Moses and Aaron Before Pharaoh With Serpent and Frogsby CNSDA
8:2Exodus 8:2
And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs:
God gave advance warning through Moses that if Pharaoh refused to let Israel go to serve Him and to sacrifice to Him, He would smite all the borders of Egypt with frogs, and the warning was given beforehand so that Pharaoh could escape the plague by obeying and letting Israel go. The demand was, Let my people go that they may serve Him, with refusal to bring frogs over all the borders. This warning belongs to the first displays of signs and wonders that did not bring immediate deliverance.
The threatened plague followed Pharaoh's rejection of the rod becoming a serpent and the seven-day plague in which the river was turned to blood, which Pharaoh took for magic because his magicians imitated them, and his hard heart was not moved but only increased in hatred of Israel. When Aaron stretched his hand and the rod over the waters of Egypt, frogs came up by the power of the living God from the river and the Nile and covered the land. They were not brought by magic or by any human influence or power of Moses and Aaron, and only God could remove them. The signs were wrought through Moses by the power of God to convince Pharaoh that the great I AM had sent him to command Pharaoh to let Israel go that they might serve Him.
The frogs spread over the country and overran the houses, taking possession of the bedchambers and even the ovens and kneading-troughs, and swarmed even in the palace of the Pharaohs until the nuisance became intolerable. Because the frog was regarded as sacred the Egyptians would not destroy the slimy pests. The plague turned the Nile, which the Egyptians revered as sacred, into a source of pollution and torment, undermining confidence in the river as a divine power. It showed that Egypt's idols could neither protect their worshipers nor save themselves.
The Egyptian magicians by enchantment with Satan's aid appeared to bring up similar frogs also, over which Pharaoh exulted and boasted. They could produce frogs but could not stay the plague or remove them, proving God's work superior and exposing the emptiness of Pharaoh's boasting in his magicians. Satan was present on the ground knowing Moses was chosen to break bondage and prefigured Christ's first advent to break Satan's power over the human family and deliver captives. He worked through the magicians to counterfeit God's true work to harden Pharaoh against God's power, to stagger Moses and Aaron in their mission, to keep Israel from release to serve God, and to destroy faith in Christ's mighty miracles through all ages, yet even where imitated God proved superior and would not suffer Satan to proceed beyond a few miracles.
The manner of removal proves the plague was a real judgment from the God of heaven and not magic. At the appointed time set for the next day the living cause was removed while the effect was left. God could have caused the frogs to disappear and return to dust in a moment but did not, lest the king and Egyptians pronounce the removal sorcery or enchantment like the magicians' work. Instead throughout all Egypt the frogs died and their putrid bodies remained in sight gathered in heaps and polluted the atmosphere, giving Pharaoh and all Egypt evidence their vain philosophy could not explain away or gainsay.
The plague somewhat humbled Pharaoh and began to teach him something of the God he had claimed not to know. So he sent for Moses and Aaron to entreat the Lord to take the frogs away from him and his people, with promise to let the people go to sacrifice. Yet when asked to appoint a time he set the next day, secretly hoping the frogs might disappear of themselves and save him from the humiliation of submitting to the God of Israel. Moses answered by pointing back to his former boasting and asking where his glorying and the power of his magicians now were.
Delay in deliverance was overruled because many Hebrews had lost the knowledge of the true God and forgotten His law through worship of the sun, moon, stars, beasts and images of wood and stone. They had become corrupted and content to remain in bondage rather than meet the difficulties of journeying to a new country, so God overruled events to more fully develop Pharaoh's tyrannical spirit and to manifest His great power before the Egyptians and before Israel to make Israel anxious to leave Egypt, be rid of idolatry and corrupting influences, and choose the service of God. The smiting of all the borders by an overspreading unclean and degrading visitation of frogs pictures the immense tide of printed matter now overspreading the land, much of it commonplace, idle, enervating, unclean and degrading, read hastily and superficially to the loss of connected, vigorous thought. This flood intoxicates and ruins the mind and corrupts and destroys the soul, finding foothold especially in the indolent and aimless mind and heart, and it must be met by directing the mind to high and holy ideals with a noble aim and absorbing purpose through close study of the Word of God received into the soul as a mighty barrier against temptation.
God gave advance warning through Moses that if Pharaoh refused to let Israel go to serve Him and to sacrifice to Him, He would smite all the borders of Egypt with frogs, and the warning was given beforehand so that Pharaoh could escape the plague by obeying and letting Israel go. The demand was, Let my people go that they may serve Him, with refusal to bring frogs over all the borders. This warning belongs to the first displays of signs and wonders that did not bring immediate deliverance.
The threatened plague followed Pharaoh's rejection of the rod becoming a serpent and the seven-day plague in which the river was turned to blood, which Pharaoh took for magic because his magicians imitated them, and his hard heart was not moved but only increased in hatred of Israel. When Aaron stretched his hand and the rod over the waters of Egypt, frogs came up by the power of the living God from the river and the Nile and covered the land. They were not brought by magic or by any human influence or power of Moses and Aaron, and only God could remove them. The signs were wrought through Moses by the power of God to convince Pharaoh that the great I AM had sent him to command Pharaoh to let Israel go that they might serve Him.
The frogs spread over the country and overran the houses, taking possession of the bedchambers and even the ovens and kneading-troughs, and swarmed even in the palace of the Pharaohs until the nuisance became intolerable. Because the frog was regarded as sacred the Egyptians would not destroy the slimy pests. The plague turned the Nile, which the Egyptians revered as sacred, into a source of pollution and torment, undermining confidence in the river as a divine power. It showed that Egypt's idols could neither protect their worshipers nor save themselves.
The Egyptian magicians by enchantment with Satan's aid appeared to bring up similar frogs also, over which Pharaoh exulted and boasted. They could produce frogs but could not stay the plague or remove them, proving God's work superior and exposing the emptiness of Pharaoh's boasting in his magicians. Satan was present on the ground knowing Moses was chosen to break bondage and prefigured Christ's first advent to break Satan's power over the human family and deliver captives. He worked through the magicians to counterfeit God's true work to harden Pharaoh against God's power, to stagger Moses and Aaron in their mission, to keep Israel from release to serve God, and to destroy faith in Christ's mighty miracles through all ages, yet even where imitated God proved superior and would not suffer Satan to proceed beyond a few miracles.
The manner of removal proves the plague was a real judgment from the God of heaven and not magic. At the appointed time set for the next day the living cause was removed while the effect was left. God could have caused the frogs to disappear and return to dust in a moment but did not, lest the king and Egyptians pronounce the removal sorcery or enchantment like the magicians' work. Instead throughout all Egypt the frogs died and their putrid bodies remained in sight gathered in heaps and polluted the atmosphere, giving Pharaoh and all Egypt evidence their vain philosophy could not explain away or gainsay.
The plague somewhat humbled Pharaoh and began to teach him something of the God he had claimed not to know. So he sent for Moses and Aaron to entreat the Lord to take the frogs away from him and his people, with promise to let the people go to sacrifice. Yet when asked to appoint a time he set the next day, secretly hoping the frogs might disappear of themselves and save him from the humiliation of submitting to the God of Israel. Moses answered by pointing back to his former boasting and asking where his glorying and the power of his magicians now were.
Delay in deliverance was overruled because many Hebrews had lost the knowledge of the true God and forgotten His law through worship of the sun, moon, stars, beasts and images of wood and stone. They had become corrupted and content to remain in bondage rather than meet the difficulties of journeying to a new country, so God overruled events to more fully develop Pharaoh's tyrannical spirit and to manifest His great power before the Egyptians and before Israel to make Israel anxious to leave Egypt, be rid of idolatry and corrupting influences, and choose the service of God. The smiting of all the borders by an overspreading unclean and degrading visitation of frogs pictures the immense tide of printed matter now overspreading the land, much of it commonplace, idle, enervating, unclean and degrading, read hastily and superficially to the loss of connected, vigorous thought. This flood intoxicates and ruins the mind and corrupts and destroys the soul, finding foothold especially in the indolent and aimless mind and heart, and it must be met by directing the mind to high and holy ideals with a noble aim and absorbing purpose through close study of the Word of God received into the soul as a mighty barrier against temptation.