“…if you will not let My people go, indeed I will send swarms of flies on you…all the livestock of Egypt died, but not one of the livestock of the children of Israel died…and it became a boil breaking forth with blisters upon man and beast…”

— Exodus 8:21, 9:6, 10

In the ten plagues, the Lord God did not just judge the Egyptians for their 430 year enslavement of the Hebrews, He also judged their false gods, as we have seen.

The fourth plague involved the flies. The Hebrew word means swarms. Scholars say they probably were not flies, but were were the beetles common to that area, called the scarabaeus from which we get the word scarab, which is a black beetle. I am sure after they had a couple hundred thousand of those in every home in Egypt they were not too thrilled with the god of Scarabaeus.

The fifth plague was a disease of cattle. The god Apis was the sacred bull. You’ve seen many Egyptian figures of a man with the head of a bull that they worshiped.

And sixth, there was the god Typhon. This was when the dust caused the breaking forth of boils and blisters. Typhon was a magical genie that was worshiped in ancient Egypt. Here was a god who was connected with the magicians, who were the priests of the Egyptian religion. We find here that the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all of Egypt. So their power was broken.

God alone is to be worshiped.

Lord of all, today we see people turning to false gods and playing with spiritual forces they know nothing about. Free us from Beelzebub, “The Lord of the flies.” Thank You for calling us out of darkness and into Your marvelous light…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH ALONE,
CAN WE STAND AGAINST EVIL.