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Hayes Hegemier

Ms. Akers

Honors English 9

20 October 2017

The Significant Suffering of the Pharaoh

In the Bible the Pharaoh is the leader of the Egyptians and the overall owner of the all of

the Hebrews slaves. The Pharaoh is in the book of Exodus, and the story of Challenging the

Pharaoh. He is important to the story because he resisted Mosess orders to let the Hebrews go

and had to endure the Plagues that God and Moses had casted upon him and the Egyptians. The

Pharaoh acts as a antagonist in the book Exodus, which adds conflict to the story.

The Pharaohs suffering is necessary because his anguish led to the freeing of the

Hebrews. If the Hebrews had never been freed in the story of the Bible, then the story itself

would not carry on as it did.

In the story Challenging the Pharaoh the Lord says to Aaron, Go into the wilderness and

meet Moses(116). Aaron then meets Moses and they head to Pharaoh and say to him, Thus

says the Lord, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the

wilderness(116).Moses and Aaron ask the Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave from his kingdom.

The Pharaoh disagrees with Moses and Aaron and says that since he had not heard the Lords

voice, he will not let the people of Israel go. Instead Pharaoh punishes the Hebrews by making

them work harder. He tells the taskmasters to not give the Hebrews the straw to make the bricks.
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The Hebrews would now have to get the straw on their own while producing the same number of

bricks as they had before.

The suffering Pharaoh caused the Hebrews suddenly changes into his own suffering. The

Lord then tells Moses, Pharaohs heart is hardened, he refuses to let the people go. Go to

Pharaoh in the morning , as he is going out to the water; wait for him by the rivers brink, and

take in your hand the rod which was turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, The Lord

the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in

the wilderness; and behold, you have not yet obeyed. Then the Lord says, By this you shall

know that I am the Lord: and behold, I will strike the water that is in the Nile with the rod that is

in my hand, and it shall be turned to blood, and the fish in the Nile should die, and the Nile shall

become foul, and the Egyptians will loathe to drink water from the Nile(117). What the Lord

is saying is that the Pharaoh is disobeying the Lords orders to let the Hebrew people go. Since

the Pharaoh is violating the Lords word, God tells Moses to go to the Pharaoh and take the the

rod which has turned into a serpent. Moses says to the Pharaoh, let my people go, the Hebrews,

to come serve him in the wilderness and worship God. Moses then states that he is the Lord and

strikes the Nile with the rod, turning it to blood and killing all of the fish in the river. The

Egyptians now can not drink blood from the river. Even though the Nile and all of the water of

Egypt was turned to blood, the Pharaoh still would not let the people of Israel go.

The Pharaoh creates his own suffering because he was cruel to the Hebrews and did not

let them go. After all of the water in Egypt has turned to blood, the Pharaoh faced 8 more
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plagues, each one becoming increasingly worse than the previous. The Pharaoh had to endure

swarms of frogs, gnats, flies, and locust. Also boils and cattle disease, hail, and daylong

darkness. Although, even throughout all of the torture the Pharaoh still remained the same after

all of the plagues, still resisting to let the Hebrews depart with Moses into the wilderness to

worship God. Until the Lord says to Moses, Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and

upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence; when he lets you go, he will drive you away

completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask, every man of his neighbor and

every woman of her neighbor , jewelry of silver and gold(118). This one last plague was that

every firstborn in Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of the Pharaoh to the firstborn of the maids.

After this final plague had passed through Egypt. The Pharaoh told the Hebrews and Moses to

leave and not to come back, because the Pharaoh had lost his firstborn and could not take

anymore harm to him and his people.

The Pharaoh had to suffer through all of the plagues in order for the Hebrews to be free.

Therefore the Pharaohs suffering is the most important in the Bible because, without his

suffering, the Hebrews would have never been freed from Egypt and would never have been able

to go into the wilderness with Moses and worship God. The story would not have been able to

continue without the suffering of the Pharaoh.