By now I could have lifted my hand and struck you and your people with a plague to wipe you off the face of the earth. But I have spared you for a purpose—to show you my power and to spread my fame throughout the earth. [Exodus 9:15-16 (NLT)]
Over a period of 3,000 years, ancient Egypt’s pantheon of gods numbered between 1,400 and 2,000. During that time, some faded in prominence and new gods appeared. Often depicted as part human and part animal, Egypt’s gods had names, unique back-stories, and their own domain and expertise. Each god/goddess was responsible for a certain part of daily life, from motherhood to music, record keeping to funerals, and cosmic order to hunting. While the ten plagues God sent Egypt through Moses and Aaron may seem somewhat arbitrary to us in the 21st century, every one of them was a direct attack on one or more Egyptian god. They were the ultimate “smack-down” between God Almighty and Egypt’s deities.
When Moses struck the water of the Nile and turned it into blood for seven days, it was a direct attack on the crocodile-headed Sobeck, whose job was to be the Nile’s protector, as well as Khnum, the god of water and life, who was to guard the river’s source. The fouled river also was an affront to Osiris whose bloodstream was said to be the Nile. The plague of frogs who came up from the Nile and into people’s homes challenged the frog-headed goddess Heget who was in charge of regeneration, rebirth, and fertility. Aaron striking the dust of the earth to make gnats/fleas/lice immediately appear that covered both man and beast was a direct attack on Geb/Seb/Keb, the god of the earth and soil. The fourth plague, teems of flies or biting insects filling the air, challenged the power of Shu, the Egyptian god of air, and brought shame to any insect-headed god like Khepri whose head was that of a scarab beetle. With this affliction and the ones that followed, God distinguished between Egypt and the people of Israel. Remaining unaffected by the plagues, the people of Israel did not suffer these annoyances and hardships! While the God of Israel protected His people from the flies, Shu and Khepri couldn’t protect theirs!
The plagues intensified with the fifth plague, a deadly disease affecting cattle and livestock. The deaths of Egypt’s cattle was an insult to Apsis, the god of fertility (often represented as a bull) and the cow-headed Hathor, the goddess of love and protection. The punishment continued when ashes tossed by Moses became festering boils on both man and beast. This was the first direct strike on Egypt’s people and skin diseases and boils were seen as a sign of divine displeasure or judgment. Both Sekhmet, the goddess with power over disease, and Isis, goddess of healing, were helpless in the face of this challenge. The punishments increased with a devastating hail storm and continuous lightning, an attack on Seth/Set (god of wind and storms), Nut (goddess of the sky), and Osiris, the crop fertility god. The assault on those deities continued with the eighth plague, an east wind that blew in swarms of locusts. The false gods couldn’t prevent the locusts from consuming any vegetation that survived the hail storm.
The ninth punishment brought three days of complete darkness to the Egyptians. The most worshipped god in Egypt was the sun god Ra/Re, but both he and Kepri, the god of the dawn, were powerless in the face of Israel’s God. The final plague was death to the firstborn of both man and beast. Even Pharaoh’s son, believed to be a divine birth, died. These deaths challenged the power and authority of Isis and Osiris, the protectors of life, as well as Pharaoh, the god-king believed to be the son of Ra.
Revealing them as the powerless worthless idols they were, each of the plagues challenged, defeated, and shamed the false gods of Egypt. The God of Israel proved Himself to be the one true God—sovereign and superior in all aspects. While directed at Egypt, this message of Jehovah’s supremacy also was meant for the people of Israel as well as the rest of the world.
There is no need to go to heathen lands to find false gods. We can find them right here in our own country (and possibly in our own homes). Anything that gets between us and God is a false god and no more worthy of our devotion and worship than were Ra, Osiris, or Sekhmet. That we don’t depend on Seth to protect us from storms or bow down before statues of the bull-headed Apsis doesn’t mean we’re not guilty of idolatry! Nowadays, we worship the far more subtle false gods of the 21st century—things like wealth, power, influence, property, fame, pleasure, beauty, popularity, education, comfort, science, sex, money, and self. Never forget that our false gods will fail to serve and save us just as easily as Egypt’s false gods failed them!
What each one honors before all else, what before all things he admires and loves, this for him is God. [Origen]
When reading the narratives of the Old Testament, it’s tempting to think that some of the stories are more legend than history. Take the story of Balaam, the pagan prophet hired by King Balak to curse the Israelites, who ended up blessing the Israel and pronouncing disaster on its enemies. Since this took place around 1407 BC, it’s easy to question the story’s accuracy. Balaam’s existence, however, has extra-biblical non-Israelite confirmation.
While I expected bear sightings when we lived in the mountains of Colorado, I never expected a bear to find its way into our Florida community and scavenge in a neighbor’s trash bin on her driveway! While bears generally prefer natural foods like berries and nuts, as civilization encroaches on their habitat, those foods are becoming less abundant. Driven by their need to eat, bears will go where they can find any food. With a sense of smell that is seven times greater than a bloodhound’s, it’s estimated they can smell a food source from as far away as 20 miles. Opportunistic creatures, they take advantage of whatever is easily available, whether bird seed, pet food, barbecue grills, or garbage.
Earlier this week, I wrote of the Levites’ failure to protect Judah from idolatry but one Levite stands out in his loyalty to God and commitment to the temple: Jehoiada the priest. When Judah’s King Ahaziah died, his mother, Queen Athaliah seized Judah’s throne. The daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, she was as evil as her parents and tried to kill all of her son’s heirs. Unknown to her, Ahaziah’s infant son Joash was hidden by his aunt and survived. Raised by the high priest Jehoiada, the boy’s existence was kept secret while the priest plotted to put him on the throne. When the boy was seven, Jehoiada made a pact with five army commanders who covertly travelled throughout Judah to summon the Levites and leaders to a meeting at the Temple.
Evil is anything that contradicts the nature of God and it’s easy to see Satan’s presence in malevolent acts like terrorism, genocide, slavery, torture, and human trafficking. The enemy, however, is usually far more subtle. Evil also includes things like anger, pride, fretfulness, immorality, pettiness, selfishness, deceit, envy, spite, unforgiveness, hatred, hypocrisy, envy, jealousy, greed, and unkindness. Although we’re more likely to find them in our hearts than genocide or murder, they’re not as easy to recognize. Because it’s easier to see the evil done by others than it is to face the evil in our hearts, we don’t spot Satan when he comes slithering into our lives.
When writing about nitroglycerin recently, I realized there’s something else in our lives much like this strange chemical that is both helpful and harmful. Like nitroglycerin, man’s capabilities are a dichotomy between good and evil, constructive and destructive, and beneficial or detrimental. The same mind capable of creating a vaccine that saves thousands of lives is capable of creating a nuclear bomb that can take those lives. James speaks of this incongruity when writing about the way we use our words, “We use our tongues to praise our Lord and Father, but then we curse people, whom God made like himself. Praises and curses come from the same mouth! My brothers and sisters, this should not happen.” [3:9-10]
Devotions of the Heart 