If we learn to obey God’s soft voice, He won’t raise His voice. But He’ll shout if He has to!
Pharaoh had someone check and, sure enough, there wasn’t one Israeli cow dead. God was making His point! “But the heart of Pharaoh became hard, and he did not let the people go” (Ex 9:7). Just as I thought, said the Lord, but we still have business here anyway. Isis, the goddess of healing, was the most powerful and popular goddess in Egyptian history. Known as “mother of the gods,” symbolically she was thought to have borne every king. Her name means “goddess of the throne.” She had to go! Unannounced, the sixth Egyptian plague is given. Now, for the first time, this plague will do more than bring discomfort; it will directly attack the Egyptians’ bodies. You can see the pressure ramping up. The Lord said, “Take for yourselves handfuls of ashes from a furnace, and let Moses scatter it toward the heavens in the sight of Pharaoh” (v 8). This became fine dust, which formed boils on both people and animals. Again, nothing touched the Israelites. The magicians, representing Isis, also known as Weret-Kekau, “The Great Magic,” “could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were on the magicians” (v 11). They can’t help others if they can’t help themselves. Only Moses and Aaron, representing the True God, can stand before Pharaoh. If only the Egyptians, seeing the impotence of their leader and his religious phonies, would have done what the Thessalonians did when they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess 1:9). But on this occasion, “the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh” (v 12). Why? He wanted to give the Egyptian people an opportunity to distance themselves from their stubborn leader, and act in faith, believing what God said. Let’s see how this works out!