Passover Plagues--Day 4

Have you ever had a fly buzzing around your head. It’s annoying. You spend the next half of an hour thwacking at it with your fly swatter. Finally you kill the pesky sucker only to have his best friend show up and start bothering you all over again. So can just you imagine an entire swarm of them overtaking your house? Inside and out. Flies everywhere. Talk about irritating.

However, it must not have bothered Pharaoh as much as it would bother most of us because on day four of this adventure he got a taste of these bothersome bugs:

The Plague of Flies (Exodus 8: 20-32)
‘This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies; even the ground will be covered with them.” (v 20-21)

OK… at this point if I were living in Egypt I would simply be upset. I am not sure I would be able to remain calm if, for reason unbeknownst to me, my bathtub was full of blood, frogs were in my bed and gnats were everywhere else. Thankfully for the Israelites, God’s chosen people, this particular plague did not invade their land.

Look at what the LORD says through Moses to the ruler of the land.   God is going to seperate the good guys from the bad guys.  “‘But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the LORD, am in this land. I will make a distinction between my people and your people…’ And the LORD did this. Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh’s palace and into the houses of his officials; throughout Egypt the land was ruined by the flies.” (v 22-24)

Did you catch that? “Dense swarms of flies poured…” It did not say, “some random flies landed on his face while he was sleeping.” Nor did it read, “ a couple of flies were floating in his Coke.” No, God sent a swarm of flies.  And only sent them to the Egy[tians.  I am sure the slaves were relieved.

So at our house…well we didn’t quite get the entire house covered with a horde of flies. We did, however, try and reenact the plague to the best of our ability. We found some really disguising looking plastic ones. They were squishy and gross. I had them covering the dining room table during dinner. They may have not been flying around our heads but we were slightly disturbed. I am sure it was nothing like what the Egyptians suffered through.

But yet again, as if out of habit, Pharaoh lied. He asked Moses to make the flies go away and “Then Moses left Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD, and the LORD did what Moses asked. The flies left Pharaoh and his officials and his people; not a fly remained. But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.” (v 30-32)

Which takes us to the next plague…