Nils Glenn

Exodus 12:12 has God announcing that he will execute judgment on all the gods of Egypt, and Numbers 33:4 repeats the claim. Most of us were taught the ten plagues as a series of disasters meant to pressure Pharaoh into letting Israel go. The text itself says something more specific, and the Egyptian setting shows what it was.

In this video, we go through the plagues one at a time and ask what each one hit in Egyptian religion. The Nile was worshiped as a source of life, so the first plague turns it to blood. Frogs were tied to Heqet, a goddess of childbirth, and they come swarming out of the river. The ninth plague blots out the sun in the land of Ra. The tenth takes the firstborn, including the heir of a king Egypt considered divine.

We also look at why the plagues come in the order they do, how Egyptians understood Pharaoh’s job of holding the cosmos together, and why Exodus keeps framing the whole story as a question of who is really Lord. Pharaoh asks who Yahweh is in Exodus 5:2, and the plagues are the answer he gets.

If you’ve ever wondered why it took ten plagues instead of one, this video gives you a reason that comes straight from the text and its ancient context.

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