The Fifth and Sixth Plagues: Livestock Destroyed and Boils Afflict Egypt

The previous episode discussed the four scholarly approaches to understanding the plagues upon Egypt in the exodus story. Two of those approaches (polemic, de-creation) were deemed more fruitful than the others, for they cast the plagues in terms of Yahweh’s mastery over creation order (the Egyptian concept of Maat) that in turn serves as a polemic against the theology of the ancient Egyptians. In this episode we go through the plagues of Exodus 8-10 (plague numbers 2 through 9) with an eye toward thinking about each plague as de-creation and polemic.