Plagues of Egypt

The book of Exodus (שמות), chapters 7:14 - 12:42, recounts the story of the plagues of Egypt (Eser Ha-Makot עשר המכות in Hebrew): disasters, executed against Egypt by God, in order to convince Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go.

John Martin's engraving of the plague of hail and fire

The plagues as they appear in the torah were:

(Exodus 7:14-25) rivers and other water sources turned to blood for seven days, killing the fish
(Exodus 8:1-25) a plague of frogs
(Exodus 8:16-19) handfuls of dust turned into a plague of lice
(Exodus 8:20-32) flies (Arov)
(Exodus 9:1-7) pestilence killing off the livestock
(Exodus 9:8-12) boils (Shkhin) unhealable by medical priests
(Exodus 9:13-35) hail and fire destroying crops
(Exodus 10:13-14,19) locusts consuming all remaining crops
(Exodus 10:21-29) three days of darkness
(Exodus 12:29-36) death of the firstborn

Wheras all the other plagues do not affect the Hebrews, the torah indicates that the final plague is only avoided by them after they sacrificing a lamb for God, and eating Matzot ("Poor's Bread" לחם עוני), marking their doorstep with the lamb's blood. In the anthropomorphic style typical of the Elohist, the torah describes God himself, as the angel of death, personally killing each of the firstborn, except where he notices the lamb's blood on the doorstep.

This plague, in the torah, results in the Pharoah finally relenting, and sending the Egyptians away at whatever cost they wish. Nethertheless, their survival through the final plague still requires a redemption of the firstborn for the Hebrews, and associated fast, which, as it reflects their freedom, is held every year by the Jews, as an annual ritual (named Passover).

Context

Although the main reason for the plagues appears to be Pharaoh's repeated refusal to release the Jewish people from slavery, according to the Torah, God deliberately made Pharaoh unwilling to release the people, so that God could manifest his great power and cause it to be declared among the nations (Ex 9:14, 16), so that other peoples would discuss it for generations afterward (Jos 2:9-11; 9:9; Isa 4:8; 6:6). In this view, the plagues were proof that the gods of Egypt were powerless (Ex 12:12; Nu 33:4).

If God triumphed over the gods of Egypt, at that time, a world-leading nation, then the people of God would be strengthened in their faith, although they are a small people, and would not be tempted to follow the deities that God put to shame. Although some have advanced theories as to which of the Egyptian gods would have been affected by which plague, this is only scantily supported by Midrashic sources, and these attempts have generally produced widely divergent results.

In an historical context, the greatest candidate for the Israelite presence in egypt is that of the Hyksos. However, rather than being slaves who escaped, the Hyksos were rulers who were chased out of egypt. The extreme resilience, in the story, of the unnamed Pharaoh to releasing them therefore, according to such an historical-critical view, serves to provide an explanation of why an egyptian Pharaoh so angrily chased after the Israelites.

According to the documentary hypothesis

Within the understanding of the documentary hypothesis, in the Jahwist version of the tale, the Pharaoh simply lets the people go immediately, and later changes his mind and sends his army after them. It is the Elohist that introduces the story of the plagues, which may indicate that while the plagues could be an historic event, they may have been an entirely independant event at a different time, which the Elohist chose to combine into the story to magnify God's apparant greatness, perhaps unaware that the events were not related to the exile.

In the Elohist source there are only 8 plagues, as it does not include the plague of lice or the plague of boils. The Priestly source, following the JE source, copies the list of Elohist plagues, but replaces flies with lice, and pestilence with boils, apparantly neglecting to include the subsequent plagues of hail, locusts, and darkness, leading to 5 plagues in the Priestly source - blood, frogs, lice, boils, and death.

The third, sixth and ninth plague came without warning, suggesting that the plagues came in three iterations of three; indeed, Biblical commentators point out parallels between individual plagues. However, this pattern is explained more simply by the documentary hypothesis, as all the plagues are forewarned in the Elohist source, the three days of darkness itself being seen as a warning about the passover rather than a plague in itself, wheras in the Priestly source, there is no forewarning for any of the plagues (this is also the case for the priestly version of the frog and blood plagues).

The Priestly source also describes Aaron instigating the plagues, starting ... And The LORD said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron..., wheras it is always Moses in the Elohist source. Commentaries resolve the resulting situation in the torah, where some plagues, but not others, are instigated by Aaron, by saying that those that Moses did not instigate, he was prohibited from doing so by having to appreciate (known as Ha-koras ha-tov) the help he had recieved from both the Nile when he was a baby and the dust of the earth when he murdered a guard in his youth, and therefore could not damage the Nile by turning it to blood, or the dust by turning it to lice.

In the Elohist source the Pharaoh briefly repents each time, and Moses undoes the plague, but seeing respite, the Pharaoh hardens his heart, wheras in the Priestly source, the Pharaoh hardens his heart because each time his Magicians successfully duplicate the plague, until the last.

Historicity

The vast majority of scientists and secular thinkers believe the plague stories are simply mythical or allegorical, or inspired by passed-down accounts of disconnected natural disasters. Some, however, have speculated on possible natural inspirations behind the story of the sucession of plagues.

Archaeology

There is archaeological material that some Christian archaeologists, such as William F. Albright, have considered historical evidence of the Ten Plagues, for example, an ancient water-trough found in El Arish bears hieroglyphic markings detailing a period of darkness. Albright, and other Christian archaeologists have stated that such evidence, as well as careful study of the areas ostensibly travelled by the Israelites after the Exodus, make discounting the biblical account untenable, though without persuading any archaeologists who do not initially assume the biblical account is accurate.

The Egyptian Admonitions of Ipuwer describe a series of calamities befalling Egypt, including a river turned to blood, men behaving as wild ibises, and the land generally turned upside down. However, this is usually thought to describes a general and long term ecological disaster lasting for a period of decades, such as that which destroyed the Old Kingdom. The document is usually dated to the end of the Middle Kingdom, or more rarely, to its beginning, fitting the Old Kingdom destruction, but in both caseslong before the usual theorized dates for the Exodus.

Immanuel Velikovsky decided that the Egyptian papyrus did, in fact, describe the events of Exodus, along with the major natural catastrophes that he thought preceded it; in his opinion it was the conventional chronologies of Egypt that were wrong by several hundred years.[1] His theory has never gained credibility among Egyptologists, not even those who are evangelical Christians such as Kenneth Kitchen.

Natural explanations

As noted above, some science writers and bible researchers have suggested that the plagues were passed-down accounts of ordinary natural disasters, and not supernatural miracles. Natural explanations have been suggested for most of the phenomena:

(plague 1) The blood in the Nile could have actually been pollution caused by volcanic activity, which, due to the colour of Nile silt, could make the Nile turn blood red, and would also render it undrinkable
(plague 2) Abnormal rapid growth of algae, possibly triggered by such alteration to the chemistry of the Nile, could have caused frogs to leave the river
(plague 3/4) In turn, the lack of frogs in the river, could have brought hordes of insects, which are usually kept in check by the frogs feeding on them. Alternately, frogs and other aquatic creatures can be sucked up by waterspouts and carried long distances before "raining" to the ground. (1)
(plague 5/6) Such a spread of insects, including mosquitos, could easily spread disease, such as that causing boils.
(plague 7) Volcanic activity not only brings with it ash, but brimstone, and also alters the weather system, occasionally producing hail. The hail could also occur as a completely independant natural weather event.
(plague 8) The weight of hail will destroy most crops, leaving several insects and other animals without a normal food source. The remaining crops therefore would become targeted heavily, and thus be destroyed by swarms of locusts which would otherwise be distributed rather thinly.
(plague 9) Darkness could be caused by unconnected events, such as a solar eclipse, or sandstorm. It could also be caused by volcanic ash, or more directly by an excessive number of locusts, whose population, if not kept in check by frogs, could become so large, that a swarm would literally block out the sun for all those who witnessed it.
(plague 10) The double-selectiveness of the last plague - only the first born dying - does not have an obvious naturalistic explanation. However, there is a hypothesis that food left in storage was polluted by the vast amount of excrement of the plague of locusts, as well as Cladosporium, or black mould, growing in the crops. Because, traditionally, the first-born son received a double portion, they would have taken in more mildew and pollution than others. In effect, the first-born being more susceptable to allergies, toxins, and disease present in the crops, than others. On an outbreak of some dangerous toxin or disease, the first-born is thus more likely to recieve fatal exposure than any others, thus there will be a significantly higher number of first-born deaths. An alternative interpretation of "firstborn" has come to mean the cream of the crop of Egyptian society instead of literal firstborns in every household, their victim status being caused by the same reason - they are the ones who are likely to greater consumption of a toxic food supply.

A candidate for a volcanic eruption that could have inspired the stories of the ten plagues is the eruption of the Thera volcano 650 miles to the northwest of Egypt. Controversially dated to about 1628 BC, this eruption is one of the largest on record, rivaling that of Tambora, which resulted in 1816's Year Without a Summer. Records of the enormous global impact of this eruption have been recorded in an ash layer deposit found in the Nile delta, tree ring frost scars in the bristlecone pines of the western United States, and a coating of ash in the Greenland ice caps, all dated to the same time and with the same chemical fingerprint as the ash from Thera.

According to the theory, the volcanic ash could have then polluted the Nile, turning it red, leading to frogs leaving the river. The ash, and lack of frogs in the river, also would have impacted the ecology of the Eastern Mediterranean, possibly resulting in the plagues of flies/lice, pestilence, and locusts. Hot ash coming into contact with skin could have caused the plague of boils, if it wasn't already caused by the lice/flies, and storms caused by the Theran ash cloud could have resulted in the plague of hail, and the ash would have subsequently blotted out the sun (a phenomona well documented in the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens) to make day into night for the plague of darkness. However, all the proposed dates for this eruption are hundreds of years before the proposed dates of the Exodus; thus only a radical revision of the chronology, like Velikovsky's, or an abandoning of the connection between the Exodus and the plagues, can solve the problem.

These explanations do not account for the selectiveness the torah attributes to the plagues: according to the Hebrew Bible the plagues damaged only Egyptians, while the Hebrews remained untouched. Typically, modern writers, and particularly skeptics, account for such details of the account as being pious exaggerations, or literary devices, intended to encourage faith.

Following the assumption that at least some of the details are accurately reported, many modern Jews agree that some of the plagues were indeed natural disasters, but argue from the fact that they followed one another with such uncommon rapidity, that God's hand was behind them. Indeed, several Biblical commentators (Nachmanides and, more recently, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky) have pointed out that for the plagues to be a real test of faith, they had to contain an element leading to religious doubt.

Morality

The last plague, if divine, has seemed to many to be a very cruel and unjustifiable punishment against the Egyptians, and is criticised for promoting an unethical schadenfraude. A common and widely accepted Jewish Midrash explains the dreadful plague by expanding upon Exodus 10:28, where Pharaoh threatens to kill Moses:

When Moses went to Pharaoh to demand of him that he let the people go, the whole event is happening in front of Pharaoh's first born son who teases and mocks his father for allowing the Hebrew shepherd to humiliate him. Enraged by the insult and mad with pride, Pharaoh resolved to have revenge for the plagues, and told Moses that he shall deal with the Hebrews in such a manner that a great cry will be heard in Egypt, such that has never been heard before. This was an allusion to the crimes of his father, who ordered the drowning of the male children of the Hebrews. Therefore, Pharaoh brought this harsh punishment upon his own people. His cruel plan was turned back upon him, so that what Pharaoh wanted to do to the Hebrews, God made to happen to him.

This Midrash justifies the last plague with two main arguments:

Retribution in kind מידה כנגד מידה (Mida ke-neged mida): in the Bible the punishment fits to the crime, not only in severity, but also in symbolism. This is for a pedagogic reason: so that everyone, including the sinner himself, shall know why he has been punished by God.
Self defence הקם להרגך, השכם להורגו (Ha-kam le-horgecha hashkem le-horgo): Pharaoh planned to slaughter all Hebrew children. By inflicting upon Pharaoh the same thing he planned for the Hebrews, his plan was thwarted.

The Plagues in Popular Culture

The Ten Plagues of Egypt were dramatized by the heavy metal group Metallica in their song "Creeping Death", on their 1984 release Ride the Lightning. Late bassist Cliff Burton came up with the title of the song while watching the 1956 Biblical epic The Ten Commandments, specifically when the Angel of Death moved among Egyptians, killing the firstborn in each family. The plagues were also dramatized as part of a modern horror film in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971).

External Links

Exodus - relevant chapters

Exodus with sources highlighted, according to the documentary hypothesis, at Wikisource
Hebrew: ch 7 - ch 8 - ch 9 - ch 10 - ch 11 - ch 12 .
English: ch7 - ch8 - ch9 - ch10 - ch11 - ch12.