V1 God’s message doesn’t change, there is no compromise in the Lord. He’s not like us. We tend settle for lesser when things don’t go our way, God won’t settle. God’s still wants to be worshiped. TO be served.  (goals in life match this?)

V2 If you refuse, always a choice with God, He is always the best choice.  Plague, means to smite or smote or to give a blow, nagaph.  Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor.  Our bad choices effect others.

V3 teem with frogs, swarm, bedroom and bed implies no personal space, they will sleep with you, no escaping these things. All people, officials, etc. Ovens implies you might eat these little buggers by accident. Your food will be tainted by them.  They will get on you all the time. This will be very annoying.

This is a miracle epic proportions, this is not natural behavior for any frogs.  They seek dark wet cool spaces, not warm ovens or comfortable homes. Nothing natural about this.  Note: the Nile blood water didn’t drive them out, the water had swarms of them.  Frogs healthy water to reproduce.  We don’t know how much time went by between this and the blood water. The two are unrelated miracles. Not a natural cause from bacteria, this happened at God’s timing and command.  

V5-6 Release of frogs are at God’s timing, not by natural causes.  Funny plague because this goes after the false goddess Heket.  Sacred cow, now think sacred frog.  They are revered so no one kills them.  Even when they become obnoxious.   Almost like God saying, you want to worship frogs, have at it. God gives us over to our idols. 

V7 Magicians are not doing the exact same thing, nothing super natural about what they are doing. It’s a game of illusion and tricks. The better trick would be to make them go away. They actually add to the problem instead.

V8 Pharaoh summons, this is a big deal, Moses has gone to Pharaoh up to this point, now Pharaoh looks weak going to Moses for help.  Pharaoh no longer who is the Lord, HE acknowledges God exists, yet doesn’t put his own faith in him, only asked a true believer. Why does an unbeliever ask a believer to pray?  This happens all the time.  They ought to believe themselves, yet they ask the believer to perform the act of prayer.  If God exist, he won’t listen to me maybe I’m too far gone, not true? Or I’m afraid he will answer me and I will need to change my life? Or I want a believer to pray and if nothing happens I can rub in their face? His plea is not genuine regardless. 

Pattern: People cry out to God, People cry out to Pharaoh, Moses cries out to God, now Pharaoh cries out to Moses.

V9 Leaves Pharaoh the honor of when.  Maybe out of respect, since he is already showing himself humble, Moses gives some dignity back to Pharaoh in front of others.  Maybe to show there is no one like God.  He extends this mercy to Pharaoh, he is given an active role to play to remind him that he always has a choice in doing the right thing all along. Pharaoh appears humbled, but he is not.   Notice Moses reminds him of how bad the frogs are in his reply, note also he says they will go back to behaving like normal frogs and stay to the waters as the true God made them.

I’m very thankful I’ve never made a prayer request about frogs in my life.

V10 tomorrow? Seems odd that you’d want to sleep with the frogs one more night? Why not now?  (1) Pharaoh needed time to tell others and somehow take credit for the frogs leaving? (2) If frogs died that moment or day he could say it wasn’t the Hebrew God, holding out hope in his own gods? (3) He dislikes and likes the frogs and needs time to say goodbye, not likely?

Are you putting God’s mercy off in your life for some reason? Are you still sleeping with the consequences of sin rather than worshiping the Lord?

V11 You will know there is no one like the Lord.  This battle is about God revealing himself to the king and all the people of the land.  There should be no question of who is the real God. Yet people will cling to their false gods and sin. 

V12 Cried out, prayed that the Lord would show himself true.  The most powerful people are not the government or it’s king, it is those who pray.  This is still true.  No matter who is in office the most powerful people on the planet are those that pray. 

V13 this is supernatural for all the frogs to suddenly die.  Parley, the king should have asked the frogs to go back to the Nile instead they died in place. He should have negotiated terms better.  The Lord does what the believer asks, this is powerful.

V14 heaps indicates the epic size and quantity of frogs.  They are small and takes a ton to make heaping piles. The land again stinks for 2nd time.  The people thought they stink to Pharaoh, now Pharaoh stinks to God.

V15 Liar, liar, pants on fire.  Why is that we will make deals with God and then not hold up our end of the bargain.  Anytime we have relief we go back to our sinful ways and stubborn hearts. The Pharaoh should have gone with the people to worship also at this point.  No surprise that the king doesn’t listen because the Lord saw this coming and told Moses. Perhaps he is starting to trust God’s plan. All of the plan and not just the parts he likes. 

V16-17 this time without going to Pharaoh, another plague comes.  Dust to gnats, God can do more from the dust then we could imagine.  Man from dust, Satan curse to move on dust a reminder of how man was elevated and how he was not. Man when he dies he returns to dust.  Dust is never a pleasant term, it’s the lowest form of creation, yet God can take something out of the lowest and make it do something great for His glory.

Not that God needed the dust, He could have spoke them into existence, think about how much dust is in Egypt or on the planet.  He had a lot of raw material to work with. Are we raw material ready to be used by God? I’m just dust ready to take action for God’s glory.  

V18a Hard to train a gnat.  The illusionist can’t reproduce this one.

V18b Even the magicians are admitting this is the finger of God.  Not the hand.  Only took a finger to do this, indicates the respect they have for the Lord. No surprise even this is not enough to move Pharaoh’s heart.  Gnats would have been particularly awful for Egyptian culture who shaved and had lots of exposed skin for bighting.  God’s dust is hard at work, yet the king doesn’t believe, while the magicians might be coming around.  WE are God’s dust at work so that others might believe that Jesus saved them.

V20 the cycle repeats, Moses goes to Pharaoh at the river.  This time flies,

V22 we don’t know if this distinction was only for the flies or other plagues too.  This is supernatural to make a no fly zone.

V23-24 frogs gone tomorrow, flies here tomorrow, showing God’s reaction to tomorrow.  He has time to think about it.  Crisis is coming, but the choice to avoid it is still within Pharaoh’s power, he won’t exercise that choice. We often exercise the wrong choice despite the warnings.

V25 Pharaoh summons again. Sacrifice here, sounds reasonable, why not, worship could be seen by the Egyptians. 

V26 no compromise in God. You don’t worship where sin is taking place.  Set apart, God is into holiness and being set apart from all others. Not a God, the God. Not to be compared with others, not to just be in the mix with their false gods. Moses shifts the blame to the Egypt as the reason, not for their sinful false god worship, rather they won’t like our worship.  Sinners don’t like to be shown that sin costs something.  It is detestable because shed blood is hard to watch.  If we keep our eyes on the shed blood of Jesus we might not sin.  The shed blood of Christ is offensive to the unbelieving sinner.

V27 3 day separation is required.  3 days is what separates a believer from an unbeliever then and still is today.  Jesus died and rose on the 3rd day and that truth is a separating distinction in belief.  They go 3 days because God commanded it, we worship a God that died and rose again in 3 days because God commanded it.  Can you believe in the 3 in 1 God of the universe who rose again on the 3rd day? 3 days God changed the world.