Read with Me
Exodus 9:22-35 (HCSB)
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven and let there be hail throughout the land of Egypt—on man and beast and every plant of the field in the land of Egypt.” So Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the LORD sent thunder and hail. Lightning struck the earth, and the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt. The hail, with lightning flashing through it, was so severe that nothing like it had occurred in the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout the land of Egypt, the hail struck down everything in the field, both man and beast. The hail beat down every plant of the field and shattered every tree in the field. The only place it didn’t hail was in the land of Goshen where the Israelites were.
Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron. “I have sinned this time,” he said to them. “Yahweh is the Righteous One, and I and my people are the guilty ones. Make an appeal to Yahweh. There has been enough of God’s thunder and hail. I will let you go; you don’t need to stay any longer.”
Moses said to him, “When I have left the city, I will extend my hands to Yahweh. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know the earth belongs to Yahweh. But as for you and your officials, I know that you still do not fear Yahweh our God.”
The flax and the barley were destroyed because the barley was ripe and the flax was budding, but the wheat and the spelt were not destroyed since they are later crops.
Moses went out from Pharaoh and the city, and extended his hands to the LORD. Then the thunder and hail ceased, and rain no longer poured down on the land. When Pharaoh saw that the rain, hail, and thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his officials. So Pharaoh’s heart hardened, and he did not let the Israelites go, as the LORD had said through Moses.
Listen with Me
The hail that God sent was precisely as damaging as He had predicted. The hail did not destroy buildings or anything in the towns and villages, but it killed people and animals that were in the fields, and utterly destroyed everything that was growing at that time – the flax and the barley.
The realization of what God could and would do moved Pharaoh to admit that the Lord was in the right, and that Pharaoh (and he included “my people”, even though his people had no part in the decision making process) were in the wrong. This sounded enough like repentance to Moses that he agreed to pray that God would stop the hail, which he did even though Moses figured and God knew that this repentance was only a show. As soon as the hail and storm stopped, Pharaoh hardened his heart yet again.
Some might wonder why God didn’t just bring on the tenth plague immediately as soon as it became obvious that Pharaoh would not repent until then. But God had three goals in mind.
The first was that Pharaoh had to be broken to the point that he would not reconsider letting the Israelites go until they were far enough away for him to not catch up to them until they reached the shores of the Red Sea. Without being sufficiently humbled, his grief would quickly turn to anger in only a day or two, and he would instantly be focused on revenge.
The second goal was for the Israelites to gain a more thorough understanding of who God is and what He is capable of doing. Seeing this escalation in punishments, ultimately leading to disaster and tragedy, would make them less likely to rebel against God themselves.
The final goal was to help the Israelites understand that He not only held life and death in His hands, but that He is in control over every aspect of this world. God can not only bring plagues, but He can also control the elements, and even the animals.
Pray with Me
Father, I sometimes think that we need to be reminded of all those things as well. We pray for healing from sickness and disease, with more or less faith in Your ability to answer. But we don’t usually pray for relief from the larger things including severe weather, earthquakes, tidal waves and the like, even though Jesus himself calmed the storm and enabled Peter to walk on water. Help me, lord, to never limit You in my own mind to things that I think are possible, but to simply trust what You have revealed about Your own limitless power. Amen.