Friday - Exodus 8 - Frogs, Lice & Flies

The Kingsmen Quartet once sang a song entitled, “One More Night with the Frogs” - and the obvious question is, why? Why would Pharaoh ask to be delivered the NEXT day instead of the SAME day?  When the time comes to evaluate Pharaoh’s way of thinking, we’ll quickly be mystified.

Out of the 10 plagues, numbers 2 - 4 might be the most fathomable for us. It's hard to visualize a river full of actual blood and what that might be like, but frogs in the cupboard... well, that’s a little easier to imagine.  Yet, it’s not the plagues that intrigue me most in this story; it's the reactions of Pharaoh.

Why did he ask Moses to wait until the next day?  Was it just the hardness of his heart?  Was he trying to act like he was tough enough to endure the plagues? Was it to see if it was really Moses who had the power over the plagues? Whatever his reason, he was crazy. He was crazy to let his magicians bring even more frogs into the scene, and he was crazy not to be rid of them ASAP.

When God turned the dust of Egypt into lice, He showed a little of the intensity of His wrath against the Egyptians. See, Egypt is mostly a desert.  There would be more dust in a desert that just about anywhere else in the world. And, ALL of the dust of the land became lice (Exodus 8:17). Insanely, the magicians tried to play copycat again, but this time they couldn't. So, those wicked sorcerers actually told Pharaoh that this plague was sent from God - but, he didn't care (Exodus 8:19). So, God sent swarms of flies.