Exodus 8:16-19 comments: a plague of lice

Exodus 8:16 ¶  And the LORD said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt. 17  And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man, and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt. 18  And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast. 19  Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.

The court magicians could counterfeit the rod turning into a snake, the surface water turning into blood, and the frogs. However, they could not produce the lice. The Egyptians hated lice. Lice were a sort of personal horror to them. The remains of lice can even be found in Egyptian tombs. They were so sickened by the infestation of lice that normally Egyptian men and women shaved their heads and the hairstyles you see on statuary and tomb paintings represent wigs. The Ebers Papyrus, listing many medical remedies, contains remedies for lice as well.

This is very personal. I am reminded of the symbolic significance of the first wonders; the serpent, the blood, and the frogs. But, with lice I am reminded of the personal horror and nausea this entailed, much like the Philistine lords being afflicted with painful hemorrhoids in 1Samuel 5. The symbolic wonders that may have told a story of spiritual significance were able to be copied by the heathen magicians. But, this very personal pestilence was all God’s own. God even warns us now in our lives in many other ways, often, before afflicting us personally to turn us from our sin to Him.

Each of these plagues affect things that were worshipped as gods by the Egyptians. The earth the lice came from was no different. God is punishing not only the Egyptians, and the entire ancient world by example, but their devils, their gods.

Exodus 12:12  For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

In God’s ministry of reconciling man to Himself we have come to a critical point. As I pointed out in my comments on Genesis the ancient world had deteriorated spiritually to a point where idolatry was the norm, where gods were created who were gods of a particular city and family, and where the God who created mankind was ignored or forgotten. Political gods were part of a nation, a cultural entity’s sense of self-identity. A nation, an ethnic nationality, was justified by its political gods much like the Hindus and Muslims who battled at India’s independence from the British in the late 1940’s or the so-called Christian governments of Britain, Russia, and Germany during World War One or the fundamentalists of America who glorify the state with flags on the pulpit and celebrations at every national holiday and support any martial effort of this country no matter what the reason or consequence. It was all done to the glory of their gods, not the God of the Bible or creation. Yes, I am saying that many Christians in America today, Britain, Russia, and Germany in times past, and Hindus and Muslims worship false gods, devils, and not the God of the Bible. Their gods are wrapped in a flag, a political ideology, and a cultural chauvinism. That is why they hate each other so and why they kill each other so easily. But, even supposedly non-religious people will fight and die over secular gods whom they call ideals and ideologies thinking they have escaped the plague of religion. It is not so. Communists and other atheist ideologies are also bloody killers, trying to create a perfect kingdom out of millions of victims and great suffering they cause.

God is judging mankind here by proxy for its decay into the lunacy of national gods and cultural gods, as even the modern Christian merely worships a god who is a reflection of his own political beliefs, paranoia, and bigotry.

The magicians acknowledge that, because of their inability, they realize that this is proof of the God of the Hebrews involvement. This is not a saving acknowledgement however, as we see the Pharaoh, as a god-man, the only physical and living emblem of the gods on earth for the Egyptians, set his heart to oppose the God of the Hebrews, who, unknowing to him, is the God who created him and sustains him.

The Egyptian Pharaoh was the incarnation of gods on earth as he lived and when he died he was the representation of the god of the underworld. Pharaoh was a false god in the flesh. He, of course, possessed by devils, and filled with pride and exaltation, like the Beast of Revelation, sets his heart of stone against the God who created Him.

Some part of mankind will follow God through the only physical representation He has ever had, the incarnate God, the physical body of the invisible God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God by which all things were created and are sustained. But, it began with one man, Abraham, coming out of Ur of the Chaldees, and now this one group of people, the Hebrews, coming from Jacob, who was called Israel, who will depart from Egypt as Abraham departed from Ur and as the Christian looks forward to departing a judged world that is shrouded in darkness, a condition of which one proof is decay and death, the greatest temporal plague of all.