On a family vacation a couple of years ago, we rented a house way out in the country that had zero air-conditioning (don’t ask me why). The owner explicitly told us not to keep the windows open, but in a desire to breathe, we opened all of them in the house.
When we all awoke the next morning, the house was covered in flies. Not just a few and not just in one room, either. The entire house was swarming with hundreds of flies. My sons and I spent probably a solid hour running from room to room, swatting anything with wings. To this day, we still call it “the fly house.”
And it was on that trip, in that house, that I understood the fourth plague.
All of the plagues on God’s list for Egypt sound horrible, but the fourth one in particular seems bad. Exodus 8:21 lists their presence as extensive: in the houses, on the ground, even on the people themselves.
As bad as this sounds, God makes plain that their presence will only be on the Egyptians. The Israelites—those who live in the land of Goshen—will be free of the flies.
This delineation is extremely important. If Moses were simply a weather forecaster or a zoologist, he could only say that flies would be present, not limit them to one place or the other. The fact they’ll only be in Egypt and on Egyptian bodies signifies God’s power over creation.
It also shows that God is a God who exercises dominion over everyone.
Idolatry is usually specific to a locale. One god may rule over the Babylonians, while the Ammonites may have a different god. Warfare in ancient times usually ended up looking like a “my god can beat up your god” contest.
That’s part of why the Old Testament stresses the supremacy of God so much. There is simply no equal amongst any of the other nations. They are all false, He is legitimate. They are imaginary, God is real.
The fact that Jehovah exercises power over Egypt shows the Egyptians that His power stretches beyond His own people and into their own backyard. It’s a lesson that, along with the other plagues on this list, should have been learned already.
But when the Egyptians look up and see that their Israelite neighbors have no flies on them at all, it’s a lesson that will quickly develop to bitterness. And when bitterness is present, the people will start to cry out to their leaders.
It’s actually a poetic reversal from the origin of the Exodus in the first place. In Exodus 3, Jehovah hears the cries of His people, and He responds to deliver them. In Egypt, Pharaoh most likely heard the cries of his people, but he’s powerless to do anything about it.
Except let the Israelites go, but as we know from the rest of the story, that won’t happen for another six plagues.
