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EXODUS: FUNCTIONING WELL IN A HOPELESS GROUP ASSIGNMENT
Part I: God's Deliverance Of Israel Amid Humanly Helpless Trials
O. God's Glorifying Himself By The Plague Of Locusts
(Exodus 10:1-20)
  1. Introduction
    1. We have noted that Scripture reveals five goals for the plagues on Egypt: they came to deliver Israel from Egypt, to answer Pharaoh's question of "Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice and let Israel go?", to reveal God's power to Israel, to reveal the earth belongs to the Lord and not Egypt's gods and to judge all the gods of Egypt, R. Grigg, "The Ten Plagues of Egypt," Creation (v. 27, no. 1), Dec.-Feb. 05, p. 36.
    2. For such goals to be reached, the plagues would have to be seen as miracles by the Egyptians.
    3. However, naturalistic explanations for the plagues were offered by Greta Hort in 1957, a scholar of medieval English literature and religion, and her views are cited in reference works today, Ibid., p. 34, 38.
    4. Thus, we view the Scripture and data to see if the eighth plague was a true miracle that glorified God:
  2. God's Glorifying Himself By The Plague Of Locusts, Exodus 10:1-20.
    1. The Biblical account of the eighth plague is as follows:
      1. God directed Moses to visit Pharaoh again, explaining He had hardened Pharaoh's heart along with the hearts of his servants that God might show His signs before them, Exodus 10:1.
      2. God also revealed the accounts of these signs would be told down through Israel's generations so that the generations in Israel might know their God was truly God, Exodus 10:2.
      3. Moses was thus to tell Pharaoh that if he again hardened his heart, God would send locusts to cover the earth, and eat all that was left from the hail storm, Exodus 10:3-5. [This plague is connected to the former plague of the hail storm!] The locusts would fill the ground, the homes of the Egyptians and their servants as had never occurred before in Egypt, Exodus 10:6.
      4. At the urging of his servants, Pharaoh said he would let Israel's adults go, but not the children, 10:7-11.
      5. Due to Pharaoh's evil response, God sent an east wind that bring in locusts that ate every green thing (that remained alive from the hail storm), producing Egypt's worst locust plague of all time, 10:12-15.
      6. This destruction led Pharaoh to call for Moses quickly to deliver Egypt from the plague; he confessed he had sinned against God, and begged Moses to rid the land of the locusts, Exodus 10:16-17.
      7. When Moses asked God to end the plague, God sent a west wind to carry every locust into the Red Sea, Exodus 10:18-19. However, Pharaoh hardened his heart as before, Exodus 10:20!
    2. Greta Hort gave a naturalistic explanation for the plague to counter the view that it was a miracle:
      1. She suggested "the seventh plague, of hail and thunder, was a coincidental local weather feature, which also promoted the locusts of the eighth plague." (Ibid., p. 34)
      2. Also, "Hort changed the east wind that brought the locusts into a south wind" as "they are supposed to come from the Sudan or southwestern Arabia" and "the west wind that blew the locusts into the Red Sea into a north, or sea wind," B. Sparks, Red algae theories of the ten plagues: contradicted by science,' 2 parts, Bible and Spade 16(3):66-77, 2003 and 17(1):17-27, 2004, on which this article [by Grigg] is based." (brackets ours)
    3. However, the Biblical record does not support Hort's naturalistic explanations (as follows):
      1. Scripture claims the EAST wind brought the locusts (Ex. 10:13), not Hort's suggested SOUTH wind.
      2. Also, the WEST wind sent them into the Red Sea (Ex. 10:19), not Hort's suggested NORTH wind!
      3. Thus, God miraculously both provided the locust plague and ended it, and that by special winds!
    4. The plague "of locusts (. . . by the wind) that destroyed the crops, attacked the . . . sky deities (e.g. Shu, Tefnut and Nut . . . of air, moisture and sky) who allegedly controlled the weather. The loss of crops showed the impotence of the gods of vegetation, agriculture and harvest (e.g. Geb and Seth)." (Ibid., 37)
Lesson: (1) Hort's naturalistic explanations of the eighth plague are countered by the Scripture record. (2) The plague was a miracle showing the inability of Egypt's gods to control the weather and vegetation, agriculture and crops that grew as a result of the weather's activity.

Application: May we believe the plague of locusts was a miracle, and worship the Bible's Creator God as the One, True God of the sky, air, moisture, vegetation, agriculture and harvest of crops!