Jesus’ first miracle of grace was turning water to wine; Moses’ first miracle? Water to blood!
Pharaoh had just seen the miraculous display he had asked for. God had proven Himself superior to Egypt’s gods. Now what? “Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the Lord had said” (Ex 7:13). So out comes the big artillery. We are introduced to the first of ten plagues inflicted on Egypt. These were not merely judgments. In them, the Israelites would meet the God of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Egyptians, too, could be delivered by transferring their faith from the bondage that held them to their demon-possessed idols to the obviously true God. There were over 2,000 deities in the Egyptian pantheon of gods and goddesses, but there were nine (plus Pharaoh) whom the Lord directly confronted. The first was Hapi, deity of the Nile, and linked with the seasonal flooding that deposited the rich silt which the farmers relied on for their crops. The Nile was considered the river of life, but the Lord said, Watch this, Pharaoh! “By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, I will strike the waters which are in the river with the rod that is in my hand,” said Moses, “and they shall be turned to blood” (v 17). God was clear: I am the source of life, not this river soon to be filled with the stench of death. Moses and Aaron, using the empowered rod, touched the river’s surface, and immediately it turned to blood. Even the water “in buckets of wood and pitchers of stone” became blood (v 19). Some things men suffer through God’s judgment; some things they suffer through their own stupidity. The people dug channels to access some groundwater, but again the magicians showed off, turning that water into blood as well. The king thus was unimpressed, refusing to let the people go.