The Amazing Livestock of Egypt

Number 7 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:

by Farrell Till

The tit-for-tat premise in the biblical story of the Egyptian plagues continued until Aaron struck the dust of the ground with his staff (Ex. 8:16-17) and brought forth an  infestation of lice or gnats or mosquitoes or maggots (pick your translation). At this point, Pharaoh's magicians, after trying with no success to produce lice (gnats, mosquitoes, maggots), threw in the towel and said, "This is the finger of God!" (Ex. 8:19). Yeah, sure! Only in the Twilight Zone would sorcerers, who had matched Aaron and Moses tit for tat in changing all the water of Egypt into blood and frog for frog in the second plague, have been deterred by a comparatively simple little thing like bringing forth lice (gnats, mosquitoes, maggots). If I had been Pharaoh, I would have given those magicians their walking papers on the spot. After all, what is calling forth a swarm or two of lice or gnats (mosquitoes, maggots) compared to changing all the water in Egypt into blood after all the water in Egypt had already been turned to blood? If nothing else, they could have faked it, waved their hands, said an enchantment or two, tossed some dust into the air, and then pointed at some of Yahweh's lice or gnats and claimed that they had conjured them up. Talk about lack of imagination!

With Pharaoh's sorcerers out of the contest, Moses and Aaron now had free rein, which wasn't quite so free as the Twilight-Zone imagination of the Exodus writer, who piled more absurdities onto prior absurdities as the plagues continued. When Pharaoh appeared to weaken under the plague of flies, Moses prayed for Yahweh to take away the flies tomorrow (!), but after the flies were gone, Pharaoh hardened his heart again. So Moses brought down a pestilence upon the livestock of Egypt, "the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks" (9:3). As pestilences go, this one was a biggie, because "all the livestock of the Egyptians died" (9:6). Under normal conditions, this would have spelled doom for the Egyptian livestock industry, but we must remember that normal conditions never existed in the Twilight Zone. So when Moses inflicted the plague of boils on the land, no one in the Twilight Zone of biblical fundamentalism seems at all surprised to read that the boils afflicted "animals throughout the land of Egypt" as well as humans (9:9-10).

One might logically assume that since all the livestock of the Egyptians had been wiped out by the previous pestilence, these animals inflicted with boils had to be dogs, cats, squirrels, and other species not considered livestock, but such was not the case. When Moses warned the Egyptians that a plague of hail was about to come, he advised them to take their "livestock and everything that [they had] in the open field" to a "secure place" (9:19). We rationalistic simpletons must remember that in the Twilight Zone, all doesn't mean all, so when the Bible says that all the livestock of Egypt died, that didn't mean that all the livestock of Egypt died; otherwise, why would Moses have afterwards warned the Egyptians to take their livestock from the fields and shelter them from the hail that was to come? You just have to understand how things are in the Twilight Zone.

Although Pharaoh was spending a lot of time hardening his heart while Moses and Aaron were doing their stuff, the ordinary, man-on-the-street Egyptian must have taken the warning to shelter the livestock very seriously, because the hail that came was unlike any that had ever fallen on Egypt "since it became a nation" (9:24). It struck down "everything that was in the open field throughout all the land of Egypt, both human and animal" (9:25), yet after it was over and the subsequent plague of locusts had devoured "the last remnant left after the hail," there were still livestock alive to die in the plague that killed the firstborn throughout the land of Egypt. That couldn't have happened, could it, unless most of the Egyptians had heeded Moses' warning and sheltered their livestock? Or maybe it could. If livestock were still alive after all the livestock had died from the pestilence, there is no reason why some livestock couldn't have been alive after all the livestock had been killed by hail. We must remember that we are talking about events that happened in the Twilight Zone.

At any rate, at least some of the amazing livestock of Egypt were still alive to die in the plague sent down on the firstborn of Egypt. Yahweh being Yahweh, of course, was not about to let dumb brutes escape his wrath, so when he sent the plague to kill all the firstborn, he naturally included "all the firstborn of the livestock" (11:5; 12:29). It's a pity that such resilience as that which resided in the genes of the amazing livestock of Egypt didn't survive until modern times, and we have to wonder why it didn't. If Yahweh's throwing everything he had against them couldn't wipe them out, then pray tell what eventually did? Anyway, we can imagine, in this age of genetic know-how, how simple it would be to eradicate famine if only we had that gene for resilience to breed into our modern livestock.

And wouldn't you know it? After the pestilence had killed all "the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks" throughout all the land of Egypt, after the hail had pelted "every herb of the field" (9:25), after the locusts had devoured "the last remant" of foliage left by the hail (10:5), and after the death angel had smitten "all the firstborn of the livestock," Pharaoh somehow managed to raise an army of "six hundred picked chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt" and other "horsemen" (14:6-28) to pursue the Israelites to the Red Sea. None of those horses, of course, were the "firstborn."

It could have happened only in the Twilight Zone.