Exodus 7:15-19 - You have not obeyed

7:15,16

So Moses and Aaron are to go to Pharaoh, and they are to tell Pharaoh that he has not obeyed. Notice the phrasing here. Letting the people go was a command, not a suggestion nor a request from God. As we see our world adopt godless ways they are disobeying God. The fact that they may say they don’t believe in God has nothing to do with it, they are still acting in disobedience, and there will be consequences. This does raise some questions about the way we interact with the world. We usually do it by reasoned argument, and this seems a reasonable thing to do. But does there come a point where we need to realise that this is a power struggle, and to tell the world plainly that it is disobeying God and if it continues on this path there will be consequences?

7:17-19

So we now get the first plague. They would strike the Nile with the staff and it would turn to blood. What exactly happened? We cannot say for sure. There may have been a chemical change in the water. This is not impossible, but seems unlikely. Equally unlikely, in fact absolutely impossible, is the suggestion that the way the sun reflected off the water made it look like blood. This would not explain much of the account at all, namely the water stinking etc. God may have used a natural phenomena, such as red clay being washed into the water (there is a phenomenon called “red Nile”), or large numbers of red plankton or algae. Whatever the case, the water was changed and this had observable and real effects.

So Moses told Aaron to take the staff and stretch out his hand over all the waters of Egypt. The effect was to be very widespread.