079 - Plague #1: There Will Be Blood

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.

Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. So, you know, when you cut your finger, you know, the sight of blood, it just makes you all woozy.

It makes your knees weak and you want to faint. Yeah. Well, and that's just blood from your finger. But what if an entire river turned into blood? Oh, you mean like when God turned the Nile into blood? Yeah. So did Pharaoh get woozy?

Let's find out today on More Than Ink. Well, here we are again around our dining room table. We love being around the dining room table. And sometimes we eat and sometimes we read the Bible. Amazing.

Yeah. So I'm sitting across from Dorothy. And I'm sitting across from Jim. And we are going to continue our romp into Exodus. Exodus 7 is where we are today. And we are at the beginning of the 10 plagues. First of the 10 plagues. You're probably familiar with the 10 plagues, but if you're not, you will be. Because even, you know, a lot of times we focus on the last plague. The 10th plague is kind of what, you know, that's the straw that broke the camel's back. And it's also, it takes a lot of, a lot of pages in Exodus when you read it. So it's really different from the other 10.

But number one is no slouch. No, as a matter of fact, it raises the question in my mind, why is this one the first one? Yeah, I know.

So, you know, when we read these details, we will talk about that a little bit. Yeah. This is a jaw dropper. It's a jaw dropper.

It's a stunning thing. There's no slow beginning to the plagues. Yeah. So we left off last time. We left off in verse 13 of chapter 7. And, you know, it said what we will hear forever and ever for many, many pages. Pharaoh's heart was hardened.

It still was hardened. And so you go on to the next chapter. And today the next chapter is the first plague. Well, we talked about Pharaoh's heart. The condition of his heart was hardened even in the face of Moses's staff being thrown down and devouring the little snakes that were tossed on the ground by the Egyptian magicians. So he saw that.

He said, eh, sleight of hand. No big deal here. Yeah. So God has to ramp it up one notch, which is what it is because his heart is still tragically hardened. This is the real beginning.

Yeah. So here we go. Let's find out what this plague is and why is it interesting to be the first plague. You want to read for us? We're starting in chapter 7, verse 14. Verse 14. Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened.

He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he's going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. But so far you have not obeyed. Thus says the Lord, By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, the staff that's in my hand with the staff. I will strike the water that's in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood.

The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile. And the Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron, Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over the rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood, and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Blood. Blood. Blood everywhere. Okay. We need to talk about this. Blood everywhere. So I want you to take note before we go on too much that in this particular case with this plague, God gives a warning to Pharaoh before it happens.

Right. He tells him exactly what's going to happen. Tells him what's going to happen. Here's the consequences. And just, you know, if you've got a scorecard for the ten plagues, keep note of which ones have warnings involved with them.

It's not a surprise. It's something that Pharaoh is informed by Moses. And here God says, you know, you're going to find Pharaoh out on the river, you know, right on the Nile. And while he's standing there, you go up to him and say, Pssst.

Well, you go out and meet him. You be there when he arrives. You be there. Exactly. So he has his face to face while Pharaoh is standing on the bank of the Nile, looking out at this wonderful life-giving water. Yeah. Because the Nile is the lifeblood of Egypt, quite literally.

The reason Egypt arose where it did was because of the Nile. Yeah. And if you look geographically at the northern coast of Africa, all the way from the west to the east. You can see it from space.

Yeah. The only place that looks really green is where the Nile comes out. The Nile delta. And if you think about the fact that the majority of the African continent is flowing into this river, and then the people in Egypt are the ones that really benefit from the greatest. I mean, that Nile delta is just, man, that is a place to be.

It's fertile. So, you know, why is Pharaoh going out to the water every morning? Is it to bathe? Is it to worship?

Is it to make a public statement? We don't know exactly. We don't know. But we know that it was his morning habit to go out to the bank of the Nile. And God says, now you go and be there and meet him. Yep. And he meets him there.

While he's looking at the Nile, he tells him what's going to happen to the Nile. And be sure you have the staff in your hand. The staff, by the way, that turned into a serpent.

That swallowed up the other staffs. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's a very stark warning. You know, let my people go. They might serve me. But so far, you have not obeyed. Right.

You have not obeyed. And so, he says, so by this you shall know that I am the Lord. Which, you know, that's an interesting echo.

Because all the way back in chapter 5 on the first confrontation, Pharaoh says, I don't know this Lord. Right. Right. I don't know this Yahweh you're talking about. I don't know who he is.

Who is this guy? Right. And here God, this is part of the repetition we talked about last time.

Here God saying, well, you're going to know after today. Well, and this Lord, this capital L-O-R-D in every edition always means this is the proper name of God. Right. This is the I am that I am statement.

I like to read it as I am the God who is. Who is. Right.

Who is present, currently, actively present. Right. So, he says, you'll know that I am that God. So, this is Pharaoh being warned that from the events that are going to come down in a second, you're going to have an education. And the education is who this Yahweh is.

Who this guy is. Well, and if Pharaoh was going out to the river every morning to worship, as we said last week, the God of the Nile, the crocodile God, then this is a good statement. God says no. You're going to know.

I'm the God who is. Right. Right. Not that crocodile live in the river.

Not whatever you associate with this water you're looking at right now. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. In fact, what Moses is telling him is that God's saying that he's going to make the Nile useless to you. Useless to you.

More than useless. Which is terrifying. It's going to be a source of death.

Yeah. It's terrifying. And also, as he spans his eyes, look across the immensity of this river. This is a big river. At the immensity of this river, he's thinking to himself, who's powerful enough to negate the benefits of this river to us? I mean, come on. It's a whole river. This is different than turning staffs into snakes. We're talking about a whole river.

This is impossible. So, it's a big play right at the beginning. So, God predicts what's going to happen. And guess what happens? Well, and as we said, you know, the Nile was the lifeblood of Egypt.

These two ideas recur in this chapter. The water, the water, the water. A dozen times the water and blood, blood, blood. Well, even ancient peoples understood water is life. Water is life. Where there's water you can live.

Especially there. And blood means life. If you pour out the blood, then the animal or you are dead. Yeah.

Right? So, those two ideas both speak of life and death. And you don't have to be a scientist to understand this. That's right.

Especially if you're an agrarian society that relies on water to stay alive and irrigate crops and blood that keeps alive animals. This imagery is not lost on you. This is powerful. And it's very visual. Yeah.

Very, very visual. So, do they do it? Well, let's just talk a minute how specific God is before they actually do it. Okay. Okay. Because he tells Pharaoh the fish will die, right? Oh, yeah. They don't depend on the water. They're dependent on the fish. Right. It'll stink.

They're going to not be able to drink it. And the Lord says, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt. The rivers that naturally occur in the water. The canals. Those are human dug canals, right? To lead to irrigation ponds and all their pools of water. So, natural water, man engineered places for water.

And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt. Even in vessels of wood and vessels of stone. Yeah. How about that? What's the significance of that?

How about that? What's the significance of vessels of wood and vessels of stone? The wood and stone. Yeah. So, even water that's not flowing in the river. Right. That you've collected. That you have collected and kept in your house for drinking, cooking in a vessel. That's your use water. Right.

But the difference between wood and stone will become much later in the law when it becomes clear that stone vessels are the clean vessels. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. And wood vessels are the everyday common vessels. Yeah.

So, God says, you know, no matter how you're keeping it. Yeah. Water's mine. Yeah. So, whether it's water that's currently flowing or whether it's water that you've pre-collected, it doesn't matter. It'll all become blood.

So, if you pre-collected Nile water, that's too bad. It's still going to be subject to this problem. Yeah. This is pretty visual and it's going to affect everybody. It's very visual.

Not just hard-hearted Pharaoh. Yeah. It's very visual. And the whole idea about the fish dying and stinking, I mean, you're going to see death up close. Right. Massive death.

All the fish in the Nile dead. Yeah, because it doesn't say the water looked like blood. Right.

It says a couple of times the water became blood. Mm-hmm. Now, you can only imagine how awful that smelled. Yeah. This is stark. This is why I'm saying this first plague is no lightweight. This is stunning. This will get your attention.

This is just absolutely stunning. And it's a national threat to the people of Egypt who live and die based on the water coming down this. So, I mean, this is a gigantic threat. You know, the Nile as a source of life is such a big deal.

I had to go read up on this. I knew that there were a handful of gods that were associated with the Nile, not just one. Yeah, there's a bunch of them.

There's a bunch of them. And several of them show up as guardians of the Nile. So these are like protectors of the Nile, so the Nile's not going to go dry.

You have a protector for that. There's one that has to do with just being the spirit of the Nile. There is some... Osiris, which is a very popular god. Almost everyone knows about Osiris. Osiris, it was said that the Nile was his bloodstream. The blood that flowed through Osiris was the Nile itself. So the lifeblood of Osiris himself is the Nile. So what happens when that stream actually turns into blood? It looks like Osiris is bleeding to death. Dying, yep. So the imagery.

And you know, they found in ancient papyruses, they found song hymns written down that are hymns to the Nile. So there is so much invested in terms of this being the absolute source of life. And if we did not have this here, we would look like, I don't know, Morocco or Libya.

I mean, we'd be bad off. So this is our life. Our life comes from the Nile. So that actually answers question number one.

Why is this the first plague? Yes. Right. God's just striking at the very heart of the nation for what they regard as their source of life. Without the Nile, Egypt would not be.

So you think that's life for you? Let me show you. I am the god who is.

And yet in their minds they're thinking, who's powerful enough to reverse it? It's the mighty Nile. It's huge.

It's Africa's watershed. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, this is predictable. And yeah. And it nurtured civilizations there on the Nile Delta for a long time. Thousands of years. Yeah.

One of the oldest civilizations we know about. So I mean, it's worked out well. So for Moses and Aaron, these guys who were once slaves to these superior people, the Egyptians, when they come up and say, you know, you better watch out.

God's going to turn off the Nile for you. Well, sure he is. So it's nice that it gives them a warning. I don't think it's going to change his mind.

Well, it's interesting. He didn't actually say he's going to turn it off. No.

Because what's flowing in there is no longer going to be water. It's going to be death. He's going to turn off through usefulness. Yeah. So it might as well not even be there. Because like you said, it's a source of problem. You might be opening some confusion because later on in the scriptures, God actually does turn off the rivers. He does turn off rivers. Right. But he doesn't do that here. Yeah.

The flow continues. It's just no longer life giving. Yeah.

It's not life giving. Exactly. Good qualification. Okay. So. Well. It's all about the text. What does it actually say?

Let's get some action. Verse 20, some action. And in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of the servants, he lifted up the staff, struck the water in the Nile and all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died and the Nile stank so the Egyptians could not drink the water from the Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. But the magicians, but the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So Pharaoh's heart remained hardened and he would not listen to them.

There's that willing word. And he would not listen to them as the Lord had said. He predicted this. And so 23, so Pharaoh turned and went into his house and he did not take even this to his heart. It just didn't penetrate.

What a callous response. 24, there's a work around but not a great one and all the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink for they could not drink the water of the Nile. 25, seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile. Seven days. A week.

A week. That's very clear here. It says the Lord struck the Nile even though it was Aaron who wielded the staff. Right. Right, right, right.

Smacked the water. Right. You know, you want to talk about the staff for a minute? Yeah. Have you got some thoughts on it? I've got a few. Well, no. But you had said that you did.

What do you have to add to yours? Well, what's interesting and it caught my eye, if you go back to verse 19, take your staff and stretch out your hand. That stretch out your hand is almost always mentioned when they use the staff for something. Stretch out your hand.

It's kind of interesting. So we get this picture of him sort of waving it. But the actual word for a staff, it means to extend. It means to extend and it's fundamental. So for instance, a branch on a tree, that extends the tree. So any branch that you take off is called a staff because it's an extension of the tree.

Even the tribes of Israel, when you talk about a tribe by name, it's this word because it's an extension of the history of the families and stuff like that. So when I see a phrase that says, take your staff and stretch out your hand, it's like extend your staff and stretch your hand. It's like you see this composite action of this thing, which is an extension by etymology, and then also stretching his hand out. In a way it sort of looks like a picture of God himself reaching out from where he is and touching because a staff is an extension thing and Aaron's arm is an extension thing. It's kind of metaphorically sort of like the finger of God visibly coming down and touching something.

Well, the magicians are going to use that very phrase later on in plagues. They are. Yeah. But I was thinking about the staff being the symbol of authority, the symbol of leadership. Yeah, exactly.

Right? The one holding the staff is the one in charge. Right.

Right. And we talked about this before, the scepter of the king, which is a symbol of his power. So here we have the staff, which identifies a family tree or a leader of a family, the leader of the family of God will extend his authority over. And I think it's fascinating as an irony again, is if you look at the staff from an ancient perspective as a scepter, a scepter of the power of God, what a great thing it is that the scepter itself is not fancy and gold-plated like all the other scepters. It's just a stick. It's a stick off a tree. And so it's God's way of saying, you know, even the most common of medium like this, you know, it's not about the scepter itself.

It's about me doing this. Right. Yeah. So I think it's just, I think that's why the staff starts to play such a central role and every time God acts, God acts through a motion of this quote unquote very common scepter, this branch. And it's just a visual picture. It's not a magic tool, not an omen in itself. It's not a wielder of magic.

And that's why they use this word. I mean, this staff, this rod, this stick, I think it's better translated just stick. He's got this stick and we'd say, well, if it's just a stick, what kind of magic power does it have? Well, you know, a lot of people who like to talk about magic stories and stuff like that will say, well, the stick is everything. Well, not in this case. It's just a representative thing.

It's a representative thing. It has no magic power in itself. But the magicians were able to duplicate this trick.

Yeah, they, yeah. By the way, when you think about that for a second, if every piece of water they know is already turned to blood, where did they get the water that they did their trick with? Well, I never thought about that. They dug it up along the Nile.

Apparently. So the people who were digging up for that, so what you can say is, okay, they duplicated the trick. However, God changed the entire Nile into blood. All they did was took some water that they dug out of a well and turned it into blood, which is a wholly different thing on scale measure altogether. Well, and it says seven full days, right?

Seven full days. That these magicians couldn't undo the trick. Right, right. And that would have been the hat trick if they could undo it. They could make water look like blood. Yeah. But they couldn't undo it. Yeah. So the people who are suffering because of this, they're saying, we don't care if you took some well water and turned it into a cup of blood.

Just give us water to drink. I mean, it's a very weak kind of imitation, and they're not really getting it. They're not reversing anything.

They're not really doing anything productive for the people. But in a way, they think that this somehow can influence Pharaoh and say, look, we can do this too. Of course, in his own mind, he's saying, look, you can't change the Nile.

Or undercut the authority of the God who is doing this. Right. Right. Saying, oh, he has magicians who do tricks.

We can do tricks too. Yeah. But the scale difference is so different. I mean, it's just like, you know, the serpent eating all the other serpents. I think that's the bigger miracle here is he ate a whole room full of serpents.

So that's a really big deal. The big deal here is, okay, you can take a cup of water out of a well and sort of by trickery turn it in. But can you undo the Nile? No, can't do that.

So God is clearly showing himself as being incomparable regardless of the hat tricks that they do for Pharaoh. Yeah, doesn't work. Seven full days. So this wasn't just something that happened on Tuesday and by Wednesday everything was fine. Right. Yeah. This is something that they endured. This is something that they could actually have enough time to say, Pharaoh, you need to change this.

Right. And, you know, Wednesday would turn into Thursday, would turn into Friday and still no change. And in their minds this might have been something that stuck forever. They have no clue that this might actually reverse at some point. So it's definitely terrifying and something that they would demand a Pharaoh who they saw as a God himself. If you are a God yourself, get out there and reverse this. And Pharaoh can't reverse it and all of his magicians can't reverse it. No one can reverse it.

But the people are saying you need to reverse this or we're all going to die. So this isn't just kind of playing here. This is a big deal. And after it goes on for a week they're thinking, well maybe this is the end of life for us. Well and seven full days. Now we, you know, we know from the rest of scripture that seven is a hugely significant number. Right. And while it has not appeared yet in Exodus, it's going to as they are going farther into the, when they get out of Egypt. But this, Moses is saying seven full days, right?

The whole process, the whole work out working of the effect. Yeah. Yeah.

Because that's the idea with seven, a completed process, the thing has run its course. Yep. Yep. God made a full impression. So, you know, does it strike your attention that God allowed all these innocent people to suffer?

Well what he's doing is he's challenging where they place their trust. That's right. And Pharaoh had always says, I'm your God, I'm your king and I'm your God. And you know, and I, and I'm uniquely connected with all the other gods. I'm uniquely connected with the gods that guard the Nile. Right.

Are you really? So it's really, it's challenging everyone's theology at this point. Everyone's theology. I mean it's, it's, it's really an in your face kind of thing. And like we said before, without the Nile, Egypt doesn't exist. This is its, this is its life. So God starts the plague with saying, I can turn off your very source of life. That's how powerful I am. Something as big as the Nile.

It's a huge amount of water. So yeah, this is, this is, this just isn't an irritation. This is actually a, this is a blow against life itself as they see it and the deities that they trust to preserve life. I was going to say so. Why wasn't this one enough? Why didn't we go right from here to the, to the last plague? I know it should have been.

This should have been it. And yet that's why Pharaoh's reaction in 23 blows my mind. Absolutely. I mean blows my mind.

Pharaoh turned, went into his house and he didn't take even this to heart. Right. What?

Let him eat cake. And he turned around and he goes into his, I mean it's, it's so heartless. It's just astonishing to me.

It's just astonishing. Well that statement, so Pharaoh's heart remained hardened comes right after the magicians do their little trick. Right. Like it didn't. Okay. Didn't do anything.

No big deal. Didn't do anything. Yeah. Yeah.

It didn't do anything. But you know, this, this plague opens with God's statement. Pharaoh's heart is hard. It is tough. It is obstinate.

It is resistant. And look what I'm going to do. I'll tell you what I'm going to do.

I'm going to do it and Pharaoh's heart remains hardened. Yep. Right. Remember Jesus said, you know, that these people would not be convinced even if somebody rises from the dead. Oh, absolutely. So what the direction of a determined heart not to believe becomes only harder in the face of increased evidence. And that's what I'm saying. This, that points to the fact that we're talking about a willfulness here, not, not really an evidence thing. When someone, when someone challenges you and says, I'll actually turn the entire Nile into blood.

And it happens. Why wouldn't that be enough evidence for you? I mean, really. And it's not just a trick because this will actually snuff out the Egyptian nation if it persists.

Why wouldn't that be enough? So that just, that just tells you really how far advanced Pharaoh's hardness was. He just turns his back on it and walks inside his palace. That's what he does. I, that, that is such a descriptive phrase. Every time I read that, it just stuns me. It just stuns me. What a heartless guy he is.

I mean, he's further gone than I thought he was. Well and here we kind of see the beginning of this, of this pattern that's going to recur. God had told Moses, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. He said that back in the previous chapter and back in chapter four. And then here at the beginning of this passage, he says, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. He makes this statement of its condition.

He doesn't claim responsibility. He just says, Pharaoh's heart is obstinate. And then at the end of this passage, Pharaoh's heart is remaining obstinate. And so God will continue to present opportunities. So he has to keep going.

He has to keep going. So it brings us to plague number two. And I would think this should have done it. It's really should have done it right here. Yeah.

And so, so the people are crying out for a savior that will save them from this really evident death because the Nile becomes useless to them. And at this point, they're probably looking at the magicians, right? The magicians. Yeah. Change this back. Yeah. You guys are the ones who told us you had connection with the gods. Right. So tell them this is a bad deal. Right.

And what did those five or six gods who were associated with the Nile, did they all just fail? I mean, come on. What's going on? This is a real, this is a shaker.

This is a real shaker. And again, I don't know why this wasn't sufficient. This really should have done it, but it's going to take a while. Well, we are running out of time again. And next time we're going to turn the page into chapter eight. And after plague number one comes plague number two. And it almost becomes comical with the plagues come up next. And again, I really don't know why, I don't know why Pharaoh's Hide is so hard that it has to continue because this should have really been enough all by itself, but it is going to continue. Read ahead.

Yeah. And I might mention just really quickly, a video that we saw some years ago, about seven years ago called Patterns of Evidence Exodus. There's, there's three or four patterns of evidence series, but Patterns of Evidence Exodus, which is made in 2014 by Tim Mahoney. But he talks about a lot of the history and the historical misunderstanding about it. But inside that he mentioned a papyrus that you can find in a museum in Europe called the Ipawer Papyrus. And interestingly enough, it mentions the Nile being turned into blood. It's very interesting. So it's a fascinating thing. If you can find it, it could be a fun watch as we go through the patterns of evidence.

Can we post a link to that on the resource page? So anyway, I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're with us. And we're going to push on next week to plague number two on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org.