LIVING WORD DEVOTIONAL
By Pastor Mensa Otabil
 
Tuesday 21st April 2026

THE SECOND PLAGUE
 
Scripture Reading: Exodus 8

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up on the land of Egypt.’” So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments and brought up frogs on the land of Egypt. Exodus 8:5–7

The second plague struck the waters of Egypt for the second time. God commanded Moses to let Aaron stretch out his rod over the waters of Egypt as before. In the first plague, the waters turned to blood. In the second plague, the waters would produce an excessive number of frogs.
 
In Egypt, the frog was a fertility symbol; and ‘Heqet’, the goddess of resurrection, fertility, and childbirth, had the head of a frog.
 
Having frogs in the waters of Egypt was quite normal. What made this plague unique was the fertility angle to the numbers of frogs to be produced. The Lord God struck the Egyptian god of fertility with the god’s own claim. It was as if the Lord was saying, ‘if you’re god of fertility, see if you can handle this’.  Then out of the waters, frogs sprung up. The Lord probably activated and accelerated the growth of every frog egg laid in the waters. The waters of Egypt started producing frogs on an unprecedented scale.
 
The frogs came out of the water into people’s rooms. This was fertility gone wild. The Lord God sent the claim of the Egyptian gods into overdrive. He showed how powerless they were to even control the events and places that they claimed to rule over. The gods of the Nile could not control what happened in the Nile; neither could the god of fertility stop the frogs from hyper reproduction.
 
How did Pharaoh’s magicians respond? Once again, they simply mimicked God’s work and made a bad situation worse. They could not stop the frogs from multiplying. Instead, they used their powers to add more frogs to the plagues. Their so-called enchantments could not take out what the Lord had brought on the land. They confirmed the fact that any display of power that is not divine only worsens situations.
 
Prayer:

Heavenly Father, disrupt every evil force that operates in my community. Overturn their work. In Jesus’ name, Amen.