Sensible Madness

And the Lord told Moses to go once again and tell Pharaoh to let his people go. Further, he instructed Moses to tell Pharaoh that if the Israelites were not freed, God was going to give all of Egypt’s cattle the plague, and they would all drop dead. However, the cattle belonging to the Israelites would be just fine. Thus faced with the prospect of the Israelites cornering the beef market, Pharaoh would immediately let Moses’ people go.

So it came to pass that God did killeth a bunch of perfectly good cows, and Pharaoh did tell him to go fucketh himself, and so God decided to up the stakes once again. He told Moses to grab a handful of soot from the furnace and toss it into the air, and every particle that landed on an Egyptian would turn into a boil. Moses did so, and suddenly all the Egyptians started looking really nasty. Pharaoh summoned his magicians to duplicate the trick, but unfortunately they were all too busy being grossed out by the boils all over their bodies to do anything.

And then Moses delivered God’s message, which was that if the Egyptians didn’t start letting the Israelites go, he was going to really up the ante on the plaguing business. Seriously, he was going to fuck them up so bad they’d be begging him for mercy.

The next step, as it turned out, ended up being hail. Not just any hail, but giant basketball-sized hail that would kill any person or animal unlucky enough to be wandering the streets when it showed up. Those Egyptians who had decided to go with the clearly winning team and hang out with God had decided the best course of action was to cower in their houses with all of their various smelly animals the first time they heard that giant cow-killing hail was imminent. The others, however, wandered around outside waiting to be pummeled by ice balls.
So the time came, and God told Moses to lift up his staff, and suddenly ginormous hail mixed with FIRE started falling to the ground. Oh, did God forget to mention his livestock-killing hail storm was also going to include fire falling from the sky? Well, now you know.

Anyway, the hail killed a bunch of crops as well as the livestock, but miraculously passed by the land of Goshen, home of the Israelites, without harm.

After the hailstorm, Pharaoh told Moses that he was finally convinced that God was kind of a big deal, so the Israelites would be set free if Moses asked God to pretty please stop the gigantic ice balls falling from the sky. Moses, having been burned before (and not just from the fire falling from the sky), insisted that he at least be able to leave the city before calling off the nasty weather. Further, Moses said that he knew Pharaoh wasn’t really ready to fear God yet, because God hadn’t completely obliterated Egypt yet. So, Moses went out of the city and asked God to cut it out with the hail and the fire already. God complied and, surprise surprise, Pharaoh changed his mind and decided to keep the Israelites right where they were.