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This morning, gentlemen, we gave ourselves to studying section one of the book of Exodus in some detail, and found it to be concerned in its center portions with the declaration of the name of God to Israel. Now, this afternoon, we must move on to section two of the book of Exodus, and we shall find, as we pointed out last evening, it is concerned with the declaration of the name of God, but this time mainly to Pharaoh, and then through him to the whole nations of the world. It lies on the surface of- surface of things to observe that the declaration of the name of God to Israel in section one of the book implied the deliverance of Israel from bondage and the setting of them free. Revelation and declaration of the name of God to Pharaoh, on the other hand, in this section two of the book, will lead to the judgments of God upon Pharaoh. And Pharaoh's being subsequently used as a lurid beacon light of warning to all impenitent sinners the world through. Since that is so, we should not forget, let us mention it at once, that in making Pharaoh an example and thus declaring his name through him, God was using Pharaoh as a vessel of wrath, not only to exhibit his own righteous character, but that in so doing, other people might hear, be warned, repent, and be saved. So when we consider these heart-chilling stories of God's wrath on Pharaoh and Egypt. We should remember those other stories, for instance, how the report of what had happened to Pharaoh eventually percolated across the desert and reached the ears of a prostitute in Jericho, and began the process that led to her repentance and faith in the living God. Her being saved and enrolled amongst the people of God. Subsequently being given the high honor of becoming an ancestress of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Surely God makes even his wrath and his dealings in wrath with men the medium and means of his salvation of others. These are solemn matters, therefore, and we have in particular to try and grapple with the fact that is put before us many times of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. It is, uh, we are informed of these matters early on in the narrative. In section one, for instance, chapter three, verse nineteen, where God is announcing to Moses that he must be sent to Pharaoh to demand Israel's liberation. God says to Moses three nineteen, and I know that the king of Egypt will not give you leave to go except by a mighty hand, meaning I know that Pharaoh will not let you go unless I bring my mighty hand to bear against him and compel him to go. Uh, compel him to let you go. That is a very important statement that we should put into the pool of our thinking in this matter. God surely is not about to proceed in a contradictish, contradictory and contradictious manner, first hardening Pharaoh's heart so that he shall not let them go, and then using his big hand on him to make them let them go. God is not contradictious, surely. He's informing Moses to start with that such is the hardness and pride of Pharaoh's heart that he will not let you go unless I compel him to let you go by the use of my mighty hand. That is the first reference to the matter. God will have to force Pharaoh to let them go. God returns to that same, uh, subject in chapter four and verse twenty two and twenty three— sorry, verse twenty one and twenty two. The Lord said unto Moses, when thou goest back into Egypt, see that thou do before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in thine hand, but I will harden his heart, and he will not let the people go. So now, in the second place, God announces that he, God, will harden Pharaoh's heart. The point that will exercise us, and to which doubtless you will give me the true answer tonight in our question time, is at what point in the proceedings did God himself harden Pharaoh's heart? And indeed, what the hardening of Pharaoh's heart by God really means. Mean. The first actual explicit complete statement in what subsequently happened to the effect that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, the Lord hardened his heart, is, as far as I am aware, in the translation I use, in chapter nine and verse twelve, where it explicitly says, and the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them as the Lord had spoken unto Moses. That occurs at the end of the sixth plague, well on the way through the plagues, at the end of the sixth, and there follows chapter nine thirteen, a long preface to the final series of plays, where God now explains why he will fa- harden Pharaoh's heart, and I nearly said, explains the morality of his so doing. And therefore, it seems to me to be exceedingly probable that when God originally said to Moses that he would harden his heart, he is referring to what he foresaw would happen. Pharaoh himself would not let the people go unless compelled. Pharaoh would harden his own heart until there came a point when God himself stepped in and hardened Pharaoh's heart, fixed Pharaoh in the stance that Pharaoh himself had adopted. But of course, in holding that view, I am aware that I do not carry over many people with me. The more learned say that I am making a false deduction from the Hebrew usage. In other places, for instance, in the course of the plagues, it says that Pharaoh hardened his heart. That is explicit, Pharaoh did it. But in other places it says Pharaoh's heart was hardened. In other words, a simple passive. And they say that is simply a variation in language that would mean no real difference in substance in the way a, a Hebrew looked at these things. Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Well, if it was so, that was God ultimately who did it anyway. And therefore, uh, uh, the deduction that it was God o- o- only in uh chapter nine onwards, chapter nine twelve, that God actually hardened his heart is false. Even where it says simply Pharaoh's heart was hardened, any Hebrew would take that to mean that God did the hardening anyway, so that God's hardening starts quite early on. In fact, starts i- in our section that we consider now at chapter seven verse thirteen. Indeed, the Old English translation at that point has it that he, that is the Lord, hardened his heart. But, uh, other translations, of course, give and Pharaoh's heart was hardened. This problem of how we should understand these variations in the phraseology used is not confined, of course, to the book of Exodus. We shall all remember that in the classic discussion of this in the Epistle to the Romans in chapter nine, Paul uses a similarly differentiated phraseology. He says, what if God willing to show, uh, his power and to make his glory known, what if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction, plain passive, the agent not being specified. But in verse twenty three, and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which are now explicitly said that God did it, which he afore prepared unto glory. And to this day, the commentators, uh, remark upon that difference of phraseology, do they not? And tell us it is deliberate that when it comes to the fitting of vessels of wrath, Scripture draws back from saying that God himself fitted them for that purpose. Doubtless, uh, you will, uh, put me on the right lines of how to think about these things in the question time that we are to have tonight. As you will have heard from high authority in the session this evening, it is to be a question time when, in the first place, I use my privilege and question you. And I shall be looking, in particular, for help on the understanding of these God's ways with Pharaoh and the plagues upon Egypt. And if you'll say, what will you really want to know? Well, that will become all too evident as I proceed with this afternoon's exposition, and you will find yourself gasping all over the place. Dear me, dear me, dear me, he does need putting right. And, uh, if you will make a note of those places when it comes to the question time, uh, uh, and I put the questions to you, uh, you will me- uh, be a great help to me. And I mean that sincerely, my brethren. I'm not, uh, being unduly modest, uh, nor am I indulging in a little effort to gain your sympathy or something. I mean that seriously, and you will see that presently I do mean it seriously. But this very fact, that God is going to use these plagues and the hardening of Pharaoh's heart to make his name known to the Egyptians and to the world at large, forces on us, does it not, the question, what exactly was God doing in sending so many plagues upon Egypt? If God was simply hardening Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh would then refuse to obey, so that then God might destroy him. Why, may I ask, did God take such a long while about it? Why didn't he at the most give him three opportunities, and then when on the third occasion he refused, destroy him then? Why prolong the procedures so far? Uh, we should notice, of course, that the plagues, the whole nine of them, evidently do not themselves result in Pharaoh's destruction. All nine put together do not persuade Pharaoh to let the people go. The thing that actually persuaded Pharaoh to let them go was the tenth. And that plague we saw last night is specially, uh, separated from the others. It's a different thing, one last plague, which was the execution of God's wrath upon Egypt. It is not, therefore, to be confused with the plagues and the purpose of the plagues. If the plagues were not purposed to destroy Pharaoh, then what were they meant to do? With those questions in mind, let's begin by looking once more at the context. And for that purpose now, I, uh, uh, ask your patience while I go back to where we left off this morning. We were considering in the last moments of our dis- our, our discussions this morning, the broad composition of the first section of the book. How it starts with the pro- the oppression in Egypt, Moses' uh, unsuccessful attempts to deal with it, and his flight, leading on to the del- declaration of the name of God to Moses, and then his return and his success. So that when he addressed the people and did the signs, all the people believed, and they bowed their head and worshiped. And then we saw in the second half of that first section how that when Moses did as he was told and went in and demanded from Pharaoh that he let the people go, instead of Pharaoh letting them go, the only effect was that the oppression was made ten thousand times worse. And as far as Moses' relationship with the Israelites concerned, it was now worse than it was before. We notice here how they said to Moses, who made you a prince and a judge over us, and rejected him. Here they come within a shadow of cursing him outright. The Lord look upon you and judge you. You have made our name stink before the Egyptians, and you put a sword in their hand to destroy us, you fool, and worse. And when Moses complained of it to God, God's response, as we saw this morning, God's delightful response is not to abandon his people, but now to declare his name again, and this time to make it very personal. Here they were to say that the God of your fathers has appeared, and he is going to do this. But this time say to them, I am the Lord, and you will know that I. In that delightful personal experience that the Israelites will come to know God personally, and the significance of his name, and the nature of his character and faithfulness. Second declaration of the name. Moses went and, uh, told that to the Israelites, but they did not. How can? That is explicitly said in the text at that point. Yeah, so then God recommissioned Moses, and Moses said, what is the good of your sending me to Pharaoh? Even your own people, Israel, will not listen to me. What is the use of sending me to Pharaoh again? But God persisted and recommissioned him and gave him a charge. So says verse thirteen of chapter six. And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron and gave them a charge unto the king of Israel and unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. That is going to be repeated now at the beginning of the second section that begins at chapter six and verse twenty eight. God's charge to go unto to the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and speak to Pharaoh all that the Lord tells him to. But in between, you notice that long and at first sight peculiar paragraph, verse fourteen onwards, down to verse twenty seven of chapter six. These are the heads of their fathers' houses. And a genealogy that in the end comes down to Moses and Aaron and their siblings. And verse twenty five says, these are the heads of the fathers' houses of the Levites according to their families. These are that Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their hosts. These are they which spake to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt. These are that Moses and Aaron. You might think at first that that is rather superfluous, all that endless and needless repetition. Well, these are Moses and Aaron anyway, and what is the point of the whole paragraph, if any? We'll say simply to identify Moses and Aaron, which tribes did they belong to? Well, that is useful information. But is there not more to it? We began, of course, this section, didn't we, with the whole list of names, but it was a very short list. It was the names of the people that came into Egypt with Jacob, and hence you have eleven of the names of the patriarchs, and then you're told that Joseph was already in Egypt. This is the little extended family then, and the names of the patriarchs are given. Now you end up this section with a long list of names once more. And this time it is not a complete genealogy of all the twelve tribes, is it? You will have noticed that at once. It starts with the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, verse fourteen, and so forth. It proceeds to the sons of Simeon in verse fifteen. These are the families of Simeon. It proceeds then to the sons of Levi, chap- uh, verse sixteen of chapter six. Then it gives you in great detail the sons of Levi, and gives you not only the names of Moses and Aaron, but also the names of sons of other branches of that family. But having given you the genealogy of Levi up to date, it stops there. And doesn't bother to give you the genealogy of any other of the tribes. Well, it may be simply because he's identifying Moses and Aaron in their tribe. Is there not more to it? We're going to hear of Moses the Levite and Aaron the Levite, going in amongst the Egyptians with the rod of God, their lethal rod, to smite Egypt with these plagues. What, pray, is happening? You cannot begin to ponder, can you, the history of the Levites, but what some vivid stories will come to your mind from the book of Genesis. In chapter thirty four, Genesis gives us an exceedingly sorry story about the Lev- about Levi and Simeon. Jacob had come back into the land. Jacob had spent his early years in the land, then he had had to flee for his life from Esau and had gone back to the Gentiles and lived among the Gentiles and made an enormous pot of money. And made so much money that his Gentile relatives began to get very tired of him when they saw it was Jacob's name over every bank in town. And that all Laban's capital had somehow found itself in Jacob's hand. They began to get very tired of it, and their faces were not toward him as before. Ah. And Jacob felt it politic to flee from these Gentiles, taking his capital with him and Laban's daughters, you remember, and had some very vivid experiences of God, of course, and came back into the land there to try to establish himself and made peace as best he could with the Esau. But then it happened, as I suppose it will on occasions, that Dinah, one of Jacob's daughters, went out to Zusi to see the, uh, land, or say, went out to see the daughters of the land. But Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, saw the dear lady, and he took her and lay with her and humbled her. Nevertheless, he proved himself an honorable man and came along and honorably asked Jacob for the hand of his daughter Dinah and was willing to marry her. You'll see. The sons of Jacob heard of this, and in particular Levi, Simeon and Levi. They said, it won't do, gentlemen, if you want, uh, our daughter for your, uh, the wife of your prince, all the men of Shechem must be circumcised. Honorable men that they were, they said, all right, we will be circumcised. So they circumcised themselves. And while they were still exceeding sore and And painful. painful. Simeon and Levi took their swords and executed every man among them. Thus expressing their wrath, you will say, against these Gentiles. And Jacob said, you have troubled me to make my name to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites, and I being few in number, they will gather themselves together against me and smite me, and I shall be destroyed, I and my house. And they said, but should he deal with our sister with a harlot. Outrage, they vented their wrath upon these Gentiles and felt justified in so doing. Did it in the name of religion. Did it in the name of Israel's distinctives. You made my name stink, says Jacob. When old Jacob lay upon his deathbed, according to Genesis forty nine, he said as follows: Simeon and Levi are brethren. Weapons of violence are in their swords. Oh my soul, come not thou into their council, and unto their assembly, my glory, be not thou united. For in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they hocked an ox. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce. Cursed be their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. Jacob was giving voice to the sentiment that his namesake Jacob of the New Testament, uh, repeated. Jacob on his deathbed addressing his twelve sons, and Jacob the Christian in his epistle addressing the twelve tribes, and says, Jacob the Christian, the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. What is now going to happen as these two Levites take each of them his rod and smite Egypt therewith. They say it is the wrath of God. Is it? Or is it only a rationalization of their own wrath, seeking to get revenge upon the Gentiles? That would be an important question to ask, would it not? You say that in the Bible it makes it clear that it's the wrath of God and not the wrath of man. Very good, and you believe it marvelously so. But there are other folks who don't, and they say, look at these old stories. It's said to be God who, uh, punished the Egyptians. This is but a rationalization and fuels the fire of Israel's natural indignation and a desire for revenge upon the Gentile nations around. Is it so? What is the nature of the stories before us? Let's come now, therefore, well, let us observe what we've already observed and immediately answer our question. Notice that the plagues are not the execution of the wrath of God in the full and final sense of that term at all, are they? It was the Passover that was the execution of the wrath of God, and Moses and Aaron had nothing to do with its execution whatsoever. The plagues serve a different function. But let's come now to the briefing that God gives Moses and Aaron at the beginning of our section two. Eh, verse twenty eight: it came to pass on the day when the Lord spake unto Moses in the land of Egypt, that the Lord spake unto Moses. That's a curious circumlocution, isn't it, what? Uh, when he spoke, he spoke. That the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, I am the Lord, speak thou unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I speak unto thee. And Moses said before the Lord, behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me? Moses now, his first task is to speak. And what he is to speak is, I am the Lord. He is to make known to Pharaoh the name of the Lord. Moses protests once more, and for the third time, behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me? The man seems to be obsessed, if I might say so, of such an eminent personage, with his inability to speak. It's the third time he's objected to it. He said it just over the page, didn't he? You'll see, uh, verse twelve of chapter six: How then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips? He said to Daliah when God appeared to him in the thorn bush, and it is a curious apparent contradiction with what Stephen was later to say, that Moses was a man mighty in word and deed, that has led some to suppose that what Moses meant was this, that he'd been so long out of Egypt that he'd forgotten how to speak Egyptian, and, uh, therefore stammered and stuttered when he got back into the presence of Pharaoh. But here it comes again, how shall Pharaoh listen to me when I am of uncircumcised lips and you keep telling me to speak to Pharaoh? So God has to explain, my dear Moses, may I not tell you yet another time, Moses? Pharaoh isn't going to listen to your speaking, old chap. And it isn't your speaking that's going to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. Please disabuse yourself. I haven't given you that outrageous task to do. Your speaking won't bring him out, bring them out. I'll go and speak, my man. In fact, verse three, I will harden his heart, chapter seven, verse three, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt, but Pharaoh will not harden unto you, and I will lay my hand upon Egypt, and I will bring forth my hosts, my people. And thus, verse five, the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them. And once more the contrast is made. All your speaking throughout all the plagues won't bring them out. I shall bring them out by my mighty hand. That once more forces us to this question, what then was the function of the plagues? Well, they were, as we saw last night, to declare the name of God. We're told that in verse twenty nine of chapter six and then throughout. Let me just refer you and give you the references again. Uh, verse five of chapter seven: the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. Verse seventeen of chapter seven: thus saith the Lord, in this shalt thou know that I am the Lord. Chapter eight and verse ten: that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord our God. And verse twenty two of that chapter, to the end that thou mayest know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. Chapter nine and verse fourteen: that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. Verse sixteen: that my power, to show thee my power and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth. Verse twenty nine of chapter nine: that thou mayest know that the earth is the Lord's. The declaration of the name of God to Pharaoh that, uh, he is the Lord, and what that means, that, uh, there is none like him. In other words, he is unique. None of the gods of Egypt is like him, his uniqueness. Secondly, verse twenty two of chapter eight, that he is not an absentee landlord. He is the Lord in the midst of the earth, controlling its affairs. Again, in chapter nine and verse twenty nine, his possession of the earth, that thou mayest know that the earth is the Lord. But, so, how do the plays establish these facts about the name of God? It is at this point that I genuinely shall need your help. Is it? Here comes suggestion one. That the E- the Egyptians deified various aspects of nature. They deified the Nile, for instance. They imagined that the Nile was a god. They imagined that the sun was a great god. They deified other parts of nature, and that the plagues were directed to showing that these gods were no gods at all. And therefore the water of the Nile was turned to blood, and the supposed god of the Nile was shown to be a nonsense. That the sun was darkened in the land of Egypt so it didn't shine, and thus the notion that the sun was a god was either contradicted, or at least it was shown that Jehovah is unique, there's none of the supposed gods that's like him. Is that indeed the burden of the plagues? Judgments on the gods of Egypt to show that they were a nonsense. All right, let's take up that. How was it done? And here we meet, or the innocent like me meet, one or two problems. You say it was done by miracles, marvelous miracles. Anybody can see they were miracles. Well, wait a minute. When, uh, Moses went in to Pharaoh and, uh, uh, Pharaoh said, show me a sign. Uh, so Moses said, oh yeah, I'll show you a sign. He got his rod and he cast it down and became a serpent. And Pharaoh smiled. He said, what was that meant to be, Moses, old boy? Well, Moses said that was meant to be a miracle, uh, your majesty. Oh, really? But come off it, Moses, he said, there's no miracle. My, my men can re- produce the same results in the laboratory. And he pressed the button, and in came the white-coated magicians. Magicians. I don't know where science, why scientists always wear white coats, but they seem to. And in they came, you will see, and Pharaoh said, uh, gentlemen, he said, this Moses here, my troublesome grandson by adoption, he said, you know, he has a notion he's just had a miracle. Marvelous. His, his rod has turned into a serpent. Um, um, just show him that we these days can, uh, reproduce the same kind of results in our laboratories, and that there isn't any miracle at all, you'll see. Well, that was a funny way to start, wasn't it? Why did God Almighty s- trouble to start with a, a thing that the other boys could reproduce? Is that how you would have conducted an argument if you'd have been an apologist for the Lord Almighty in the court of Pharaoh and before the magicians, the elementary and early scientists of the day? No, you say, but that was just a sort of the aperitif to get their interest, you know, like the speaker tells a joke before he begins to preach. Uh, uh, but then he got down to the real stuff. And so he said that now Pharaoh, as he went to stand for the first plague before Pharaoh stood to challenge the imperial might and authority, he stretched out his rod, and the river Nile was turned to blood. Once more, Pharaoh's magicians were able to do the very same thing. Come, come, we're slipping now, aren't we? Um, how's the old argument going? Yeah, I mean, granted, this is the first plague now. Why on earth go and do a plague that the Egyptian wise men can do. Wish they would do better next time. So next time, ah, Moses is told to bring up frogs out of the river. And the Egyptians go and do it again. We're not getting very far very fast, are we? You say, but the third one, look at the third one. And Moses was able to, um, bring up lice, turn the dust of the ground into lice or whatever they were, mosquitoes or something. And when the magicians tried to do it, they couldn't do it. And informed His Majesty, this is the finger of God. You say all that, uh, all that, uh, introduction was by way of leading the old magicians up the garden path for five minutes, you see, and thinking, letting them think they had a marvelous good argument, and when they thought it, they had proved their point, smashing the whole thing down, and Moses did a real miracle this time that the magicians couldn't do. And you say, therein lies the proof. Really? Proof of what? I'm going to ask you gentlemen tonight to tell us honestly, please, in your apologetic work before the ungodly and unbelieving world. Would you quote the record of these plagues as an evidence for the reality of God and his uniqueness? Or would you say, oh no, come, come, that sufficed for then, but it wouldn't suffice for now because our men are really scientific. So. So, you've even got better magicians nowadays than they had then. Are you saying that the argument that Moses advanced towards Pharaoh was a very limited truth or something? And it only convinced the contemporaries because the argument, well, they weren't sharp enough to see its weakness? Or was God demonstrating something that is still valid? What was he demonstrating? And some people come up, therefore, when they confront these, uh, miracles, with another explanation that would get us out of that kind of difficulty. They say, really, the convincing part of the evidence was, not that it was a miracle, because the magicians could do most of it themselves. The really convincing thing was the word of the Lord spoken through Moses, you'll see, so that Moses was able to say, tomorrow at this time it shall happen. And then it did happen tomorrow at that. And the thing that was impressive was not that it happened, it could have been an ordinary thing that the magicians could do, but it should happen at the time when Moses says it would. This was the evidence. It wasn't just an occurrence in nature, it was that occurrence accompanied by the word of God that prophesied and announced that it was going to happen, and it happened as the word of God said it was. That was then the evidential force of the plagues. And of course, to have a similar effect nowadays, you'd need to know that a plague was going to happen tomorrow and then be, uh, let into the secret by God today so that you could prophesy it was going to happen tomorrow, but that's a rather difficult thing to arrange, perhaps, but that would be the evidential force of it nowadays, if such things were possible. Added to that, and along that line, and developing it a bit further, comes a third suggestion by theologian Hort that the happenings in the plagues were not really miracles at all. They can all be explained, and should be, by normal physical happenings. Not quite normal, perhaps, but the explanation of the first one is that the, uh, Nile flooded very early and, or very severely that particular year. And being so full and boisterous, it brought down a lot of the material stuff from the upper reaches, and certain microbes and things that, uh, eventually turned red and what have you, and it gave the river the appearance of blood. With the extra flooding of the river and its bad state, when the water subsided, the mosquitoes, uh, abounded, you'll see. They are the lice of the third plague. And then things went by the natural cycle. Uh, there was, uh, anthrax, and the cattle died, uh, and some people caught the disease as well. And so forth and so on. Uh, there came a Hunson wind, and that helped to darken, but we can understand that because it says that, uh, uh, it'll say the wind blew up the, uh, sand and, uh, it came in a particular direction, so it caught Egypt, but Israel's houses were free, and similarly with the locusts and so on. That all these things can be explained by natural causes, and that God was using natural causes. But the importance of it is that God prophesied these things would happen through Moses, and they happened accordingly. Now, in and of itself, of course, uh, you could support that, uh, that particular argument, couldn't you? By saying that the text tells you that God used natural means. For instance, the locusts. It says that that that the wind blew all night, and after so many hours of the wind blowing, it blew up a whole lot of locusts, you see. So God is using natural means. Or again, when Israel crossed the Reed Sea, it was, in one point of view, an ordinary physical happening. A strong wind blew all that night, and as a result, the waters parted. Oh, there is a good deal to be said for that particular viewpoint of it, isn't there? I so ha- I have to confess to you forthwith that one little thing troubles me with that explanation, if not others, and that is, what then is the point of the magicians doing the same thing? And as far as the narrative goes, we shall, uh, uh, not escape this emphasis, shall we, so many times repeated, that in the early stages, the magicians were able to do what Moses did. I want, in the second little bit of our afternoon study, uh, to take courage in both hands and put before you how I read or tend to read these stories of the plagues and what the issue at stake might be. As I say, I look forward even more to your contributions in the session after dinner.