Exodus 7:14-19: a reflection

14The LORD said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is stubborn. He refuses to let the people go. 15Go to Pharaoh in the morning. Behold, he is going out to the water. You shall stand by the river’s bank to meet him. You shall take the rod which was turned to a serpent in your hand. 16You shall tell him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. Behold, until now you haven’t listened.” 17The LORD says, “In this you shall know that I am the LORD. Behold: I will strike with the rod that is in my hand on the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood. 18The fish that are in the river will die and the river will become foul. The Egyptians will loathe to drink water from the river.”’” 19The LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your rod, and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their streams, and over their pools, and over all their ponds of water, that they may become blood. There will be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’”

The first plague strikes the Nile, turning its water to blood, and God states his purpose plainly: by this you shall know that I am the LORD. Notice that phrase, because it runs through the whole exodus like a refrain. God's acts, even his acts of judgment, have an aim beyond the events themselves: that people would come to know who he truly is, that he is the LORD.

And notice what he strikes. The Nile was not just a river to Egypt; it was the source of their life and prosperity, and it was worshiped as a god. God strikes precisely there, at the thing Egypt trusted and revered in his place, to show that it is under his hand, not a rival to him. The false security, the thing set up as a god, is shown to be no god at all before the true Lord.

There is a pattern here worth seeing. God's purpose, even when he acts in ways that unsettle us, is that we would know him, and sometimes that means the things we have trusted in his place are shaken so we will see they were never God. When something you leaned on is disturbed, it may be God's way of turning your eyes back to himself, so that you would know, more truly than before, that he is the LORD. His deepest aim is not to harm you but that you would know him.

Lord, your purpose even in the things that unsettle me is that I would know you, the true Lord. Where I have trusted lesser things in your place, and you allow them to be shaken, turn my eyes back to you. Above all, let me come to know you more truly as the LORD.