Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water, and stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him. Take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent.
Water turned to blood strikes horror into the soul, but the justice runs deeper: Egypt made an idol of the Nile, and God justly turned their god into a curse. Whatever creature we worship instead of the Creator, the Lord will either remove from us or make bitter to our taste.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 7:14-25
Morning is when the mind settles and can receive what God has to say. Pharaoh went to the water, whether to bathe, divine by magic, measure the Nile's rise, or worship it as a god, but Moses was to meet him there with the rod, that he might remember what had been done and fear what would come.
AI summary
The Nile was an object of superstitious reverence to Egypt, its patron deity. God commanded Moses to the riverbank with the miracle-working rod, not in demonstration now but in judgment, because the river itself was to become the first plague against a king who refused to let His people go.
AI summary