Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 7-9.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments.

When Aaron’s staff turned into a serpent, Pharaoh’s advisor’s did the same thing to their staffs.  When Aaron stretched out his staff over the Nile and the water turned to blood, Pharaoh’s advisor’s also turned water to blood.  When Aaron stretched out his staff and summoned frogs come up and cover the land, Pharaoh’s advisors also summoned frogs.  When Aaron stretched out his staff and struck the ground bringing forth gnats to the point where everyone was covered with them, Pharaoh’s advisors were unable to duplicate his actions.  However, by that point Pharaoh had become so convinced that Aaron and Moses were tricksters that he was sure that what they were doing was just tricks his advisors did not know.  Pharaoh had failed to pay attention to the fact that from the beginning there was something different about what Moses and Aaron were doing.  When all of the staffs turned into serpents, Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of Pharaoh’s advisors.  When Aaron turned the water in the Nile to blood, Pharaoh’s advisors did it on a smaller scale.  When Aaron and Pharaoh’s advisors summoned frogs, it wasn’t Pharaoh’s advisors who ended the infestation.  It was Moses asking God which ended the infestation of frogs.  So, even when Pharaoh’s advisors were able to duplicate the signs which Aaron performed on behalf of Moses, God demonstrated that there was something different about what He was doing.  In the same way, when God gives us signs today, they may appear to be coincidence, or something which could be attributable to something else, but if we look closely we will see that the staff displaying God’s will swallows up those which try to dismiss it.  The people of Egypt suffered a lot because Pharaoh refused to listen.

There is a second way in which Pharaoh and the people of Egypt suffered because Pharaoh refused to listen when God first spoke to him.  Initially, all God asked of Pharaoh was that he allow the people of Israel to take a short trip into the wilderness to make a sacrifice to Him, returning after they were done.  Now God knew that Pharaoh would refuse that offer, but He made it nonetheless.  My point being that if Pharaoh had been the sort to allow the Israelites to take a three day journey into the wilderness to make sacrifices to God, who was not part of the pantheon from which Pharaoh’s power derived, the Israelites would not have been slaves in Egypt.  Since Pharaoh was the sort of fellow he was, God used him to demonstrate His power to the Israelites so that they would become His people.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.