The Cancellation and Voiding of Egyptian Gods

We have lived in a cancel culture for the better part of a decade. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. There was a divine cancellation of a culture approximately 3000 years ago and God was the one doing the cancelling. It occurred during the 10 plagues of Egypt.

The ten plagues of God through Moses against Pharaoh were not just haphazardly selected to be an annoyance to Pharaoh and the pagan Egyptians. These were carefully and purposefully chosen to undermine and discredit Egyptian belief systems. They were in direct opposition to the Egyptians gods and their culture. They were selected by God to demonstrate God's superiority over every aspect of Egyptian religion and life, a religion consisting of the worship of false gods and reverence for creatures rather than the Creator. To start, the Egyptians worshipped serpents, so God changed Aaron's rod into a serpent that swallowed the serpents produced by the Egyptian priests (Exodus 7:1-13). This should’ve been a menacing foreshadowing, but it was clear Pharaoh was hardheaded and hardhearted.

Plague No. 1: The Egyptians worshipped the Nile River as a source of life, so the first plague God turned the waters of the Nile into blood (Exodus 7:14-25). The lifeblood of the desert was turned to unusable blood.

Plague No. 2: The Egyptians held their magicians in great esteem. As the second plague God caused frogs to come up out of the Nile and infest the land, and He confounded the magicians who were unable to undo the plague (Exodus 8:1-15).

Plague No. 3: The Egyptians trusted their priests to officiate in the temples on their behalf, but the priests were not allowed to minister before the gods in an impure, diseased, or blemished condition. As the third plague God caused the dust of the earth to form into lice which infested every man and beast (Exodus 8:16-19). The lice-infested priests were unable to officiate in the temples. The Egyptian system of worship had to come to an screeching halt.

Plague No. 4: The Egyptians worshipped animals, particularly livestock, so as the fourth plague God caused the land to be corrupted by a swarm of flies (Exodus 8:20-32). The flies torment of the livestock was an object lesson to the Egyptians, that they might see how helpless these livestock were before flies sent by the true God.

Plague No. 5: The fifth plague, like the fourth, was aimed at animal worship, causing a terrible disease to fall upon the livestock, killing them by the thousands (Exodus 9:1-7). One might think this would cause the Egyptians to reconsider their worship of animals as gods, as they obviously could not stand before the God of Israel.

Plague No. 6: The Egyptians also believed in an evil god called Typho, and they tried to appease his wrath by burning human sacrifices. Faced with the previous plagues, the Egyptians naturally tried to appease Typho by burning human sacrifices, but as the sixth plague the ash from these sacrifices caused boils to break out upon the Egyptians. Thereby turning the offering to their false gods into the bane of their existence. (Exodus 9:8-12) This of course was demonstrating once again the utter futility of Egyptian religion.

Plague No. 7: Next God turned to the vegetable kingdom, for the Egyptians believed in and worshipped tree-gods and held other plants in superstitious veneration. As the seventh plague, God caused a severe storm with lightning, thunder, hail, and rain, and "The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke every tree of the field." (Exodus 9:22-35, esp. 25). The Egyptian pantheon of creature-worship was devastated. Many of the livestock and people that hadn’t been caught up in the death caused by the fifth plague succumbed to the seventh. There just wasn’t going to be an avenue for escape.

Plague No. 8: One Egyptian god, Serapis, served to protect Egypt from locusts. As the eighth plague, God sent a swarm of locusts, so numerous that they filled the sky and the earth was darkened, and they consumed every vegetable that had not been destroyed by the hail of the 7th plague. (Exodus 10:1-20). By this point the Egyptians should have come to grips with the fact that the gods they worshipped were disintegrating before the onslaught of the true God.

Plague No. 9: If the previous plagues hadn’t already unsettled or completely freaked out the Egyptians the next plague was going to as it was affecting things from outside this world. One class of Egyptian deities still remained untouched-the sun, moon, and star gods. As the ninth plague, God caused three days of darkness so thick that the people could not see one another(Exodus 10:21-29). Dark as a grave for three days. Even the celestial and cosmic bodies had fallen in defeat before the God of Israel.

Stripped of the protection of all their gods, the Egyptians now stood alone…desolate and godforsaken.

Plague No. 10: Then came the final and definitive plague as the tenth plague, even their human hopes for the future, the first-born sons, were stricken and killed(Exodus 11:1-10). It is only at this point Pharaoh finally relented and ordered the Hebrews to depart from the land. The Egyptians and their gods had finally conceded defeat. The death of the firstborn by a selective culling is nearly unprecedented. They are defenseless in light of the previous nine plagues, and they have no defense against Destroyer other than repentance and acknowledgement of God for who he is in the Passover. When you have no other answers or all your other answers have been exhausted of destroyed you only have God to turn to.

The death of the firstborn in Egypt is a pivotal event in the biblical narrative, marking the climax of God's judgments against Egypt. This event is not only a historical moment of deliverance but also a prophetic picture of Jesus Christ, the ultimate Passover Lamb. Every detail, from the selection of the lamb to the unleavened bread, points to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Israelites' faith and obedience to God's command to sacrifice a lamb and mark their doorposts with its blood not only spared them from the plague but also established the Passover as a perpetual commemoration of God's deliverance. The final plague, the death of the firstborn, demonstrates God's sovereignty over Pharaoh and Egypt's gods, paralleling the Gospel message that Jesus' blood saves us from eternal death.