What does Exodus 7:20 mean?
God commanded Moses and Aaron to confront Pharaoh after his rejection of previous commands and miracles (Exodus 5:1–4; 7:10–13). Here, they confront Egypt's ruler as he comes out to the Nile River in the morning (Exodus 7:15). This is the first of ten catastrophic plagues the Lord will bring against Egypt (Exodus 3:20). These supernatural events are primarily meant to prove that the God of Israel has power which the false Egyptian deities do not. They also punish Pharaoh for his stubborn refusal to release the Israelite people (Exodus 1:11–14).These events also strike at belief in false gods. God's power over the Nile shows that Hapi, an Egyptian river God, has no influence. Neither does Khnum, the river deity also associated with creating unborn children and fertility. Khnum and another idol, Heqet, also acted somewhat like midwives. All of these Egyptian deities are exposed through the Lord's plague. The blood of so many murdered Israelite children (Exodus 1:15–17, 22) comes back to haunt the murderers, through waters supposedly controlled by Egyptian gods.
When the water is ruined, Egypt is devastated (Exodus 7:21). Since the people of Israel live in a neighboring region (Genesis 45:10; Exodus 8:22; 9:26), they were probably spared from this trouble. The situation goes on long enough to become life-threatening (Exodus 7:25). In the meantime, Egyptians are forced to work hard searching for water (Exodus 7:24), much as their slaves were recently forced to work hard searching for raw materials (Exodus 5:6–9).
There is debate as to the exact nature of this plague and its mechanism. God is perfectly capable of using His creation, as designed, to accomplish His will. Some commentators suggest that the water does not become literal blood—the bodily fluid—but that it becomes contaminated and red in color. Proposals for this include everything from a landslide dumping minerals upstream to a sudden increase in algae. That Egyptian magicians seem to create the same result (Exodus 7:22) also suggests some natural process.
A weakness in these theories is that all surface water is affected (Exodus 7:19). To change water held in jars and cisterns, something remarkable would be needed. The next five plagues—frogs (Exodus 8:2), gnats (Exodus 8:16), flies (Exodus 8:21), dead livestock (Exodus 9:3), and boils (Exodus 9:8–9)—might be driven by the natural consequences of this first plague. But no matter the method, it is God's supernatural timing and power which causes them to happen.
