The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians. The magicians who last appeared in Exodus 8:18 — when they admitted the gnats were the finger of God — are now incapacitated by their own plague. They cannot stand before Moses. The ones who replicated the first two plagues, who confessed the third was divine, are now physically unable to be present at the sixth. The progressive exclusion of Egypt's religious specialists from the confrontation mirrors the progressive dismantling of Egypt's religious claims. By the time the tenth plague falls, there will be no Egyptian god that has not been exposed and no Egyptian religious functionary still able to oppose Moses. Isaiah 2:17–18 says the arrogance of man will be humbled, and the idols will totally disappear. The magicians' retreat is the beginning of that disappearance.

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