Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. The sixth plague — boils — is introduced with a distinctive instruction: the instrument is soot from a furnace, and it is thrown into the air before Pharaoh. The furnaces of Egypt were the kilns that fired the bricks Israel was forced to make; the soot of the very furnaces that produced Israel's suffering now becomes the instrument of Egypt's plague. The act before Pharaoh is theatrical and confrontational — Moses does not go to the Nile, does not stand at the palace gate, but performs the sign in Pharaoh's direct presence with material that embodies the injustice Pharaoh has perpetrated. What was used to oppress Israel now falls as judgment on its oppressors.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

Publish a note on this verse