Ten in all, these were the means by which God induced Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. A series of phenomena, almost all natural, but which were unusual
( 1 ) due to its gravity,
( 2 ) because they all occurred in a period of one year,
(3) by the timely manner in which they were produced,
(4) because Goshen and its inhabitants were not affected by some of them,
(5) because of the obvious way God controlled them. The plagues broke the pharaoh’s resistance, disgraced the gods of Egypt and desecrated their temples.
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Source: Hispanic World Bible Dictionary
(-> exodus, liberation). The Bible has presented the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt as a consequence of a series of plagues that God himself is sending over the earth (Ex 7-13). Men cannot achieve freedom with warlike methods (nobody in the world can defeat Pharaoh’s army on a military level!), but through a total transformation (conversion, revolution), knowing that the same cosmic powers put at the service of life. Pharaoh’s armies (invincible on a military level) cannot drown the great march of freedom of the Hebrew people, so that they appear useless before the plan and project of life, which is expressed in the world as a whole. The soldiers of Egypt (and of the current empire) are prepared to fight against other similar soldiers (Assyrians or Babylonians), but not against some Hebrews, who do not fight them, nor against a world that has its own laws, which, Deep down, they are at the service of the lives of the poor. In this way, the victory that the Hebrews achieved, without an army or military war, continues to be an inspiration and an example for all those who seek the liberation of prisoners and oppressed, as other books of the Bible know that have updated the theme of the plagues ( see Wis 11:16-19; Rev 15:1-8).
(1) The war of the plagues. These are the fundamental elements of the plagues of Ex 7-13. (a) Moses does not start an armed uprising, because at that level the system has all the supremacy. We (year 2006) know that the time of great military wars against the imperial system is over. Moreover, even a form of guerrilla warfare with conventional weapons has ended, since the Pharaoh or empire is also invincible in that field, (b) The war of Moses is situated on the line of cosmic life. One by one the dangers of Egypt’s geography and climate parade through the text: cloudy waters, frogs, mosquitoes, horseflies, animal plague, epidemic, hail, locusts, storm and death of children. One by one, the risks of an empire/system that believes itself to be eternal, that seems impregnable, but that is based on the feet of clay of cosmic and human fragility, pass before the reader. In this way, Moisés and his group take on the cause of life threatened by the system. (c) This is a war of values, that is, of humanity. The Pharaoh represents the violence of the system that divinizes itself and in doing so destroys itself. Moses, on the other hand, represents man’s trust in the values of his humanity, that is, his freedom, founded on Yahweh (I am who I am), that is, “I am the beginning and future of freedom.” This is how the book of Wisdom (Wis 16-19) already understood the theme of the plagues of Ex 7-13. Interpreted in this way, the strategy of the plagues of Egypt places us before the challenge and promise of life in freedom, which each new generation must update, overcoming the risks of the system. These chapters of Exodus, written in symbolic language, show that power is not found where the Pharaoh thinks it is. The path to freedom is not traveled with weapons, nor with money, because money, weapons and ideology belong to the system, they are means of oppression. But the oppressed Jews (those imprisoned on earth) may have something higher: a knowledge of life, an awareness of freedom, ideals of hope that grow from oppression itself, at the service of humanity. Therefore, they can change (the system does not change, it maintains what it has with its force) and triumph from its very change (understood as triumph).
(2) Current pests. If the revolution of Moses had triumphed for money and weapons, it could no longer teach us anything, nor illuminate a light of hope for the world, since money and weapons continue to belong to the new pharaohs (imperial powers, military pacts, multinationals…). But Moses takes us beyond those powers, so that we can discover the potential of freedom, the true strength of the poor who set out towards the goal of what is human. It is not a question, therefore, of inventing better weapons at the level of the system, but of delving into the values of the human. New strategies must be found to dismantle the power of the pharaoh and his ministers, the structure of military pacts and their economic bases. Only in this way can we begin the exodus (the exit from oppression), tracing a path of conversion and shared freedom. Now we discover that the confrontation with the Pharaoh and the experience of the plagues (cosmic risks of death) are at the service of the exodus, that is, of a rupture and creative departure that frees us from the system, to place us on a plane of freedom. Many of us want system and freedom at the same time, we criticize Pharaoh, but we take advantage of his wealth. Against this, the God of the prisoners urges us to leave Egypt, to break with the system, in order to start a universal path of freedom in which we can distinguish and link three planes, (a) There is a base plane of the type symbolic: man is a constant way out; only the one who takes risks, breaks the wall of his imprisoned life and decides to walk out into the open, reaches its deepest reality, (b) There is a level of urgency: we are part of a generation especially sensitive to the dangers of a destructive closure : we run the risk of being trapped in the meshes of a system/labyrinth that we ourselves have been building, of a universal prison that traps us. That is why the reason for the exodus, the need for a rupture, shakes us so strongly, (c) There is a level of concrete realization: the path of the exodus is open forever, but it has begun to be realized in an exemplary way in the departure of those ancient Hebrews who one day set out and broke the prison of Egypt. They did it in a way. We, after more than thirty centuries, must do it from another. Nobody will tell us from the outside how to walk. Only when we set out will we see how to do it. The history of freedom is situated and begins on this third level, today as in the time of the old Hebrews dominated by Egypt, which fed them, but made them slaves of the Pharaoh. Previously, they were not people, they were hardly even human. They lived without knowing and without knowing it, in a kind of universal prison, under a system of anti-divine oppression (of the God Pharaoh). Now they are born: a group of Hebrews had the audacity to be, breaking the meshes of the system and walking towards their own freedom. Precisely there, in the exodus, the story begins. The former was prehistory. What emerges from now on, what is born from this gesture of rupture and freedom will come to show what man is, the beginning (not the end) of humanity.
Cf. H. Jonas, The principle of responsibility. Ethical tub essay for technological civilization, Herder, Barcelona 1995; V. PEREZ Prieto, DO have cinguido greenery. Ecoloxism and Christianity, Espiral Maior, A Coruña 1997; X. Pikaza, The ecological challenge, PPC, Madrid 2004; A. Primavesi, From the Apocalypse to the Genesis. Ecology, feminism and Christianity, Herder, Barcelona 1994; R. Ruether, Gaia and God. An ecofeminist theology for the recovery of the land, DEMAC, Mexico 1993.
PIKAZA, Javier, Dictionary of the Bible. History and Word, Divine Word, Navarra 2007
Source: Dictionary of Bible History and Word
By commissioning Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, God had warned him that the task would only be feasible with the supreme power of God Himself to overcome all the power of Pharaoh, and that for this Egypt would be moved with wonders and signs from God. of God (cf. Ex. 3.19–20). After the sign of the rod that became a serpent and swallowed the serpents of the Egyptian magicians, which did not greatly impress Pharaoh, the power of God was demonstrated to him and his people through a series of ten judgments . They were carried out in such a way as to clearly manifest the reality and power of the God of Israel and, by contrast, the impotence of the Egyptian gods. The first nine plagues are directly related to natural phenomena linked to the Nile Valley, but the last one, the death of the firstborn, belongs to the realm of the supernatural.
The first nine plagues demonstrate God’s use of the created order to accomplish His purposes, and recent scholarship tends to confirm both the reality of what is described in Ex. 7–12 and the ability of the narrator of this part of Exodus to accomplish accurate first-hand observations. The miraculous element in these plagues is generally related to their intensity, timing, and duration. The most detailed study of pest-related phenomena is by G. Hort in ZAW 69, 1957, pp. 84–103, and ZAW 70, 1958, pp. 48–59. While this author’s analysis of the first nine plagues is excellent, her attempt to explain the tenth as “firstfruits” rather than firstborn is decidedly contrived and unlikely.
Hort has pointed out that the first nine plagues form a logical and linked sequence, beginning with an abnormally large flood of the Nile, which occurred in the usual months of July and August, with the series of plagues ending around March (Heb. Abib). In Egypt too great a flood was just as disastrous as too little a flood.
The first plague (Ex. 7.14–25)
Moses was commanded to stretch out his staff over the waters of the Nile so that they “(turned) into blood”; this would cause the fish in the river to die, the river to stink, and its waters to become unhealthy; there is no mention of the immediate termination of that situation. This situation corresponds to that which would be produced by the abnormal elevation of the Nile. The greater the flooding of the Nile, the greater the amount of soil in suspension, especially the fine “red soil” of the Blue Nile and Atbara basins. The more dirt it washed away, the redder the waters of the Nile became. Such excessive flooding could also wash away microcosms known as flagellates and bacteria associated with them; In addition to increasing the blood red of the waters, these organisms would surely give rise to unfavorable conditions for the fish, which surely caused their death in large numbers, as reported. The decomposition must have polluted the waters and caused a stench. The rise of the Nile begins in July/August, peaks around…