Idols

What The Plagues Really Destroyed

BY STEVEN DILLA

Exodus 7.14Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go.”

It is the job of the Holy Spirit to dismantle everything that we trust more than God. Anything less would be unloving, if God is as good as the scriptures reveal him to be. The Egyptian plagues attest to this.

The Nile was Egypt’s most valuable natural resource. The ancients would have trembled when it turned to blood in the first plague. Hapi, the father of Egypt’s gods (and god of the Nile itself), would seem to have lost control. 

Each plague systematically defeated another of ancient Egypt’s gods. The idols’ lack of control was exposed. Their efficacy to restore life was unveiled. 

The gods Heka, Geb, and Khepfi were shamed by the plagues involving insects. Apis, Menvis, and Hathor were defeated by the plague of livestock. Thoth, the god of health, proved powerless while Egypt writhed in the pain of boils. Nut and Isis were revealed as impotent through the plagues of hail and locusts.

The plague of darkness was a fierce warning — Yahweh had overpowered Ra. Arguably at the top of Egypt’s gods, Ra was the god of the sun and a central figure in ancient Egyptian worship. 

Even then, Pharaoh would not concede.

The final plague was an extension of the previous — a darker darkness. Each of Egypt’s firstborn would have been dedicated to Ra, and Pharaoh’s son was considered an incarnation of Ra himself. The death of the firstborn was a brutal and crushing end to the empty gods in whom they had placed their trust.

Idolatry always destroys our greatest joy. Our commitment to our idols cuts away at the people and things which matter most in our lives. Each idol delivers a shadow of the real experience — and their falsehood can be as difficult for us to see now as it was for the Egyptians to see then.

In comparison to Egypt’s gods, our modern idols have names which sound normal — approval, pleasure, comfort, power, control — but they act the same. We draw our identity from them. We arrange our lives around them. And, at our time of greatest need, they abandon us.

PrayerSpirit of God, dismantle our idols so our joy may be complete in Christ. Reveal in us the things which we trust more than God — the things which will destroy us. Renew us in the gospel and fill us with your peace.