In Exodus now. The main idea of the beginning of it is the Egyptians have enslaved and are mistreating the Israelites and god is trying to use Moses to free them. Moses keeps going to the Pharaoh to try to convince him to let them go, but god keeps hardening the Pharaoh's heart to make him reject Moses, which, in itself, is like "wtf, dude. just stop doing that, he may let ur chosen people go" and has always been a contention i've had with Exodus even when I was younger and in church. That's not what this post is about though!

After, god hardens Pharaoh's heart MULTIPLE times, god starts using Moses and his brother Aaron to unleash plagues onto Egypt to try to get the Pharaoh to let god's people go. Pharaoh has his own magicians that copy the plagues that Moses enacts, i guess to show that god isn't more powerful than Pharaoh.

So these magicians can both turn water into blood and spawn frogs, but they can't spawn gnats. Of those three things, you'd think that would be the easiest and not too different from spawning frogs.

Tbh, I kinda hate this book. People talk about the bible as if it's like this wonderful piece of literature, but i'm not really seeing it. also, i can't imagine believing it or trying to take messages from it.