Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials.'"
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Then the Lord said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.'"
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So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
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Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord."
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Moses said to Pharaoh, "I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile."
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"Tomorrow," Pharaoh said. Moses replied, "It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile."
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After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. And the Lord did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said.
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Life Application Bible Study Notes
Moses predicted that every house in Egypt would be infested with frogs. The poor of Egypt lived in smalled, mud-brick houses of one or two rooms with palm-trunk roofs. The homes of the rich, however, were often two or three stories high surrounded by landscaped gardens and enclosed by a high wall. Servants lived and worked on the first floor while the family occupied the upper floors. Thus, if the frogs got into the royal bedrooms, they had infiltrated even the upper floors. No place in Egypt would be safe from them.
After repeated warnings Pharaoh still refused to obey God. He hardened his heart every time there was a break in the plagues. His stubborn disobedience brought suffering upon himself and his entire country. While persistence is good, stubbornness is usually self-centered. Stubbornness toward God is always disobedience. Avoid disobedience because the consequences may spill onto others.
Stubbornness can blind a person to the truth. When you rid yourself of stubbornness, you may be surprised by abundant evidence of God's work in your life.
PSALM 95: 8-11
"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the dessert, where your fathers were tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation. I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray and they have not know my ways." So I declared on oath in my anger, "They shall never enter my rest."
A hardened heart is as useless as a hardened lump of clay or a hardened loaf of bread. Nothing can restore it and make it useful. The psalmist warns against hardening our hearts as Israel did in the desert by continuing to resist God's will (Exodus 17:7). They were so convinced that God couldn't deliver them that they simply lost faith in him. When someones heart becomes hardened that person is so stubbornly set in his ways that he or she cannot turn to God. This does not happen all at once; it is a result of a series of choices to disregard God's will. If you resist God long enough. God may toss you aside like hardened bread, useless and worthless.
Meribah means "quarreling" and Massah means "testing". This verse refers to the incident at Rephidim (Exodus 17:1-7) when the Israelite's complained to Moses because they had no water (see also Numbers 20: 1-13).
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