You've probably heard of the ten plagues of Egypt.
But what were they?
Could they have really happened?
And what's the deal with all the frogs?
Keep watching to find out more.
The traditional account of the plagues of Egypt is told in the Old Testament in the
book of Exodus.
The story begins with the Israelites migrating to Egypt due to widespread famine.
The Israelites originally prospered, but were soon enslaved by the Egyptians — and that's
when Moses entered the story.
Moses was commanded by God to act as his prophet and free the Israelites.
He demanded the release of the enslaved Israelites with his companion Aaron, who acted as Moses'
speaker.
"Who are you to make their lives bitter in hard bondage?
Men shall be ruled by law, not by the will of other men!"
As predicted, the pharaoh refused, and so God inflicted 10 plagues upon Egypt — forcing
him to relinquish the Israelites and allow them to escape from Egypt.
Almost all reported proof of the Hebrew Exodus has been highly speculative, and the chances
are that it did not happen as a dramatic historical event.
However, it is likely that a small group of people in Egypt migrated to Canaan, the region
located on the far eastern reaches of the Mediterranean.
The paper Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective suggests that there was probably
some form of Exodus forming a historic kernel of truth, but it didn't happen as written
in the Old Testament.
There is also fierce debate as to when it occurred, with most scholars saying either
the 13th century or 15th century B.C.
Of course, this hasn't prevented scholars from attempting to demonstrate how the plagues
themselves could have occurred.
Moses let loose the first plague after Aaron struck his rod in the Nile, which caused its
waters — and those waters tied to it — to turn to blood.
This water soon grew putrid, becoming undrinkable and killing off all the fish.
The common consensus is that, instead of literally turning to blood, the Nile may have been fouled
by some other substance.
Some scholars have speculated that this condition may have been red tide.
This occurs when water conditions allow red algae to proliferate in such great numbers
that it can turn the color of water crimson.
It is also toxic to some fish and shellfish.
This phenomenon has become well known in recent years, with one large outbreak occurring on
both coasts of Florida in 2018.
"You get exposed to the toxin produced by the red tide, you know right away.
You breathe it in, it's like a tear gas."
Another theory has to do with the fallout from a volcanic eruption on the Aegean island
of Santorini around the year 1600 B.C.
Some have suggested that volcanic dust — which includes the red mineral cinnabar — may
have caused this Biblical disaster.
The second plague, in a word, was frogs.
And lots of them.
As quoted from Exodus 8:
"And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house,
and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon
thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading troughs."
So what's the deal with this one?
Frogs seem more of an irritant than a plague, after all.
While it is never clearly explained why frogs could be so damaging, those who push the red-tide
theory of the first plague have suggested that frogs could have rampantly bred in a
river devoid of fish.
However, they would have been driven out of the water by a lack of oxygen.
Meanwhile, if the volcano theory holds weight and the water was fouled by ash, it would
have been so acidic that it would have driven the frogs out of the water.
There have also been historical instances of mass movement of frogs, including several
occurrences of a phenomenon in which frogs rain down from the sky.
"Mulder, toads just fell from the sky."
"Guess their parachutes didn't open."
In any case, the pharaoh temporarily agreed to release the Israelites — after the frogs
were killed by God, however, the pharaoh went back on his word, setting the third plague
into motion.
The third plague is somewhat nebulous.
Exodus 8 tells how Aaron, at the behest of Moses, struck the ground with his rod, which
turned the dust to lice.
In its analysis of the plagues, the paper Origin of the Old Testament Plagues points
out that the Hebrew word kinim has usually been translated to mean gnats, mosquitoes,
or lice.
Basically, small biting insects.
One theory posits that atmospheric warming may have created warmer, swamp-like conditions
in which these creatures could have thrived.
It's also true that the dead frogs from the end of the second plague would have led to
an increase in insect activity.
These may have been culicoides, small biting insects that lay their eggs in the dust, and
whose larvae feast on corpses, such as dead frogs.
The pharaoh, of course, still didn't get the hint… and so the plagues were intensified.
The exact nature of the fourth plague is even murkier than the third.
The King James version of Exodus translates it as a plague of flies.
However, other translations involve wild animals instead.
The Hebrew term used in the Old Testament, arov, means "mixture," so it has been hard
to pinpoint exactly what this plague was.
The Jewish text known as the Haggadah has often been decorated with fierce beasts to
depict the fourth plague, but there has been significant debate about whether the term
"arov" means a mixture of wild animals or a mixture of insects.
It is perhaps more likely that this plague was indeed made up of insects of some kind
since it is hard to imagine lions, tigers, and wolves invading the pharaoh's land en
masse.
If the fourth plague is interpreted as flies, it fits more tightly with the speculative
framework of the Ten Plagues of Egypt being linked to scientific climate change.
Specifically, biting flies would have become abundant in warmer weather.
As the Bible tells it, the pharaoh agreed to let the Israelites go to the wilderness
to pray for three days if Moses ended the plague.
But he went back on his word once more.
The fifth plague was an infectious disease that killed the livestock of the Egyptians
— but spared that of the Israelites.
The King James version of the Bible reads:
"Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses,
upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a
very grievous murrain."
It's easy to see how a plague like this could have happened.
For example, rinderpest was an infectious disease that afflicted cattle for centuries.
"If you could imagine that you are an owner of a hundred animals, a milking herd.
By the end of the week, you would have zero."
African horse sickness and Bluetongue are two diseases that afflict only hooved animals,
and they are spread by culicoides — meaning these illnesses could easily have been spread
by the insects found in earlier plagues.
Just why this sickness spared all the Hebrew livestock is not easily explained, though
one theory is that their livestock may have been situated well away from the insects that
acted as a vector for the disease.
For the sixth plague, God got personal.
As quoted from Exodus 9:
"And the Lord said unto Moses and unto Aaron, 'Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace,
and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh.
And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking
forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.'"
In trying to figure out a potential cause of this plague, Origin of the Old Testament
Plagues links causality from the insect pests of the fourth and fifth plague, speculating
that fly larvae could have burrowed into the skin of animals and humans in order to cause
such horrid swelling.
The paper's researchers felt that the Tumbu fly larvae could be responsible for this since
these grubs have been known to emerge from human legs and buttocks.
This would explain why the pharaoh's magicians could not even stand because of the effects
of the boils.
The paper Environmental and Medical Aspects Related to the Sixth Plague of Egypt takes
a different tack, proposing that the boils were the result of environmental air pollution
caused by a volcanic eruption.
Regardless of the cause, the pharaoh did not seem to be too bothered by the boils — so
he did not free the Israelites.
The seventh plague consisted of fiery hail storms.
The authors of Origin of the Old Testament Plagues propose that this was a result of
an El Niño-Southern Oscillation superstorm.
Another explanation goes back to the theory of a volcanic explosion in Santorini.
Such a volcanic eruption may have disrupted weather patterns, perhaps causing severe storms.
This seems to be the only plausible kind of scientific explanation for a storm of such
intensity.
According to tradition, though, the result was disastrous.
Entire fields of crops were destroyed and there was a serious threat of famine.
As the story goes, the pharaoh repented, but only temporarily.
It is also notable that biblical scholars found that the seventh plague is treated differently
by the text than the other plagues, in that there is more text devoted to this plague
than any throughout the Hebrew Bible.
This may be because of the significance of the number seven in ancient Middle Eastern
religions.
When Moses and Aaron returned to the pharaoh, they issued a new threat.
As quoted in Exodus 10:
"And [locusts] shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the
earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you
from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field..."
Some have speculated that the moist and humid conditions caused by the earlier plagues were
the ideal conditions for locusts to thrive.
Some scientists who support the volcanic explosion theory suggest that the fallout from ash caused
the weather anomalies.
This would have caused the higher precipitation and humidity.
That kind of environment is a prime opportunity for locusts to thrive.
In the Bible, the pharaoh again repented and begged Moses to get rid of the locusts, which
were dispersed by a mighty divine wind.
And then, the pattern repeated and the pharaoh once again betrayed the Israelites.
"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal."
By now, it was clear that the Egyptian pharaoh wasn't getting the hint.
So this time God wanted to do something entirely unnatural.
Exodus 10 recounts:
"And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be
darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt."
This darkness lasted for three days, forcing all the Egyptians to stay at home except the
Israelites, who had lights within their own houses.
One explanation for this plague suggests that a south or southwest wind may have blown an
intense sandstorm into Egypt, thus darkening it with very fine particulates.
A potential volcanic explosion could also have caused prolonged darkness.
Alternatively, the ninth plague could have been a solar eclipse, although there is no
recorded solar eclipse that has lasted for three days.
"You have conquered, Moses.
The foot of a slave is on the neck of Egypt."
The tenth plague was the selective killing of all Egyptian firstborn sons and cattle.
To prevent the Israelites from being slain, God told them to smear lamb's blood upon their
doorways so it would pass over them — and thus the holiday of Passover was born.
This plague is the hardest one for experts to offer rational explanations for.
Archaeologists have long suggested that a fungal wheat infestation might have caused
the deaths of babies and livestock.
But this doesn't really explain the selective nature of the tenth plague.
Another possible explanation is offered in Origin of the Old Testament Plagues, which
suggests that the water puddles and vegetation growth from the seventh plague would have
caused a proliferation of mosquitoes, which attracted birds, and the birds passed on deadly
diseases to the ancient Egyptians.
This explanation strains credulity for the same reason.
Though it offers some idea of why vulnerable young children and animals may have died,
it does not satisfactorily explain why only the Egyptians were killed.
Either way, as religious tradition holds, this plague did the trick, and the Hebrews
were freed from slavery.
The tenth plague shows better than any other that these scientific explanations are speculative
at best, but that is arguably beside the point.
The Ten Plagues of Egypt are a powerful spiritual statement, and the theme of God as a liberator
holds a powerful grip on the spirit and imagination.
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