“The Lord then said to Moses, ‘Tell Aaron: Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, canals, and ponds, and cause the frogs to come up onto the land of Egypt.’ When Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. But the magicians did the same thing by their occult practices and brought frogs up onto the land of Egypt. . . .But when Pharaoh saw there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I love getting into early summer when it’s warm enough to sit outside in the evenings and you start hearing the frogs for the first time. Their cacophonous chorus is a welcome note of the changing of the seasons. Their music is a gift from God and speaks to the wonderful variety of creatures He has created to fill the earth to His glory. But frogs belong in the ponds and puddles around my neighborhood. If they started to encroach on my living space and in greater numbers than the one or two you occasionally find hopping around the yard, they would not be quite so endearing. In fact, I suspect I would come to hate frogs with the same passion I bring to my hatred of gnats. Today we talk about the second plague God sent on Egypt: frogs. Let’s explore what was going on and its outcome.

At first glance, this has always seemed like a funny plague. I mean, frogs? Really? Frogs are cute. If they appear where you don’t expect them, they can be a little startling. Big bullfrogs look kind of gross. But in terms of something that would be sufficiently menacing to convince the hard-hearted Pharaoh to soften his resistance to the Lord’s command to let the Israelites go, this doesn’t seem like it would really even register. What was God’s plan exactly, to irritate the king into submission?

Well, have you ever had too much of a good thing? Eventually you start to hate it. Then you come to abhor it. Then something about it starts to trigger fear in your mind. The fear is not necessarily of the thing itself, but rather of the prospect that you don’t have any control over whatever it is any longer. The loss of control can be a potent fear for many folks. And, from a careful reading of the text here, it wasn’t simply that God threw a pile of frogs at Egypt in hopes of getting Israel out of there. In fact, God harbored no delusions at all that the frogs were going to get them set free. This was a step forward in what He had already told Moses was going to be a long process. And, this was a lot of frogs. No, you don’t understand. It was A LOT of them. If you didn’t click through a second ago to actually read this passage, go and do it.

I’ll wait.

Did you catch vv. 3-4? “The Nile will swarm with frogs; they will come up and go into your palace, into your bedroom and on your bed, into the houses of your officials and your people, and into your ovens and kneading bowls. The frogs will come up on you, your people, and all your officials.” There were frogs everywhere. They were in everything. They were on everyone. This would have sailed right on past a nuisance to become terrifying. This was intended to be a blow to Egypt’s confidence in the god who presided over keeping the separation between the amphibious world and the rest of Egypt. The God of Israel was completely obliterating his power and turning what was perhaps seen as a blessing into a curse.

In v. 2 God tells Moses He is going to “plague” Egypt with frogs. The Hebrew word there could also be translated as “strike.” This was like a blow a boxer might throw at his opponent. This was intended to be a deflating punch to the gut of Egypt’s confidence that they were safe behind the wall of their worldview.

Then, as we get into the story a bit, we discovered something interesting. The magicians of Egypt were also able to make frogs appear. What exactly this means is not clear. They were apparently able to make a single frog multiply into many frogs. In other words, it appeared they were able to copy what God was doing. And, as far as Pharaoh was concerned, if they were able to copy His actions, then He wasn’t really more powerful. Yes, this was a nuisance, but he still wasn’t dealing with someone more powerful than he was. This was at best a peer, and a peer he intended to face down so that he was properly recognized as the most powerful authority in his land. Moses tells us they reproduced the effect of multiplying frogs by their “occult practices.” We are again not sure what that means. Whatever it means, though, it is worth noting that they couldn’t reverse the effect. That is, they couldn’t make the frogs go away. That would have been an even handier trick. They may have been able to mimic God’s power, but they couldn’t defeat or undo it.

And because they couldn’t make the frogs go away, they just kept multiplying. They kept multiplying until for the first time Pharaoh was forced to acknowledge Israel’s God. This was a big step. He was forced to take the humiliating step of asking Moses for help. I’m sure he made it seem like a small thing, but it wasn’t. By asking Moses to ask his God to get rid of the frogs, Pharaoh was forced to acknowledge that this God had a power that was greater than his own or the power of the various other gods of Egypt. One of the ways someone like Pharaoh maintained his power was by the illusion of strength. As long as the people believed him to be undefeatable, they stayed properly deferential. Now, though, there was a God out there with a power over which he didn’t have any control. It was a symbolic chink in his armor, yes, but an important one nonetheless.

Next, Moses takes the intriguing step of allowing Pharaoh to choose the date on which the frogs will disappear. This was actually a smart tactical move. Had Moses announced the date, Pharaoh could have easily accused him of having the whole thing planned out in advance, thus undermining the claim that this was all a demonstration of the power of his God. By giving Pharaoh the power of choice, it eliminated the appearance of trickery. Pharaoh chooses the next day, and Moses goes home to cry out to God to get rid of the frogs on the next day. I wonder a bit what would have happened if God had decided not to play ball with this request. Moses would have been put in a pretty awkward position.

In the end, God did just what Moses asked, but not in the way anyone probably wanted. Rather than shooing all the frogs back to the water, they all simply died. Right where they were. Now, instead of millions of hopping and climbing and crawling frogs covering the land of Egypt, the whole place was ankle deep in dead frogs. Moses tells us in v. 14 that there was a terrible odor in the land. I’ll bet there was. The Egyptians piled them in “countless heaps.” This was perhaps even worse than when the frogs were alive. I don’t suppose any pop-up restaurants opened offering 1,001 ways to enjoy frogs legs.

Pharaoh had assured Moses that as soon as the frogs were gone, he would allow the people to go into the wilderness to worship like they wanted. He lied. Mosese should have perhaps told Pharaoh that the frogs would be gone as soon as they got back from their desert retreat. But then Moses no more intended for the people to come back from their worship retreat than Pharaoh intended to let them go take it. They were both being dishonest with each other to a certain extent. Like we talked about back when we looked at the story of the courageous midwives, though, someone in Pharaoh’s position didn’t deserve the truth, wouldn’t have expected the truth, and so Moses didn’t give it to him. (One interesting thought experiment: God would have accepted the people’s being sent on the three-day retreat Moses initially requested had Pharaoh been willing to grant it as a first step, but because Pharaoh kept fighting Him, He simply pushed him to the point of releasing them entirely.) Either way, once the frogs were gone and the threat was in the past, Pharaoh doubled down on his opposition and refused to keep his word to let the people go. This was just as the Lord had said it would be. It was almost like He knew it was going to happen.

In the end, I’m not entirely sure that this story means a whole lot for us. It points toward the Gospel in that God is capable of getting our attention in terms of our need to acknowledge Him for who He is. It also shows us that resisting God is not ever going to go well. And, it is a sobering reminder that we are nonetheless able to resist His efforts. Sometimes, though, the thing God uses to get our attention is not necessarily something big or dramatic. It’s little and irritating. The Holy Spirit can sometimes act like sandpaper that way. Our best bet is to pay attention so He doesn’t have to go on to more stringent measures to get us to tune in. Oh, and if you make a promise to God, you should probably keep it.