diggingfor archeological treasure. The site was pleasant, the camp was near a clear, meandering stream, and the shade trees were enjoyable. There was just “one fly in the ointment” and that fly was the ichneumon. Every time food was placed upon the camp table, this gorgeous insect responded with enthusiasm and delight. They came in regiments and companies, bringing all their relatives and friends with them! So we could say from experience, that anyone who had to fight with a swarm of ichneumon flies for his own share of the lunch, would soon come to revile the god to whom this symbol was sacred! Not only Jehovah, butanygod would seem preferable to Uatchit after an invasion of his particular pets. Or should we turn this last word around and make it pest, instead?

Hathor

When we come to the Fifth Plague, we are again on solid and assured territory. Once more firm archeological ground supports the theme of this chapter. When God smote the cattle of Egypt, He dealt most definitely and drastically with Egyptian polytheism. There were many of the supreme objects of Egyptian worship that met their Waterloo in the murrain on the cattle.

Chief of these is the mighty and venerated Hathor. She was the “cow-goddess” that was universally worshipped in all the land, and was to the human race of that day the “mother” principle of deity. Her most common name in the Egyptian language is Het-Hert, which literally means “the House of Horus.” The House of Horus is that portion of the sky where Horus lives and is daily born, namely, the east. Hathor is depicted in antiquity in many forms. Always she appears with a human body, and may sometimes have a human head as well. But more often she has a cow’s head on a human body, as the cow was her symbol. She often walked the land in the theophany of a cow, and one could tell when a calf was born, whether Hathor had come to earth, or not.

When this great goddess is pictured with a human head, she wears an impressive headdress. This is composed of the spreading horns of a cow, between which are seen the bonnet of Mut, the divine wife of Amon-Ra, the king of the gods. Above this is seen the solar disk, as Hathor was of “The Great Company” and was associated with all the beneficence of the glorious and life-giving sun. The Book of the Dead teaches that Hathor provides nourishment for the soul in the other-world, and as such a provider she excels all the minor gods. So in all the forms in which she is carved or drawn, she wearsthe sacred uraeus, to show her exalted power.

When God smote the cattle, her especial symbol, He struck a mighty blow at the tottering system for which Pharaoh had confidently expressed his preference. The other forays were but skirmishes: this was a real and decisive battle! This shrewd and telling victory was the beginning of the end of the conflict. If the divine Hathor could not protect her faithful following from the power of Jehovah, who could?

For not only Hathor was thus challenged and defeated, but other important members of the Heavenly Company met defeat and disgrace in the plague that smote the cattle. A common object in the Egypt of that day was the sacred bull, Apis, whose power was vast indeed. His temples dotted the land, and the priests of his cult were many and their power was impressive in the extreme. On the forehead of Apis appears the sacred triangle of eternity, and on his back is always seen the sacred scarab, with spread wings.

Apis was the theophany of the god whose name was Ptah-Seker-Asar, and he also was one of the triune resurrection gods. The living worshipped him that they might live again in the world to come, and the dead, of course, all worshipped him because hehad made them to live again. Now, alas, for those who trusted in him against Jehovah! He could not even defend his own earth-form from the blight that his new enemy, Jehovah, had sent on all that represented the great and powerful Ptah-Seker-Asar. Thus God humbled the sacred Apis in the same stroke that crushed the cult of Hathor.

To this record must also be added the name of Nut, the goddess of the sky, and the wife of Geb. She it was who produced the egg out of which the sun hatched, so in reality she preceded Horus and even Amon-Ra, even though they ascended to a higher power and authority later. She is depicted with a female human body, and the head of a cow. However, she does not wear the solar disk, nor the headdress of Hathor, as she was a little lower in the social company of the weird organization of nonsense and mysticism that was the religion of Egypt.

The simple summary of the whole record is just this: all the gods of Egypt were not able to defend the cattle, when the Lord God Jehovah stretched out His hand to smite them! This the people of Egypt were forced to concede, as their cattle died by the thousand before their bewildered eyes, while not one of the herds of Israel lost so much as one head of cattle by the murrain.

Reshpu

The Sixth and Seventh Plagues are simple to deal with, as the record of Egypt gives valuable aid to the unprejudiced student here. Imhotep was the god of medicine, and the guardian of all the healing sciences. Prayers were made to him for protection as well as for cures, and he was greatly revered. In like manner, Reshpu and Qetesh were the gods of storm and of battle, and they controlled all the natural elements except the light. So the noisome and painful boils struck the devotees of Imhotep and left him powerless to aid his praying following, and their plight was pitiful indeed. How little it helped to see that the followers of the god Jehovah, at whom Pharaoh had sneered with ridicule, were comfortable, and with unblemished skins! No suppurating sores advertised the pain of the Hebrews; the good hand of their God was upon them, to protect them from the very disaster that came upon all the Egyptians for Israel’s sake!

The medical man of the twentieth century, whose article we are now considering, attributes all this painful consequence to the bacteriological pollution of the Nile, which was accomplished by the skill and wisdom of Moses. The present writer of this refutationis not utterly ignorant of the science of bacteriology, but he humbly confesses that he does not know of any pathogenic micro-organism that would bite everybody except a Hebrew! We would like to know the name and the nature of such a bacterium or bacillus! The Hebrews were exposed to the same flies, the same germs, the same stench of the dead frogs, the same epidemic that was consequent upon this chain of events, unless Moses vaccinated or inoculated them all, some three and a half millions in number. Truly the natural explanations of the supernatural cause reason to totter on her throne!

Sebek

But if God was at war with Imhotep, Reshpu and the gods of healing, and desired to scatter their following and to open their eyes to the folly of idol worship, we can see how He might protect His own, while smiting the followers of the false religion. In that case also, Moses would not need to be the only man in antiquity who could call up a devastating hail storm at the dictate of his own will. Moses could leave it to God to shame Reshpu and the other gods of the elements in the eyes of their devotees.

The Eighth Plague, that of the locusts, isthe easiest of all to comprehend. This was a direct blow at the Egyptian conception of Providence, and a sweeping victory over all that was holy in the eyes of this idolatrous people. These ancient people ascribed the fertility of their fields and the abundance of the harvests to certain specific deities. The modern scholar establishes this fact by studying the hymns of praise and the votive records of the Egyptians. But after the hail had hammered their lovely ripening crops flat on the ground, and even while they mourned their loss, swarms of locusts descended like a cloud, and swept the land as clean of vegetation as a forest fire could have done.

To see God’s purpose in this act, we need only consider the prophecy of Joel. With a fidelity to detail that arouses the admiration of the modern entomologist, this prophet of Israel portrays the devastation of the land by a swarm of locusts, as a judgment from God upon His own people. When famine and want stare men in the face, and they are beyond the hope of other aid, then they turn back to God in sorrow and in repentance. For where can men turn except to God, when the land lies barren and devastated, and famine stalks the earth?

Thus in Egypt, when God would teach an unforgettable lesson to the proud and haughtyking whose impertinent comment had been, “Who is this Jehovah?”, He punctuated His answer to Pharaoh’s question with a swarm of locusts. It is reasonable to conclude that long after the starving Egyptians had forgotten the pangs of hunger that came inevitably on the heels of that visitation of consuming insects, the lesson of that visitation remained.

All these disasters, following one after the other, had struck telling blows at the very foundation of Egypt’s religion. But a worse was to follow.

The Ninth Plague struck at the very apex and head of all the Great Company of the pantheon. The most essential thing in all the physical realm is light, and the Egyptians seemed to realize this fact. The darkness of the ninth plague was a supernatural darkness. This much is evident from the record, which says that it covered the land so grossly, the people sought refuge in bed! Evidently artificial light would not penetrate that fearful gloom;but the children of Israel had light in their dwellings!

Of course they had it!

They are the people who later sang: “Jehovah is my light and my salvation.”

But the songs of the Egyptians were directed to different gods entirely. Here, then,was a golden opportunity to test the might of these conflicting ideas of deity. Is Jehovah able to maintain His superiority over the hosts of the Egyptian gods? They were indeed mighty in the hearts of the people, and the contest was long and grim.

First of all to consider, there was the incomparable Thoth who had worked out the system of placing all the stars, the sun and the moon in the heavens. He had arranged also the seasons, as they had been decreed by Ra. Although inferior to Ra and to Horus, nevertheless Thoth gave light by night, and on those days that the sun was not visible. He also gave Isis the power needed to raise the dead, and to offend him was to suffer eternal loss. Remembering that the Hebrews had lived under this culture and psychology for generations, and considering that they all must have been tinctured somewhat with these beliefs, many of them must have trembled indeed when Jehovah calmly engaged in battle with Thoth! So the Lord God not only smote the god of Egypt in this part of the conflict, but He also established His personal superiority in the minds of His own despairing people. Certainly, when this plague ended, the Hebrews hastened to follow His next commands without hesitancy, even though those commands laid them in danger of the death penalty under Egyptian law.

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