PLAGUES & PANDEMICS

PLAGUES & PANDEMICS

(Exodus 7:14-11:9)

Moses went to Pharoah,

And said, “Let my people go.”

Pharoah refused and so God sent,

Ten different kinds of woe.

First, water was turned to blood;

The Nile became a red river.

For Egypt worshiped water gods,

Instead of the true Life Giver.

Next came the plague of frogs,

On a frog-goddess Egypt relied.

Since frogs were a sign of fertility,

God made sure they multiplied.

Third came the plague of gnats,

The first not repeated by a magician.

Since none was able to mimic it,

 God’s finger got recognition.

The fourth plague inflicted was flies,

The fly-god and ours were compared.

All of Egypt was afflicted,

But the Israelite people were spared.

The death of livestock was the fifth plague,

They could truly say “Where’s the beef?”

The people were made vegetarians,

Which still didn’t cause enough grief.

Painful boils was the sixth plague;

Even the magicians had boils.

The goddess of epidemics and the gods of healing,

Couldn’t help the lowly or the royals.

The seventh plague was hail,

Not weather they would commonly find.

Pharoah confessed his sin with this plague,

But he later changed his mind.

When God sent a plague of locusts,

Pharoah tried to negotiate.

His offer was rejected and once again,

He repented but then would negate.

Plague number nine was darkness.

Sent to scare the stubborn monarch.

God’s people had light in Goshen,

But Egypt was left in the dark.

The tenth and worst of the plagues,

Was the death of each firstborn son.

This is the plague that broke Pharoah down,

For Pharoah himself lost one.

Most of the plagues had to do with gods;

The true God made fools of them.

He displayed His power over all their gods,

And left Egypt in total mayhem.

Pharoah finally relented.

And his people begged them to go.

They gave the Jews anything they desired;

They were tired of suffering woe.

‘Tho Pharoah saw punishing miracles,

Which he thought that he could outsmart,

God had given him over,

To the hardness of his heart.

Becky Wall

Note: Each plague was based on the worship of a god which made the one true God very angry. We still have gods today but in America they are not statues; they are things we worship: money, sports, games, movies, music, booze, drugs, etc.