Seeing, then, that Ra was immanent, pervasive, and the principle back of all deities, he was the chief object of Jehovah’s enmity, and the real subject of the contest and conflict. In all the other plagues the parts of Ra were defeated, and now at last the two ideas are locked in the final struggle. It was preposterous to the Egyptians that any god or power could be superior to Ra, as the sun is the source and seat of all power. But the plague of darkness left him shorn of power and greatness, and prostrated him before the feet of Jehovah forever. Three theophanies had Ra, and God desecrated every one of them!
Ra appeared in the form of the sun: so that was blotted out of the sky for three days. Sometimes he walked the earth in the form of the first-born of a cow, if that first-born was a bull. So the first-born of all the cattle died, and Ra was covered with shame. Occasionally he was supposed to visit men in the form of a ram. The first-born were all sacred to him and dedicated to him from birth: yet when all the first-born of Egypt died, the babes of Israel, with their cattle and flocks were all safe, because they were under the shed blood of what was Ra’s chief theophany, next to the sun! The application of the blood to the lintel and the doorpost was an act of blasphemy against Ra, yet in that very defiance the Hebrews were acknowledging at last that Jehovah should be their God forever, in that He had proved His power.
Amon-Ra
The Tenth Plague intrudes into the sphere of the ninth. The death of the first-born was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, as far as the Egyptian resistance to Jehovah was concerned. This is still aimed primarily at Ra, although there were notable deities other than he that suffered defeat in this last and awful skirmish. When the Children of Israel left Egypt, bribed to depart by a people who were prostrated with grief, the mourning Egyptians pressed upon them the cattle and the flocks, the gold and the jewels requested. Anything to get rid of the devotees of the awful Being who left every home in Egypt bowed in sorrow, and who had slain, as well, every particle of faith the people had in the once-powerful gods of the land of captivity!
To name many of these gods would be to weary the reader. But we cannot refrain from naming Meskhemit, who was the goddess of birth. She was also the companion of Hathor, and overshadowed the first-born of the land. To what avail, when all died who were under her divine protection! And even stronger than she, was the mighty Min, the god of virility and generation. Closely related to Amon-Ra, being the means of extending the power of Ra to those who worshipped him, he too, fell with a resounding crash, when the hand of The-Only-God-That-There-Is swept all the idols of Egypt off their pedestals, in what might be called the greatest “ten rounds” ever fought! Not only did Jehovah win the battle and the crown, He also won every round! The victory was complete and crushing.
Set
Many centuries later, Paul the Apostle recalled all that is implied and stated here, when he wrote the ninth chapter of Romans and the seventeenth verse. Here it is stated that God dealt so with Pharaoh, that the name of God should be advertised throughout all the earth.
Is it so advertised?