“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Get up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh. Tell him: This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. For this time I am about to send all my plagues against you, your officials, and your people. Then you will know there is no one like me on the whole earth. By now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague, and you would have been obliterated from the earth. However, I have let you live for this purpose: to show you my power and to make my name known on the whole earth. You are still acting arrogantly against my people by not letting them go. Tomorrow at this time I will rain down the worst hail that has ever occurred in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We’ve talked about this before, but one of the reputations God has resulting from people’s reading the Bible without understanding is that He is all anger and wrath. He looks for opportunities to judge, and delights in raining down excessive punishment on people for the smallest and silliest things. At a glance, the plagues in general, but especially this seventh plague seems to be a case in point of this. After all, what else are we to call a deadly hailstorm? Yet this plague is set within the longest narrative any of them have so far received, and this narrative paints a very different picture of God than a mere cursory reading reveals. Let’s talk today about God’s character, the judgment for sin, and why you really can’t understand one unless you understand the other.

This is a longer passage than we have generally been looking at lately. As I just mentioned, it is part of an even longer passage that I just couldn’t break up into smaller pieces without losing the larger point of the section. This is a passage you really need to see the whole thing in order to grasp what is going on here. Let me encourage you to take time today to click through and read the whole passage on the link up above. It runs from where we started here all the way through v. 35.

With this seventh plague, we are now in the last trio of plagues before the tenth and final plague that is its own animal. This final series of three plagues echoes the ones before them, but all of them ratchet things up to a whole new level. Whereas the previous plagues were inconvenient and disruptive of normal life but not deadly, these make that turn. This plague was the first time lives were going to be directly at stake. As a result, God gave more instructions and a more detailed explanation about it than He had before. This has the effect of giving Pharaoh a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at what was going on here.

As should have been made abundantly clear to Pharaoh and his officials by now, in attempting to stand athwart the God of the Hebrews, they were dealing with powers they were beyond anything they had encountered before. Every physical or spiritual battle they had faced to this point in their lives was a mere shadow of the real thing. Here they were tangling with the Source. They did not have the wherewithal to stand against this God the way they did the imaginary gods of the peoples they had conquered and subjugated before this time.

God says something here that should have gotten their attention. I could have wiped you out at any point in this process. I could have reached out my hand and inflicted you with a plague that completely obliterated you as a people. Coming on the heels of the plague of boils that, while exceedingly painful, wasn’t deadly, this had to have been a meaningful observation. God was essentially saying, “That was nothing. I could have done worse. But I didn’t.” And why? Because He wanted to demonstrate His real power to them. He wanted everyone in the world talking about the power of the God of Israel. Before this, no one knew who He was. After this, everyone would. God would have been just fine with Pharaoh’s agreeing to release the people at His first request, but because He knew Pharaoh was going to refuse, He took the opportunity to reveal Himself to the world in an absolutely undeniable way. What this amounted to was a promise that things were still yet going to get even worse if Pharaoh didn’t change his heart and decide to play ball.

God reveals something else here, though, that we dare not miss. In describing just how bad this plague is going to be, He tells them that it doesn’t have to be as bad as it could be. The hail from the storm coming the next day was going to be bad. It was going to be worse, in fact, than any hailstorm Egypt had ever seen. I don’t know anything about the weather in Egypt and whether or not hailstorms are a common occurrence, but this one was going to top all of them. Anything living that was caught out in the storm was going to be destroyed. That went for animals and people alike. Because of this, God made clear there was a way to avoid any loss of life.

Think about that for just a second. God didn’t have to do that. In fact, He didn’t have to say anything. He could have launched this plague like the last one as a complete surprise. He could have caught the Egyptian people completely unaware and destroyed hundreds or thousands of them in the process. That kind of thing would fit with the vision of God’s character that so many have today as vengeful and wrathful and looking for a reason to judge and destroy. Yet that’s not what we see. God tells them how bad the hailstorm is going to be and urges them to stay inside. That is, He makes clear there is a way to avoid any loss of life. He even places the hailstorm at a time when, though, it destroyed some of their harvest, it didn’t destroy all of it. God doesn’t want for anyone to die. All the Egyptians had to do was to accept Him as God, embrace His authority, and do what He said. And what He said wasn’t terribly burdensome. It amounted to stay inside tomorrow. And indeed, the people who had been convinced of who He was listened and lived. Those who didn’t, didn’t…and didn’t. This wasn’t on God, though. It was their own stubbornness and arrogance. Or, if they didn’t hear because of Pharaoh’s stubbornness and arrogance to not spread the word sufficiently, then their deaths were on his head.

Then the storm came. And it was bad. Just as bad as God had said it would be. Except in the land of Goshen. In another display of His power, God made sure that no hail fell where His people lived. And yet, as bad as this plague was, this seems to be another place where the hyperbolic description of the devastation of the plague may have been greater than what actually happened. We see an example of this in v. 27. During the plague, which was described as being so bad that anyone and anything that was outside was killed or destroyed, Pharaoh somehow sent a messenger to Moses to tell him and Aaron to come to the palace so they could talk things about, which they did. If the hail was as bad as originally described, unless God created a sort of umbrella around them (which He could have done, of course), they couldn’t have safely done this.

It is often difficult to discern hyperbolic language to make a point from literal descriptions when we are reading in the Old Testament, especially in the context of a narrative. We have to tread carefully as we go, recognizing as we read that ancient stories like these were not told the way we tell our stories today. They often blended fact and intentional exaggeration together in a way that made the stories more exciting, but which no one at the time understood to take away from their fundamental truthfulness. This does not put them in the category of our modern tall tales. It leaves them in the category of ancient historical narratives.

While the hailstorm may not have been quite as devastating as Moses makes it sound, it does seem to have done the truck. Pharaoh finally relents (or repents – it’s the same word in Hebrew) and tells Moses that he will finally and indeed let the people go without any restrictions. So, Moses intercedes and tells God to let up. What is fascinating here is that God does it even though He knows it is not going to stick. Moses should have known this as well since God had already told him in the beginning that it would take the death of Pharaoh’s firstborn son before he would really let the people go. And, Moses does appear to know this. From vv. 29-30: “Moses said to him, ‘When I have left the city, I will spread out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know the earth belongs to the Lord. But as for you and your officials, I know that you still do not fear the Lord God.'” Pharaoh just wants the storm to stop and is willing to say whatever he thinks it will take to make that happen.

That, of course, just raises a hard question to answer: Why would Pharaoh and his officials continue in their refusal to believe at this point? What rational reason would they have to deny God’s power and authority and refuse to honor His command to let the people go? Because this was a battle of wills. They were convinced in their hearts and minds that they were sovereign and not God. When we convince ourselves we are God and God is not, we can be remarkably hard to shake from that perch. In that situation, evidence – even really compelling evidence – won’t make a difference. Our position isn’t held based on any amount of evidence. It is purely a position of will. To put that another way, when our hearts became sufficiently hardened, there’s nothing anyone can do to soften them save God Himself acting as only He can. And that usually takes something pretty dramatic on His part.

Sometimes, though, not even God can get through. This doesn’t make us more powerful than Him, though, it makes Him more gentle than we. At any point, He could reveal Himself in the full glory of His power and might leaving us with no choice but to acknowledge Him. There is a time coming when He will do that, but until that point arrives, He wants us to be able to love Him freely. Because of that, He is gentle with us even in our resistance and rebellion. In the end, though, He will be acknowledged as God. Pharaoh and his court ultimately couldn’t avoid that conclusion even though they hated the fact. Unfortunately, acknowledging Him as the one true God and accepting Him as our God are not the same thing.

In the end, Pharaoh’s heart was unmoved. It was hard. He went back on his word and did not let God’s people go. This was tragic for Israel and for Egypt. Yet it was all playing out just as God had said that it would. We are left here with another, even more powerful picture of God’s sovereignty and graciousness, His might and restraint, His truth and grace. In the end, everyone will indeed bow down before Him because He is indeed God. For some that will be with joy and gladness. For others it will be with fury and frustration. Either way, He will be known as God.