Exodus 7-11

These chapters were brutal to get through, and you should thank me for summarizing it in the following manner.

• Moses: Let me people go!  Pharaoh: Nah, I think I'll keep them.
• To prove God's power, Egypt is subjected to a plague of:

1. Turning the river to blood and killing all the fish. The local magicians re-create the same plague.
2. Smiting the land with frogs. The magicians pull this stunt too. Note: It would have been more useful to make all the frogs disappear.
3. Afflicting every creature with lice. The magicians are powerless to keep up. Obviously only a real god can do this one!
4. Creating swarms of flies that completely destroy the land.
5. Killing all the Egyptian livestock.
6. Making boils appear on all men and livestock (which were killed one plague ago).
7. Raining forth a storm of hail and fire that kills everything that somehow survived previous plagues.
8. Covering the land with locusts that eat everything that's left.
9. Blanketing everything with darkness so dark you can feel it (ooh! scary!), and yet providing light for the Hebrew houses. Because that's how light works. You can totally partition it off between houses.
10. Sending God around Egypt at midnight to kill all firstborn sons of Egyptians and their slaves as well as the firstborn sons of all the livestock that no longer exist (see plagues 5, 7 and 8).

• Pharaoh, stunned by the severity of the plague, relents. OK, your people can go.
• An act of magic ends the plague.
• After a moment of reprieve, Pharaoh changes his mind. Actually God changes Pharaoh's mind for him by hardening his heart. Dick.
• ** Return to first list item above and read through the list again, selecting the next plague in the list. Lather, rinse, repeat. **

Each plague is very obviously nonsense, but let's pretend it's real and look at other elements of this story. God causes Pharaoh to change his mind. What is the point? Are we chess pieces or puppets? What about free will? And if the point is to prove he's the all powerful god, why not visibly appear to everyone instead of only in secret to Moses? Why don't the Egyptians who survive a given plague rise up and kill Pharaoh when they realize he's the a-hole who's extending this whole mess? And what is up with magicians who can recreate the first few plagues? Even if you buy the notion that God is behind all these other plagues, shouldn't the magicians be your clue this story might not be true?

This story needs to start sucking less. I'm getting fussy.