Now that we’ve given out one hundred copies of the NLT Study Bible, we’re already getting feedback from readers on other materials in the Study Bible. One reader noticed that, with regard to the plagues in Exodus 7–11, we don’t say anything by way of explanation for how the plagues happened. He was pleased with that decision, because to explain the plagues by means of natural causes might suggest that they are not miraculous.

That is, in fact, why we did what we did. It was a hard decision — after all, it is natural to try to understand how things happened, and there is no doubt that God uses natural means to accomplish his purposes. And I suppose there is nothing wrong in principle with seeking to understand the means that God uses on various occasions. But in the end we believe that the plagues were supernatural manifestations of God’s power, not really explainable by natural means. Our study notes say as much:

7:3 The Lord would use miraculous signs and wonders to convince Pharaoh, just as he had promised to use signs to convince the Israelites that they should follow Moses (3:12; 4:5, 8, 9).

7:5 my powerful hand: A further revelation of God would take place in the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, revealing God’s incomparable power.

If the plagues were miraculous manifestations and signs of God’s power, there really doesn’t seem to be much point in looking for natural causes.

In addition, our purpose in developing the NLT Study Bible was to help people understand Scripture as much as possible in the same light as the original readers. The original readers would not have asked about whether or not a particular miracle could have occurred, or how it could have occurred by means of natural processes. They did not have a modern, naturalistic worldview that discounts and explains away the supernatural. Instead, they had a polytheistic worldview in which various gods controlled the various forces of nature. Exodus was addressing that worldview, by showing how God is supreme over all the forces of nature, without any regard for so-called gods. So we focused our notes in this section on the ways in which God, through the plagues, was communicating the impotence of the gods of Egypt and displaying his own power over all things. Here is a sample:

7:8–11:10 God showed that all the Egyptians’ so-called gods, supposed to be sources of life, were really sources of death apart from the life-giving power of the Lord (see 12:12; 18:11).

7:14-25 The first plague was the plague on the Nile, when the whole river turned to blood (7:20). The Egyptians correctly understood that without the Nile there would be no life in Egypt. They worshiped the Nile as the Mother of Egypt, but God showed that life is his to give or withhold.

8:1-15 The second plague was the plague of frogs (8:2). The Egyptians gave special reverence to amphibians because of their ability to live in two different worlds; Egyptians were deeply concerned with survival in the next world, after death. God showed that frogs have no special hold on life.

God was in the process of taking the people of Israel out of Egypt and making them his people, the nation of Israel. They had swallowed much of the water of the Nile and had incorporated Egyptian gods into their own thinking (see, e.g., Exod 32). So the Lord was showing them that he alone is the Lord.

In many ways we are like the Egyptians (or, the Israelites in Egypt). We live in a world in which there are many sources of “life” and “power” that people revere. But when we come to the Lord by faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, he shows us in unique and wonderful ways that he holds all power over all the forces of heaven and earth. We can trust him and look to him for all things, because he alone is God.