“And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast.”
But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not. Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, the magicians said to Pharaoh: this is the finger of God. The magicians' confession is one of the most significant moments in the plague narrative. They have matched blood and frogs; they cannot match gnats. The arts that produced imitation plagues hit their limit at the third sign, and the practitioners of Egypt's highest religious and magical expertise acknowledge: this is the finger of God. The finger of God appears again in Exodus 31:18 when the tablets are described as written by the finger of God, and in Luke 11:20 when Jesus says if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Egypt's own specialists recognized the divine signature. Pharaoh refused their testimony.
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