This is the hardest of the plagues to reproduce. Making cherry kool-aid for everyone to drink, filling strawberry Jell-o with rats and filling the tub with ketchup wasn’t too difficult. Spreading plastic frogs all over the house was actually kind of fun. But today’s plague wasn’t quite as easy. Here’s why:
The Plague of Gnats (Exodus 8:16-19)
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.” They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came on people and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats.” (v 16-17)
As you can the problem is actually reproducing gnats. How can I imitate swarms of them in the house so that they were bothering us all night? In the past year we have shown these pesky insects to the children when we come upon them in the summer. However, I wasn’t quite sure how I have going to recreate this particular plague. Then my brilliant husband came up with the idea to call them “Can’t See ‘Ems”. We simply open up our empty hands and scream like little girls. The children think there is some sort of tiny something in our palms. We tell them it is skein of gnats. It works.
So this year, to represent that they have taken over our house, we even hung brown paper bags from the ceiling “full” of gnats. They aren’t disturbing us as much as they would have been disturbing the Egyptians. But we have a visual nonetheless.
And check out the scripture to see that yet again Pharaoh’s “wise” men tried to outsmart God again. Will they ever learn? “But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not.” (v 18)
Seriously? They tried again? Thank goodness they failed! If I were either an Egyptian or an Israelite I would be rather pleased that they couldn’t reproduce more of these bothersome bugs. And for the first time in this story these “wise” men actually show some wisdom: “Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God…”
The magicians finally came to their senses. However, Pharaoh did not. “…But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the LORD had said. (v 19)
He still would not let the Israelites go. God had no other choice but to send yet another plague…
That was a great idea to create the gnats. If you are wanting real gnats--fruit flies are very similar--if you can locate some rotting strawberries, banana's or tomatoes this time of year set them out somewhere in the house and inevitibly you will get your gnats/fruit flies. Kind of nasty but yet to bring your point home this would really make an impression..
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