Exodus 8:1, commentary and pictures

The command was repeated again and again, with Moses and Aaron meeting Pharaoh in the morning as he stood on the bank of the river, speaking in the name of the great I AM and demanding that he release Israel from Egyptian bondage to serve and sacrifice to God. The release was to separate Israel from the world and prepare them to receive God's word. It was to bring them out of Egypt to free them from idolatry and put them in the service of God.

Israel had been long in servitude and had grown from a few families to a large multitude while surrounded by influences calculated to make them forget the living God who made heaven and earth. Many had lost the knowledge of the true God and forgotten His law, joining with the Egyptians in worship of the sun, moon, and stars and of beasts and images of wood and stone. Children daily witnessed those abominations and engaged in them, offering sacrifice to senseless objects. A faithful remnant preserved the knowledge of God, grieved over the corruption, and cried to the Lord for deliverance from the yoke to be rid of idolatry and its corrupting influences. Many others were corrupted and content to remain in bondage rather than face the difficulties of going to a new country, so God did not deliver them by the first display of signs and wonders but overruled events to develop Pharaoh's tyrannical spirit more fully and to manifest His great power before Egyptians and Israel, to make His people anxious to leave Egypt and choose the service of God.

Refusal of the demand was warned to bring frogs over all the borders of Egypt, enforced by stretching the rod over the waters. This followed the earlier signs of the rod becoming a serpent and the waters turned to blood, so that the fish died and the water stank and the Egyptians had to dig wells for water through seven days. The frogs came up from the river and spread over the land into houses and bedchambers and ovens and kneading-troughs, even swarming in the palaces. Though the frog was sacred and the Egyptians would not destroy it, the pests became intolerable.

The demand and the plagues came by the power of the living God, not by magic or any human power of Moses and Aaron and not by human influence. Signs and wonders were wrought to convince Pharaoh that God had sent them, to begin teaching Pharaoh who had professed to be wholly ignorant of God to know Him and that there is none like the Lord God. They asserted Jehovah's supremacy and exposed the powerlessness of Egypt's idols. Satan, unwilling for Israel to be released to serve God, worked through Pharaoh's magicians to counterfeit God's true work by enchantments. They changed well water to blood and appeared to bring up frogs, to destroy the influence of God's work, to harden Pharaoh against God's manifestations, to increase his hatred of Israel, and to stagger the faith of Moses and Aaron. This led Pharaoh to think the miracles were magic and to harden his heart. But God's work proved superior and set limits Satan could not pass, since the magicians could bring up frogs but could not stay or remove the plague, exposing the emptiness of Pharaoh's boasting over them.

Pharaoh was humbled to ask Moses and Aaron to entreat the Lord to take the frogs away, promising to let the people go to sacrifice. When asked to appoint the time he set tomorrow, the next day, secretly hoping the frogs would disappear of themselves and save him the humiliation of submitting to the God of Israel. But the plague continued until the appointed time so he might know there is none like the Lord God. At the appointed hour the living frogs were taken away while the dead remained where they died and were gathered into heaps that polluted the atmosphere with sight and smell. God could have caused them to return to dust in a moment but deliberately left them dead in heaps so the king and people could not call the removal sorcery or enchantment like the magicians' work and vain philosophy could not explain it away, giving undeniable evidence that the work was not magic but a judgment from the God of heaven. Moses breaking the yoke of bondage to free Israel prefigured the first advent of Christ to break Satan's power over the human family and deliver those made captives by him.