The Fifth Plague: Livestock

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Exodus 9:1-7

9 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, 3 behold, the hand of the Lord will fall with a very severe plague upon your livestock that are in the field, the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. 4 But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.”’” 5 And the Lord set a time, saying, “Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.” 6 And the next day the Lord did this thing. All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died. 7 And Pharaoh sent, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.

 
 

Pharaoh’s hard heart is described in several different ways: sometimes the Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart, sometimes Pharaoh hardens his own heart, and sometimes Pharaoh’s heart is just hardened. The narrator also uses several different Hebrew verbs to describe what’s happening—all this adds up to Pharaoh’s remarkable refusal to yield to the Lord’s request that the Hebrews go free.

Ultimately, the Lord is giving Pharaoh over to his own desires, bending Pharaoh’s evil to the Lord’s own purposes. One of the things the Lord is doing is strengthening Pharaoh’s own will—you might say that the Lord is making Pharaoh more of what he already is. Pharaoh’s stubborn refusal to change will culminate in the destruction of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. There is a mysterious interplay between Pharaoh’s desires and the Lord’s strengthening of those desires, but nowhere do you get the sense that Pharaoh is likely to repent.

“Exodus gives no sign that Pharaoh longed to submit to [the LORD] as his sovereign and was prevented from doing so; he received numerous rebukes, explanations, and commands that imply opportunity to submit.” --Dorian Coover-Cox

One of the prayers we should pray is that the Lord would save us from our own crooked desires.

This is the ancient Jesus prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Amen.