The Plagues of Egypt


Before I continue, I feel obligated to acknowledge that I have been warned that this series may be ill-conceived and in bad taste.  If you still wish to proceed, do so with the knowledge that I was warned.
Tonight is the first night of Passover in the Jewish faith, also known as Pesach.  Throughout history, humans have searched for meaning in the pestilences delivered upon them in the forms of disease, blight and more, trying to explain what the hell they did to piss off God so badly, but not in the case of a little faith-based incident believed to have been first recorded in the 5th century BC and said to have happened in Egypt.  The Egyptians knew darn well what they did.  When God sent Moses (whose name was actually "Moshe," and who Founding Father of the United States Thomas Paine called a "detestable villain") to tell the Pharaoh to free his Hebrew slaves because they were God's favorite, Pharaoh was like, "No."  So God sent a plague, but not a normal plague like when your neck, armpits and groin swell up like balloons until you die; one that turned all the water into blood, which put everyone working at the blood bank out of work and made it so university students couldn't make money donating their plasma.  Second, in a bit of a left turn, God sent frogs, which sounds cute until you realize it was too many frogs.  So many frogs, you couldn't walk a few steps without squishing a dozen of them and slipping in their guts.  Very inconvenient.  Pharaoh apparently decided the slave labor was still worth it, so God turned all the dust in Egypt (and have you seen how dusty that place is?) into lice.  Gross.  Next, perhaps to feed all the frogs, but mainly to annoy the Pharaoh, God sent a lot of flies.  Like a crapload of flies, and even after holding his own against the river of blood, and a Chinese-level population of frogs and lice, Pharaoh finally cried 'uncle.'  Then, he took it back like a jerk.  At this, because animals are just pawns in God's eternal plan, he killed off a lot of the Egyptians' livestock.  Then, God had Moses throw some soot in the air that flew all over Egypt and resulted in boils for everyone (Oprah voice: "You get a boil, and you get a boil!"); big, disgusting pustules all over, including around the butthole.  The storm of hail and fire was dramatic, killing every person and animal still outside, but it was just a one-time deal.  God then played one of his all-time favorite cards: locusts everywhere.  However, most of their crops were probably already destroyed at this point, and with most of their animals dead too, one has to assume the locusts were a welcome source of protein for the Egyptian diet, a sort of "manna from heaven," if you will.  Pharaoh decided this was fine, after which God started getting pretty desperate and straight up turned out the sun for three damn days.  Everyone just had to stay home because they couldn't see anything.  That wasn't even the worst part.  The worst part would be when the lights finally came back on and everyone saw each others' mismatched clothes and messy makeup done in the dark.  Some of them probably wished they were dead at that point, which is exactly what happened to all the firstborn sons of Egypt.  Any firstborn cattle left were killed too, which seems a little bit excessive, even in this story.  Finally, Pharaoh let the Hebrew slaves go, but he forgot to say goodbye, so he took his army out to say goodbye, and God drowned him.  That was a miracle.

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