And I will multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretched forth mine hand upon Egypt.

Exodus chapter 7, verses 3 and 5.

Hello listeners, this is Nick from Book of Mormon Central, and today's podcast addresses the question.

Why were particular plagues sent against Egypt?

The Book of Exodus records a dramatic showdown between Pharaoh,

who claimed to be a god and to have the support of the Egyptian gods,

and the Lord, through his representatives Moses and Aaron.

As Pharaoh defies the Lord's demand to release the enslaved Israelites,

a series of ten plagues is brought down upon Egypt to compel Pharaoh's hand

and demonstrate the Lord's superior status as the true God.

Celebrated for generations by Jews across the world during Passover, the account

is taken on epic proportions and has been popularly memorialized in movie and song. Naturally,

it has also attracted considerable attention from biblical scholars and Egyptologists, as they

have sought to better understand the significance of both the plagues as a whole and each plague individually.

In recent years, scholars have increasingly emphasized how understanding ancient Egypt,

its physical environment, its religion, and its royal ideology,

clarifies why specific plagues were used by the Lord.

For example, academic studies of the seasonal cycles and natural phenomena clarifies why specific plagues were used by the Lord.

For example, academic studies of the seasonal cycles and natural phenomena of Egypt

have found that the individual plagues and their order of occurrence can be tied to the annual inundation of the Nile.

In years of extremely high flooding, due to high rains at the source waters of a major Nile tributary in Ethiopia,

algae-rich soil turns the waters blood red, giving off a putrid smell, killing the fish,

...