Ten Plagues on Egypt

Introduction

I suspect that most people who read Exodus 5 – 12 never think about how long these events would have taken or how much time elapsed between God's first appearance to Moses and his return to Mount Sinai.  For liberal scholars this is no problem, because they uniformly deny that any of these events ever really took place.  For the average non-scholar, temporal perceptions have likely been colored by the four or five cinema adaptations that have been made of the Exodus story over the past 80 years.  In both the Exodus narrative and the cinema adaptations, the sequence of events presented is something like this:

·    Moses and Aaron appear in Pharaoh's court and demand that he let the Israelites go.  Pharaoh refuses, and then Moses pronounces a coming plague as judgment on Egypt.

·      The plague occurs as pronounced.  Pharaoh relents and summons Moses.

·      Moses reappears in Pharaoh's court and promises to stop the current plague.

·     Moses again demands that Pharaoh let the Israelites go, and Pharaoh conditionally acquiesces.

·      When Pharaoh changes his mind, the pattern repeats.

Nowhere in the text of Exodus is there any obvious indication of how long any of these steps in the process took or the duration from beginning to end.  In contrast, the travel narratives are filled with indications of how long it took the Israelites to get from place to place throughout their wanderings.  It seems to me that if anything like the events described in Exodus really took place, the preserved text is just a summary that omits a considerable amount of extraneous detail.  The purpose of the narrative was to describe how the 70 individuals who came to Egypt ultimately left, some 2 million strong, to become the covenanted people of YHWH.

Temporal Indications in Exodus

I mentioned that there were no indications in the text concerning how long the events of the plagues took from beginning to end, but it does have a few temporal notices.  These are summarized here.

·      Ex 1:5 and 1:7 indicate that the people of Israel consisted of 70 individuals when they first arrived, and they became a numerous people – up to 2 million at the time of their departure – but there is no indication as to how long this transformation required.

·      Ex 1:11 indicated that Pharaoh decided to enslave the Israelites.  Again there is no indication how long the Israelites had been in Egypt at the time that they were enslaved nor how long their enslavement lasted from beginning to end.

·      Exodus 2 and 3 describe Moses' birth and early life.  He was raised as a prince of Egypt, but as a man he visited his people and murdered an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite.  He fled from Egypt and settled in Midian, where he met Jethro and married his eldest daughter.  There is no temporal note in the Hebrew text in any of this narrative, but Acts 7:23 states that Moses was 40 at the time he fled from Egypt.  Additionally, Ex 2:23 indicates that the Pharaoh from whom Moses had fled died 'after many days', but the actual duration is not stated.  

·   Moses became a shepherd for Jethro's flock.  While so occupied, YHWH called Moses and commanded to return to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh let the Israelites go.  According to Ex 7:7 Moses was 80 when he confronted Pharaoh.

·      The next specific temporal reference is in Ex 12:1-6 – the month of Aviv, spring.  The first Pesach was celebrated on the 14^th day of Aviv (April-May), and the Israelites were expelled from Egypt the very next day.  All other temporal references are based on the day of their departure.

According to the text, Moses was 80 when he confronted Pharaoh and 120 when he died, but there is no obvious indication concerning how long the 10 plagues took before the Israelites were expelled from Egypt.

The Plagues

The first time that Moses confronted Pharaoh (Ex 5:1-9), he merely demanded that the people be allowed to go out and celebrate a feast to YHWH.  Pharaoh responded by making the work imposed on the Israelites harder.  During the second confrontation Moses performed the two signs that YHWH had given him to persuade the Israelites, but Pharaoh was not impressed.  That is when the judgmental plagues began:

·      First plague – Nile turns to blood (Ex 7:14-25).  Evidently, this plague lasted seven days (Ex 7:25).

·      Second plague – Frogs (Ex 8:1-15).  No duration is indicated.

·      Third plague – Gnats/lice (Ex 8:16-19).  No duration is indicated.

·      Fourth plague – Swarms of insects (Ex 8:20-32).  The land of Goshen was excluded from this and the next five plagues, but no duration is indicated.

·      Fifth plague – Animal pestilence (Ex 9:1-7).  The text states that all the livestock of Egypt died (וימת כל מקנה מצרים), but no duration is indicated.  (Note: the expression כל מקנה can mean 'every kind of livestock,' because the people still had livestock before the start of the seventh plague.)

·      Sixth plague – Boils (Ex 9:8-12).  No duration is indicated.

·      Seventh plague – Hail and fire (Ex 9:22-35).  Anything that was exposed (human, livestock, plant, tree) was destroyed.  Specifically, the barley and flax were both destroyed, but the wheat and spelt were not.

·      Eighth plague – Locusts (Ex 10:1-20).  No duration is indicated, but all the fruit trees and anything not destroyed by the hail was eaten.  This implies that there was sufficient time for any plant not actually killed by they hail to grow back.

·      Ninth plague – Darkness (Ex 10:21-29).  The duration is indicated as 3 days.

·    Tenth plague – Death of the first born males (Ex 12:12, 23).  This plague occurred over a single night, and every house that had blood applied to the door posts and lintel was excluded.

Of these events, the seventh plague can be dated approximately based on the Egyptian agricultural cycle, and the tenth plague occurred over night of the 14^th day of Aviv.

Egyptian Agricultural Cycle

The Egyptian agricultural cycle up until modern times was based on the yearly inundation of the Nile.  Essentially all of the great rivers of the Near East flooded in spring time due to snow melt or winter rains, but the Nile flooded in midsummer – starting about August 15 by modern reckoning.  The reason for this was unknown to the ancient Egyptians – indeed, the actual sources of the Nile were unknown until about 1870.  At any rate the ancient Egyptians developed what is now called basin irrigation.  When the Nile flooded, the flood waters were captured in basins and then drained into farmer's fields.  Water was allowed to stand in the field until the soil was saturated, and then it was drained into a lower field or another basin.  After field irrigation was done, the agricultural cycle lasted 3 to 4 months.  Large scale farming was not possible at any other time.

Probable Duration of Plagues

The text describing the seventh plague specifically mentions barley, flax, wheat, and spelt.  For barley, the growth period from planting to harvest is from 60 to 90 days; for wheat it is from 140 to 170 days.  (These figures are for modern varieties, but the ancient varieties would be similar.)  The text states that the barley was in the head, or about 45 days after planting.  Thus, the plague of hail occurred in late October or early November, and the last plague occurred over night starting on the 14^th of Aviv – March or April of the following year.  This means that the seventh plague and the tenth plague were separated by 5 or 6 months.  Consequently, the total duration from first confrontation with Pharaoh to the start of the actual exodus could have been as much as 10 months.

Why So Long?

Just reading the text as it is preserved in Exodus, it is easy to conclude that the first six plagues could have taken up no more than three or four weeks.  This perception, however, does not take into account geographic and physical realities.

·      Moses was pasturing Jethro's flock near Mt. Horeb when he first saw the manifestation of YHWH.  This location may or may not correspond to the today's traditionally recognized Sinai, but all this area is characterized by very rugged terrain.

·    After meeting with YHWH, Moses returned with the flock to Jethro's camp in Midian (location unknown).  Travel time could easily have been several weeks.

·      Moses then returned to Egypt with his wife, children, and a mule.  He first went to Goshen, the primary area where the Israelites dwelt.  Travel time was at least one or two months.  He spent some amount of time with the Israelites convincing them that YHWH had actually appeared to him.

·      When Moses confronted Pharaoh, he had to travel from Goshen to Pharaoh's court.  Goshen is in the Nile delta in the extreme north of Egypt, and Pharaoh's court would have been in Thebes or possibly Memphis (about 70 miles).  Likely travel time could have been 1 to 2 weeks each way.

So What?

It is easy to forget that 3000 years ago, everything moved at foot pace.  The time delay between Moses' first encounter with YHWH and his initial meeting with the Israelites could easily have been 4 or 5 months.  He experienced direct revelation from YHWH prior to each confrontation with Pharaoh, but the average Israelite did not.  They may have heard some reports, but they had no direct experience of the plagues after the first three until the last plague.  Once the actual exodus started, the people all saw the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire, and all experienced deliverance during their travels, but none of them except Moses had any direct interaction with YHWH until they reached Sinai.  When YHWH pronounced the ten words at Sinai, all the people heard him, and they all had the same reaction – they were terrified.  This goes a long way to explain the inconsistent responses of the common Israelite throughout the course of the exodus.  This pattern continued throughout the history of ancient Israel.  The average Israelite knew the traditions of their history and revered YHWH, but few had direct personal interaction with their God.  This is the difference that was promised in the new covenant  as expressed in Jeremiah 31:31 ff – they shall all know me from the greatest to the least.