Quick, make a mental list of all the Egyptian plagues you can think of (without cheating).
Got it? Good.
Which ones did you think of? If you’re anything like me, your list probably consists of some of the “big” ones, such as boils, darkness, locusts, and death of the firstborn. Maybe hail even made an appearance on your roster.
No matter what you were able to remember, chances are they were all devastating. Boils are painful and darkness can be debilitating (just ask anyone that lives in Alaska during the winter), while the death of the firstborn arguably stands alone as the most horrific.
But what about the plague of frogs? That’s the third plague in the sequence in Exodus, and if we’re being honest, probably the least impactful in our eyes.
To be sure, the Text goes to great lengths to show us that frogs were an affliction. They covered everything, from their houses and bedrooms, and even into their ovens and kneading bowls (Exodus 8:3). When they died, they made the land “foul” (Exodus 8:14).
Let’s be honest, though. Apart from being a nuisance, that doesn’t really sound all that bad. The Egyptian magicians were able to “replicate” this sign, after all, and frogs were even seen as a sacred creature to most of the people of Egypt. Excavations have revealed frog statues and amulets, so if anything, maybe the locals even welcomed a plague like this.
To understand the frog plague, there’s a couple of things we should know. First, the reason that frogs were so popular in ancient Egypt was because they were seen as the gods (and goddesses) of fertility. They gave life, in other words, just as the Nile was seen as life itself.
Secondly, there were several frog gods in Egypt. According to Egyptian mythology, there were eight gods that represented the “creative forces” that brought life to our world. They’re called the “Ogdoad” and are represented by four pairs of creatures—one male and one female, each—and embodied by frogs and snakes.
Both of these sets of gods—the Ogdoad and the fertility gods—were very important to Egypt, and were most likely why frogs were used as the third plague. God is attacking not just the power of Egypt, but the life giving power that their gods claim to possess.
It’s fitting that when it’s time for the frogs to leave, they don’t just retreat into the water, but rather die in the middle of the land. The Egyptians are forced to pile up their symbols of life into giant stinking piles of frog corpses, creating a powerful image of Jehovah’s power over life and death.
And that image will only get more stark as time goes on.
