Exiting Egypt Chapter 8 P 1 C

Exiting Egypt

The Fourth Plague – Flies Swarming

Exodus 8:20-32

By Dennis Lee: Chapter 8 P 1 C

The Egyptians were worshipping the imaginations of their own minds. They and all the other peoples of the world had their own gods: gods who favored one nation, and gods that favored another nation. There were gods that delivered from one problem and other gods who could deliver from another problem.

All over the word there was the worship of many gods, just as there is in our world today. The idea that there is just one God, the Lord God of the Bible, had long ago been rejected by the Egyptians and this was the lesson that the Egyptians now had to learn, which is no different than today.

This brings us to our fourth plague of swarming flies, which was the prove that there is only one true and living God and He resides not only in heaven, but also in the midst of the earth. And this is seen in the fact that the Lord now is making a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

Read Ex. 8:20-32

Again we see Moses going back to Pharaoh of the judgment that was to come, giving Pharaoh another chance to repent and let God’s people go. But as it would seem, Pharaoh ignored the warning, and so God’s judgment fell in the form of a fourth plague to strike the land, a plague for swarming flies.

The flies were so thick that they literally filled the houses, covered everyone, and blackened the atmosphere that surrounded a person.

Flies are horrible creatures. The word, “swarm,” literally means in the Hebrew “divers sorts of,” and so in this case, it wasn’t just our common housefly, or as Jewish tradition tells us that it was the dog fly, but what it seems is that this plague wasn’t limited to just one particular kind, but a whole lot of different types.

There is estimated over 240,000 species of flies, but only half have been described. Besides the various types of flies, from houseflies, to black flies, fruit flies, horseflies, dogs flies, dragonflies, fireflies, snake flies, scorpion flies, just to name a few, also in this category are mosquitoes, gnats, and midges.

And not only are they bothersome, but they contaminate what they touch, and are carriers of disease. Some species destroy crops, or live as parasites under the skin of animals. They carry such diseases as typhoid, anthrax, cholera, and dysentery. Mosquitoes carry malaria, dengue fever, and encephalitis. Today, we have been hit with the West Nile virus, which infects both animals and humans.

Maybe to see just how many diseased ridden flies there truly are, we can go to the Scriptures and see that Satan is called Beelzebub, which means, “lord of the flies.” This term symbolized the myriad of demons at his command, and thus the filthiness of his nature and those that follow him. So, in a way we can say that there are as many demons as there are flies. That’s a whole lot.