COME AS A CHILD LESSON 123 DEAD LIVESTOCK BOILS AND A VERY BAD HAILSTORM

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

Once again, God told Moses to take a message to Pharaoh.  God said to tell him “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.  If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field – on your horses, donkeys and camels and on your cattle, sheep and goats.  But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt; that no animal belonging to the Israelite's will die.” 

God was not happy!  He was about to show the world WHO He was not happy with by making a distinction between the Israelites (who desired to worship Him) and the Egyptians who had turned to false, pagan gods and ways.  Not only was Pharaoh calling himself god and encouraging the people of Egypt to worship all kinds of other pagan false gods too; he was preventing the ones who wanted to worship the REAL God from worshiping Him in the way that He had commanded.  Pharaoh was being very selfish with his arrogance!  

God had been very patient with Pharaoh up to this point.  The REAL God is never arrogant or selfish, but He always considers the love of His people and his anger was righteous in that His people were not being treated fair.  This wasn't all about physical slavery; it was also very much about religious freedom of choice.  It was more about spiritual slavery than physical slavery.

Pharaoh was putting himself and his false gods above The One True God and His people.  The commandments had not been written down in stone yet; but they were already God's ways.  "Thou shalt have no other God's before me" and "Thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy" were being severely violated in a million different ways.  God was going to make this very plain before everything was over in his dealing with Pharaoh and Egypt.  Are you beginning to see how Pharaoh's rise to power had simply been God allowing it to happen so that He could show the entire universe who God is?   

Once again God set a time for these things He had proclaimed to happen.  Pharaoh could have changed his mind in plenty of time to stop it.  He had at least 24 hours to think it over and change.  Moses told Pharaoh that the plague would come “tomorrow.”  Pharaoh, as usual did not relent.

The next day the LORD sent the plague and all the livestock in the fields of Egypt died.

Still Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the people go to worship God in the wilderness.

What does it mean that God sent the Egyptians a plague involving livestock?  Well, the Egyptians worshiped most forms of livestock.  Can you see the pattern here?  They thought many of these animals were sacred, but they did not even consider that The One True God was sacred.

Once the Persians were victorious in a great battle against the Egyptians simply because they drove their sacred animals in front of them into the battle field.  The Egyptians would not fight for fear of harming the sacred animals!  This gave the Persians an easy win.  You would think that battle alone might have changed their way of thinking.  It did not.  The Egyptians just kept right on worshiping their false gods.   Hathor was the Egyptian cow-headed god that protected cattle herds.   Apis was an Egyptian bull god.    

So as these pitiful Egyptians were sitting around with their hard-hearted king after they had finished burying an unbelievable amount of their dead livestock; God spoke to Moses and Aaron again.  

God told Aaron to take hands full of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh.  It was to become fine dust that would scatter over the whole land of Egypt, and soon festering boils would begin to break out on the people and the animals that were left throughout the land.  

Moses and Aaron did exactly as God had said, they stood in front of Pharaoh and Moses tossed the soot into the air and soon festering boils broke out on all the people and animals.  Even Pharaoh’s famous magicians were covered with boils and they could not serve in their pagan temples or stand in front of Moses because of the boils.  

This time the scriptures say that the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not listen to Moses and Aaron.  It becomes so apparent that God was using Pharaoh, probably because of his horrid choices in lifestyle and his arrogance in saying he was god over all gods, to prove a very important point.  I think I get it; do you?  I don't think Pharaoh was getting it though!

So there was Pharaoh with a nation full of people covered in boils and a country full of dead animals.  They were all sick and they had no meat for their tables (if they ate meat, they probably only ate certain animals that were not considered sacred) and they had lost all of their basic modes of transportation. 

 Even worse, the animals that they worshiped were dying in the streets.  Who was going to protect them now?   Why were their gods dying?

Pharaoh did not seem to care as much for the people as he did about having his own way and being the only one in control  He still was not able to humble himself before God and do as God had said to do. 

But why boils?  What did they have to do with pagan gods being worshiped?  Well - when God told Moses to lift his hands toward the heavens and scatter the ashes, God was probably thinking of those false sky gods they worshiped; Horis, Shu, Isis and Nut.  It was the custom of their priests to scatter ashes from sacrifices as a sign of blessing.  I guess the land of Egypt was symbolic of their sacrifices and Moses was mimicking their priests; but this did not bring blessings at all; it brought boils!  God was showing the REAL blessings of worshiping these false gods.  

God spoke to Moses again and told him to get up early the next morning and go confront Pharaoh once more and say to him; “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews says:  'Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.  For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth.,  But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.  You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go.  Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Give an order to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.'"

I guess the only livestock that was left were chickens and pigs and any livestock that had not been out in the field when God had brought the plague on the other livestock earlier.  Of course the slaves were considered nothing less than livestock to the Egyptians.  So those officials who had learned to believe God brought all of their remaining livestock and their slaves inside.  Those who did not fear God did not worry about these new instructions to Pharaoh. 

Then the LORD said to Moses:  “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that the hail may fall all over Egypt – on people and on animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt."   

Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky and the LORD sent thunder and lightning and hail and the lightning flashed down to the ground.  It was the worst storm in Egypt since it had become a nation.  People and animals and all the vegetation were beat down into the ground by the pounding lightning and hail from this storm.  The flax and barley were destroyed, since the barley crop was almost ready to harvest in the fields and the flax was also already in bloom.  The wheat and spelt however, were not destroyed because they would not ripen until later in the year.   All the land and trees were stripped of their vegetation.  The goodness of the rich land was destroyed everywhere, except for the land of Goshen where God’s people were living.  They were safe from the storm and their crops were still in tact.  

Until now the desert land of Egypt had hardly known rain, much less hail or thunder and lightning.  They got their water for the land and crops from the river.  These Egyptians had probably never even seen hail or lightning.  Where were their sky gods who should be protecting them from such things falling from the sky?  Mim's party would not happen this year!  Would this open the eyes of Pharaoh? 

Mim was their false god of agriculture.  Before the coming of this plague the people  had been preparing for the annual festival for Mim where they offered sacrifices to him as their god of agriculture.  Where was he in all of this?  All of their ripening crops had been destroyed.  The Hebrews had not worshiped these Egyptian false gods and their crops were all still in place.  The Hebrews would have offerings to bring to their God when the time for their offerings came; if only Pharaoh would let them go out to do it.  Would this open Pharaoh's eyes?

For the first time, it did seem to have an affect on Pharaoh in which he recognized the One True God of the Hebrews.  When Pharaoh came out and saw the devastation to his land and his people he summoned Moses.  This time Pharaoh admitted that he had sinned.  He actually said to Moses and Aaron; “The LORD is in the right and I and my people are in the wrong.  Pray to the LORD, for we have had enough thunder and hail.  I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.” 

What an amazing break-through!   

But Moses still wasn’t so sure that Pharaoh would actually keep his word.  God had been talking to Moses and He had told him how Pharaoh would react.    

So Moses told Pharaoh when he left the city he would spread out his hands toward the LORD in prayer; and the thunder would stop and there will be no more hail, all so Pharaoh could know that the earth is the LORD’S.  But he also told Pharaoh that he knew he and his officials still did not fear the LORD God. 

Nevertheless;  Moses went out of the city and spread out his hands toward the LORD and the thunder and hail soon stopped.  The rain no longer poured down on the land.  When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again.  He and his officials hardened their hearts and Pharaoh did not let the Israelites go; just as the LORD had said to Moses.

I found it interesting that Moses even had to leave the city where Pharaoh lived in order to be heard by God.  Apparently, God turns a deaf ear to cities that are ruled by pagans!   

The worship in ancient Egypt was mostly polytheistic.  To better understand the plagues of Egypt it is helpful to understand the false pagan gods that Egypt worshiped, then begin to look closer at what God was showing them and us through all of the plagues. 

On first glance the worship of Egypt seemed like a very chaotic and unorganized religion with many, many gods, and it actually started out that way; but an order seemed to evolve in all of it when their own (made up) version of the telling of the story of creation came forth.

 

In the Egyptian version of the creation story there was only one ocean at the beginning of time.  From that ocean rose a god named Ra, who represented the sun.  Apparently Ra was hatched either from a flower or an egg that rose from the ocean.  (There are different conflicting stories about this.)  When Ra appeared as the sun on the surface of the water he brought forth four children, who were also gods.  They were the males, Shu and Geb and the females,  Tefnut and Nut.  Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere and they stood on Geb who became the earth and Geb raised up Nut who became the sky.  Ra ruled over all.  

Geb and Nut had two sons, Set and Osiris.   Then Geb and Nut had two daughters; Isis and Nephthys.  Osiris married his sister ( Isis) and succeeded Ra on the throne as king over all the earth.  Set hated his brother, Osiris and he killed him. (Counterfeit story similar to Cain and Abel in the Bible.) Isis, with the help of one named Anubis, embalmed the body of Osiris and because he had helped Isis with this task Anubis became known as the god of embalming the dead.   

Isis resurrected Osiris with her powerful charms and he became the god of the netherworld (the land of the dead.)  Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis later defeated Set and became the god of the earth.  

And so the outrageous counterfeit stories continue through the generations of many false gods.  From these stories came the nine divinities called enneads and the triad consisting of a divine mother, father and son.  Every local temple in Egypt possessed its own local ennead and triad.  Of course the greatest ennead was that of Ra and his children and grandchildren.  These were worshiped at Heliopolis, the center for sun worship.  

You are possibly beginning to see a lot of resemblance here to the order of how God destined Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be the patriarchs of The Great Family of God.  These Egyptian false gods were all fake counter-versions of the ones with the REAL power from the REAL God.  They were fakes made up as imitations of what God had truly ordained and created when He first created the earth and mankind.     

In the Egyptian triads you can see the perversion and counterfeit of the True Holy Family of God and the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  

Some of the local gods were taken from ideas of other foreign deities or patterned after the animal gods of prehistoric  Africa.  Eventually all of these fused into one big religious picture in Egypt.  Among the more famous false gods were:  Amon, Thoth, Ptah, Khnemu and Hapi.  The famous false goddesses were Hathor, Mut, Neit and Skehet.  To make matters worse, these deities were sometimes confused with human beings who had been glorified after death.  These false gods had the abilities to change from god to human to god and back to humans or animals; whatever was most convenient at the time to achieve their purposes.  

During the 5^th Dynasty the Pharaohs began to claim their divinity among all of these.  All of the Pharaoh’s were known as the sons of Ra.  Minor false gods and demons took on a more local form and were worshiped in the temples along with the other gods.  All of these gods were depicted with human torsos and human or animal heads.  If the head was an animal, the animal usually expressed the characteristics of that god.  For example, RA had the head of a hawk and a hawk was sacred to him because of its swift flight across the sky.  Hathor was the goddess of love and laughter and she had the head of a cow.  The sacred animals were venerated by the Egyptians because of the gods they were associated with or attached to.  

The animals themselves were not actually worshiped until the 26^th Dynasty.  Each of these pagan gods had their own symbol.  Ra had the sun as his sybol and Ra was always the most important and the most consistently worshiped god.  Ra worship eventually evolved into the status of a state religion which governed over the people in the land.  Ra fused with Amon at one point becoming Ra-Amon  and was noted as the supreme god of the land of Egypt during that time.  

The Egyptians believed that the amulets and statutes they made protected them from both real and imagined powers from the underworld, both in life and after death.  They put these small statues inside their tombs when they died,  They kept them with them for protection and the statues were to serve for them in the afterlife.  The Egyptians believed there would be fields to tend to in the afterlife, and their statues were there to help them with the undesirable part of that work which they would not want to do.  So the theory seemed to be that the more you had of these little gods; the better off you were in the afterlife    They believed these little statues would somehow magically come alive in the afterlife and perform their chores for them.

No wonder God was angry enough to send plagues!  He was actually very merciful to the people of Egypt.  It would have been much easier to just wipe them off the map.  But God put object lessons into each plague, hoping to teach the Egyptians that He was the Only True God of Heaven and Earth.  Hopefully, even though the Egyptians did not learn this lesson; we who are reviewing the story will.

If you know what to look for in the modern world today; you can see all of these things of idol worship and pagan worship still being carried out, just in un-obvious and subtle ways.  It is right under our noses every day, but we have been so conditioned to this over millions of years; just as the people of Egypt were.  We do not even notice what is happening in front of our very faces when we see these things.  Like in Egypt, they have become a part of the culture.  

There is lots of false worship and lots of fake religion going on in America and in many other nations.  Will God be as generous and as merciful to us as He was to the ancient Egyptians?  After all, they had no examples to teach them.  We had them and their stories as our example.  What excuses do we have to offer?  We have all seen and heard these object lessons over and over.  

If you have ever attended a Passover Seder; you should understand all of the mysteries behind the plagues.  It is a standard part of the telling of the Passover every year.  There is more to tell later about this subject; but for now it is hard enough just to consider what must be going through the mind of God when He looks down on earth today and searches to see if there is anyone similar to Moses, that would be willing to honor His name and be true to worship Him and Him alone.  

One greater than Moses has come!  His name is Jesus.  Have we even listened to Him?

Time will give us these answers.  Lord have mercy on us!