Slowly, God is loosening the king’s clutching fingers from the things that would doom his soul.
Pharaoh tries another ploy with Moses: “I will let you go,…only you shall not go very far away” (Ex 8:28). Doesn’t this sound like the devil? You don’t want to be too different, do you? But if you’re close to the world, you’re far from the Lord. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn 2:15). By this time, Pharaoh has figured out the One Big Reality, but he refuses to let his heart believe what his head already knows. When there’s a mess to clean up—frogs, flies, lice, etc., he doesn’t call for a national prayer time with Set, the god of disorder, or Beelzebub, “lord of the flies.” No, he asks Jehovah to deal with it! This is the reason for him hardening himself—so he doesn’t give in to the magnificent revelation of the true and only living God. Well, is there another idol to be knocked from its niche? Yes! Hathor, Egyptian goddess of love and protection has, as you might expect, the endearing head of a—wait for it—of a cow! Here was the original holy cow, an idea later borrowed by the Israelites, bringing down God’s wrath at Sinai. Moses once again declared to Pharaoh on God’s behalf, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me” (Ex 9:1). The next plague, unlike the lice, was given with warning in advance, allowing time for repentance: “Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing” (v 5) but it goes unheeded. “Behold, the hand of the Lord will be on your cattle in the field, on the horses, on the donkeys, on the camels, on the oxen, and on the sheep—a very severe pestilence” (v 3). Again, the Lord spared Israel’s livestock, but “all the livestock of Egypt died” (v 6). What hardship for the people of Egypt! But what hardness in the heart of their king! Will nothing be able to set God’s people free? Wait and see.