17 STILL HARDER

The compounded plagues are bringing more and more destruction and Pharaoh’s heart is getting still harder. If humans resit Him, God also will push still harder. Both God and Pharaoh are pushing harder. The seventh plague, hail and lightening, shows God’s superiority over Nut, the Egyptian goddess of the sky. Again warning is given before the arrival of the plague. Pharaoh is warned of the impending doom he will face if he does not listen to the Lord, and abandon his own Egyptian gods and goddesses. Hail of unspeakable size and ability to destroy, would rain down from the sky, which was in actuality accompanied by lightening. The Lord, in showing the Pharaohs in the world that “there is none like Him in the Earth,” allows those who are willing to hear His word and do His commands even today, can be saved from sin through Jesus Christ. A distinction is again made between the Egyptians and the Hebrews as the hail does not fall in Goshen. Interestingly enough, the crops that were destroyed by the hail consisted of flax and barley, which were ripening in the fields. These two particular crops were not the mainstay of their diet, but were used more specifically for material for clothing and producing liquids to be poured out as offerings to their gods. This destruction would make their life uncomfortable, but as far as effecting their food supply, the wheat still survived. This gave the Egyptians still another chance to turn to the One true God, and forsake their own Egyptian gods and goddesses, showing God’s continuing mercy and grace. This is the way God operates and if we Christian leaders will work with God as well as Moses and Aaron worked with Him, we too will be used by Him in our day. That is why we are studying the life of Moses, so we can learn how to lead as He led. Moses was a tough man and sometimes we too must be tough.

We begin with an earlier general declaration of the wrath of God against Pharaoh for his obstinacy in verse 12. Though God has hardened Pharaoh’s heart “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses,” yet Moses must repeat his appeals to him; God suspends His grace and yet demands obedience, to punish him for requiring bricks of the children of Israel when he denied them straw. God would likewise display a pattern of patience with the rebellious and how He waits to be gracious to a rebellious and contradictory people. Six times the demand had been made in vain, yet Moses must now make it the seventh time, “Then the Lord said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me,” (13)

A most dreadful message Moses is here ordered to deliver to him, whether he will hear or not. He must tell Pharaoh that he is marked for ruin, that he now stands as the target at which God would shoot all the arrows of His anger, “or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth” (14, 15).  Now that no place is found for repentance in Pharaoh, nothing can prevent his utter destruction, for repentance only would have prevented it. Now that God begins to harden his heart, his case is desperate. ‘I will send my plagues on your heart, not only material plagues on your body, but spiritual plagues on your soul.’ God can send plagues on souls and they are the worst kind. God can send plagues on the heart, either by making it senseless or by making it hopeless—and these too are the worst kind of plagues. Pharaoh must now expect no release, no cease fire, but to be followed with plague upon plague, until he is utterly consumed. When God judges He will overcome; no one ever hardened his heart against Him and prospered. He must tell him that he is to remain in history a standing monument of the justice and power of God’s anger. This is a hard truth: “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (16). How horrible to be raised to the throne at this time, and made to endure God’s opposing power and have forever the reputation of being the Pharaoh with a hard heart, who could have, but did not, yield to God. 

God’s plan ordered it so that Moses would now face a man of such a fierce and stubborn spirit as he was ever to deal with. Everything was so managed in God’s plan as to make it a singular, significant and memorable instance of the power of God to humble and bring down the proudest of His enemies. Everything worked together to demonstrate this, that God’s name, His incontestable sovereignty, His irresistible power, and His inflexible justice might be declared throughout all the earth. This is, not only to all places, but through Scripture to all ages while the earth remains. God sometimes raises up very bad men to honor and power, spares them long, and allows them to grow unreasonably stubborn so that He may be so much the more glorified in their downfall and eventual destruction.

Other places in Scripture refer to this event, the ruin of Pharaoh to the glory of God. Moses father-in-law will hear of it and say “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly” (Exodus 18:11). In Romans 9:17, the Apostle Paul illustrates the doctrine of God’s sovereignty with this very story, “For Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’” That is a direct quotation of what God directed Moses to say to Pharaoh: “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go” (16, 17). Pharaoh was the great king of a great land and God’s people were poor shepherds at best, and now poor slaves. What a comparison! Yet Pharaoh will be ruined if he exalts himself against them. Harming God’s children is like exalting one’s self against God. This would not be the last time God would reprove kings for their sakes, and let them know that He would not allow His people to be trampled on or insulted, no, not by even the most powerful of them.

Next we observe in verses 18 and 19 a specific prediction of the plague of hail and gracious advice to Pharaoh and his people to send their servants and cattle out of the field, so they would be sheltered from the hail. “Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.” God’s justice threatens ruin and at the same time displays His mercy. He shows us a way of escape. God took care, not only to distinguish between Egyptians and Israelites, but between some Egyptians and others. If Pharaoh will not yield, and prevent the judgment itself, yet an opportunity is given to those that acknowledge God and His Word, to save themselves from sharing in the judgment. Those that will take warning may take shelter; and those that will not may thank only themselves if they fall by the overflowing just punishment, the hail which Isaiah 27:18 writes about. “I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding place.”

See the different effect of this warning. Some believed the warning and prepared, others did not. “Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside. But those who ignored the word of the Lord left their slaves and livestock in the field” (20, 21). They followed Noah’s wisdom recorded in Hebrews 11:7, “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.” Among the servants of Pharaoh there were some that trembled at God’s Word. Others did not believe. Moses’ previous predictions of plagues had come true. Even if they had had any reason to question this particular prediction, it would have been no harm to have kept their cattle sheltered for one day. Yet they were so foolhardy in their defiance to the truth of Moses, and the power of God, both of which they had already experienced to their loss, to leave their cattle in the field. Pharaoh himself, it is possible, gave them this example of presumption, “But those who ignored the word of the Lord left their slaves and livestock in the field” (21). Obstinate unbelief which is deaf to the fairest warnings, clearest evidences and the wisest counsels, leaves the blood of those that perish on their own heads.

The threatened plague of hail is here called for by the powerful hand and rod of Moses and it obeys the call, or rather the divine command. Ps 148:8 speaks of “lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding.” God kept His Word; the hail came.

What desolations it made on Egypt except for Goshen! Verse 26 says, “The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were.” God has the directing of the pregnant clouds, in His control and causes it to rain or hail on one city and not on another, either in mercy or in judgment. The thunder, and lightening from heaven made it the more dreadful and destructive as verses 23, 24 say, “When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.” God makes the clouds, not only His store-houses from which He drops blessings on the lands of His people, but also His magazines from which, when He pleases, He can draw out a most formidable array of artillery, with which to destroy His enemies. He Himself speaks of hail in Job 38:22-23, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?” This specific hail made woeful havoc in the land of Egypt. It killed both men and cattle, and battered down, not only the herbs, but even trees, as verse 25 says, “Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields—both people and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree.” In this plague the hot thunderbolts, as well as the hail, are said to destroy their flocks according to Psalm 79:47, 48. “He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet. He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning.

Pharaoh was in a fix! See what effect it had on him. He humbled himself to Moses in the language of a penitent. No man could have spoken better. He acknowledges himself on the wrong side in his contest with the God of the Hebrews. Verse 27 says, “This time I have sinned,” he said to them. “The Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.” He acknowledges the correctness of God’s proceedings against him: The Lord is righteous, and must be justified when he speaks, though he speak in thunder and lightning. He condemns himself and his land: “I and my people are wicked, and deserve what is brought upon us.” He begs the prayers of Moses: “Entreat the Lord for me, that this direful plague may be removed.” And, lastly, he promises to yield up his prisoners: I will let you go. What could one desire more? And yet his heart was hardened and hard through all of this.

Moses, our great example of a godly leader, maintained his focus on the objective in all these plagues. He wanted Pharaoh and all would who would ever know this story to acknowledge God. Remember, my friend, that Moses was the one who later wrote this story. He was both an actor and a playwright. The end Moses aimed at in interceding for him was that Pharaoh and all who hear or read of these events would know that God has sovereign dominion over all the creatures, that they all are ruled by Him, and therefore you, Pharaoh, and you too, reader of this teaching, should be ruled by Him. See what a variety of methods God uses to bring men to their proper senses. Judgments are sent or removed for the same reason, to make men know that the Lord reigns.

Moses’ prayer for relief was again successful. “Then Moses left Pharaoh and went out of the city. He spread out his hands toward the Lord; the thunder and hail stopped, and the rain no longer poured down on the land” (33). He prevailed with God, but he could not prevail with Pharaoh.