April 7, 2022 (Lent Week 5)

Exodus 8

1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2 If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. 3 The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. 4 The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials.’”

5 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.’” 6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. 7 But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

8 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.” 9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.” 10 “Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said. Moses replied, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. 11 The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile.”

12 After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. 13 And the Lord did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. 14 They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. 15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.

 

 

Frogs. Thousands of them, tens of thousands of them, crawling everywhere. In the houses, in the palaces, in the beds, on the tables, in the ovens, on the curtains, in their shoes. Everywhere. That was the second plague of God upon Egypt in Exodus 8. It’s actually kind of a funny story.

God had already turned the Nile to blood in the First Plague (Ex. 7), and now in the second plague he multiplies the frogs in the Nile to show all Egypt that He alone is truly sovereign in the land, and not the Pharoah, and definitely not Heqet, the frog-headed goddess of fertility, nor Hapi, the god of the Nile. The melodic croaking of frogs, which would usually have been heard from the Nile, is now heard through out the land, in every corner. Slimy, smelly, noisy frogs, everywhere. The God of the Hebrews everywhere. Yahweh has laid low Hapi, and now Heqet too.

Now things get weird, though. In order to prove that the Pharoah, and Hapi and Heqet, are still sovereign in Egypt, the magicians of Pharoah’s court reproduce the plague of frogs. That’s right, they call up more frogs. They are so desperate to maintain the illusion of their authority and power that they contribute to Yahweh’s plague! Reading between the lines a little, I have no doubt that Pharoah tried to call his magicians off, but then they cannot stop what they have started, and Pharaoh must ask Moses to stop the plague instead. And Moses gets cheeky – “When would you like me to ask God to end it?” Embarrassed and wanting to save face, Pharoah says rather nonchalantly, “Tomorrow”. Hey, no hurry, I don’t care all that much.

And then, God gets in on the jest too. When Moses prays to end the plague, God does so, but instead of sending the frogs back to the Nile, they die right where they are. They die in the fields, in the houses, in the courtyards, on the tables, in their shoes. And what do you do with tens of thousands of dead frogs? You pile them up to start getting rid of them, but there were so many that they started to rot in the heat and the sun, “and the land stank.” It had become a smelly comedy of errors.

Finally, the episode ends with the strangest moment of all. The Pharoah doubles down. Sitting in his palace - heaps of rotting frogs around him and his people breathing through their mouths to avoid the stench - the Pharoah digs in his heels. No, I will not let your people go. Swarm me with frogs, I don’t care. As the text puts it, “he hardened his heart.”

I think there is a lesson for us here, especially during Lent, as we are trying to be honest and truthful about ourselves. What we see here in this story is that in the face of God’s relentless warnings and chastisements, the Pharoah hardened his heart. In the face of a plague which piled up the truth numbered in dead frogs, he digs his heels in, holding on to his illusions that his will alone should be done and refusing to submit. In fact, his stubborn efforts to remain in control only made it worse, made it stink to the high heavens.  

We can be like that too. I know I can. Confronted with one hard reality after another, instead of having the humility to accept God’s will, I keep doing the same stubborn thing, recommitting to the same sinful patterns, pushing forward no matter what the cost or the damage to the people around me. I think I am holding on to my dignity, or maybe I’m convinced I’m acting “out of my principles”, or being “true to myself”, but I’m just making it worse. I’m calling up more frogs. I’m sitting among the piles of dead frogs telling myself God did it, and not me. That’s hardness of heart. Pride. Hubris.

And the only remedy is humility. “Harden not your hearts, as in the day of temptation in the wilderness,,,” says the Psalmist. It takes humility to recognize the hardness of our hearts, and the power of sin deeply rooted in our soul. And that is the challenge for all of us in Lent, too: to learn the humility to submit to God’s will, to die to ourselves, so say as Jesus will say a week from now, “Thy will be done.”  Imagine what might have been if the Pharoah had simply obeyed in humility. Imagine how our lives might change if we would too. At the very least, we could avoid some of the frogs.

- Br. Jason