NOTES for Exo 8:1-32

Today's reading continues the description of how the Egyptian magicians competed with the God of Moses in the ability to perform miracles. Of course, here, as in every other case, God's miracle can be explained by natural causes, but such an explanation in itself does not in the least diminish the meaning of the miracle as an act of God. It is no accident that in the Hebrew text of the Bible a word that would more accurately be translated as "sign" is very often used to designate a miracle: God's miracle very often turns out to be precisely such a sign, and the fact that a natural phenomenon becomes that sign does not diminish the sign's significance at all, because in this case the point is not nature, but the One who stands behind it.

For the magicians, however, the situation looked different. Magic, in a worldview sense, is very close to science, including in the fact that the magician, like the materialist scientist, is inclined to explain everything that happens exclusively by natural causes. Of course, a magician's and a scientist's ideas about the boundaries and laws of nature can differ noticeably, but neither one will ever allow anything in his theories and concepts that goes beyond the natural framework. Methodologically this is, of course, correct, but as a worldview it often leads into a dead end.

And one of the most common worldview errors is the opinion that a natural explanation of one phenomenon or another in itself rules out any possibility that it has a spiritual component. The magicians, having managed to bring frogs up from the river (v. 7), apparently considered this fact sufficient proof that there was no miracle to speak of in this case.

Meanwhile, such an approach is a serious mistake: it confuses the spiritual and the natural. Nature always remains within the framework of causes and effects; causal chains fully determine and describe all natural processes. The spiritual begins where causes and effects recede into the background, and tasks and purposes come to the fore. Spiritual life begins where there are relationships, above all the relationship between a person and God, but also relationships between people. And a miracle becomes a miracle only in the context of the relationship between a person and God; otherwise it remains merely a natural phenomenon.

And even when reproducing the experiment proves impossible, as happened in the case of the gnats (v. 18), that impossibility in itself does not prove a miracle: for a materialist or a magician it becomes only evidence of an unsolved scientific problem at the present moment or of a phenomenon unexplained at this stage of scientific development. Pharaoh is even ready to turn to Moses for help if other means do not help (v. 28), but his heart does not become softer because of it (v. 32), for relationships with God are not established by compulsion.

A moment comes when even Pharaoh's closest circle begins to acknowledge the obvious. Even the magicians are now telling Pharaoh: this is the finger of God; these are not ordinary events of a natural kind. What is this: people's sudden insight? It may be. It happens that a person is completely sincerely convinced of his own rightness when in fact he is deeply mistaken.

Something else is possible too: the magicians simply understood that denying the obvious any longer was impossible. Every person, after all, is attached to his own worldview, his own concepts, his own understanding of life. For the Egyptian magicians to recognize the power of some prophet from the barbarians was far from simple. Indeed, it meant that his God was stronger than all the gods of Egypt, stronger than the magicians themselves and all their magic. In principle, the Egyptians had no doubt that God is stronger than any magician. Monotheism was not at all foreign to Egypt; among the priests there were quite a few believers in the One. They, however, considered monotheism not for the people, not for the masses. Even those who sincerely believed in the One were convinced that their people would not understand them, that the people needed traditional gods and traditional cults, and looked for nothing more serious or deeper. And in general, as people thought in the temples and at court, the people were mostly not interested in a serious spiritual life; whoever was interested would find the way, for the temples were not closed, and anyone who wished could always try there to find something greater than what satisfied the average Egyptian of those days. The court magicians were hardly an exception: most likely, they had no doubt that above all the gods stands the One.

It was another matter to recognize some unknown barbarian as a prophet of this One. For such recognition, a real revolution had to take place in the consciousness of an Egyptian priest or magician, since neither priests nor magicians ever took barbarians seriously. They were inclined to believe in the possibility of a genuine spiritual life among them even less than in a genuine spiritual life among the main mass of their own people. Now, however, they had to acknowledge the obvious: this strange prophet from the barbarians really knows the One and hears His voice. That is what they told Pharaoh. The decision was now his.

Egypt is defeated once again, and even the priests of the Egyptian gods acknowledge the victory of the God of Israel. For the author and readers of this story, the Lord is stronger than every circumstance, every enemy, even the stubborn pharaoh and the whole Egyptian power.

Here we touch the astonishing mystery of faith. Almost every one of us knows and remembers situations when God overcomes troubled circumstances, helps in distress, heals... But we also know cases when God did not heal, did not save, did not prevent disaster. Every day, around us, in the news and directly before us, we see how many misfortunes happen in the world, and against this background the victorious rout of Egypt by the "plagues" from God looks like a naive, childishly cruel little tale about a good and stern God who wipes out hordes of enemies with one stroke.

Will we have enough faith, like the biblical author, to see God's victory in the midst of this world, even before that triumph is shown to our eyes?