Plagues

Why does God send plagues on Egypt? To punish them? To demonstrate his power? To whom?

At least partly, I guess that he wanted to show the Israelites how powerful he is. It happens that this morning, courtesy of Scripture Union's Encounter with God, I read from the book of Numbers how the Israelites, reacting to the reports brought back from the so-called Promised Land, were frightened, too afraid to take possession. I don't know where I would have stood in that debate, but you would have thought that people who had watched the frogs, the gnats, the flies, the thunder, and the hail, would have had greater confidence. What God did to the Egyptians, he could have done again to the Amalekhites, and others. Or did they sense that this time God was expecting them to do the job themselves?