The ten plagues that struck the Egyptians and culminated in the watery destruction of Pharaoh’s army in the depths of the Red Sea (Exodus 7–12) are the stuff of Cecil B. De Mille extravaganzas. But the story of the ten plagues is far more than grist for the Hollywood scriptwriters’ mill: As commentators on the Bible have long noted, the plague narrative is a tightly structured tale with many layers of meaning. Ziony Zevit joins this distinguished line of biblical exegetes with “Three Ways to Look at the Ten Plagues.” Zevit examines two plausible explanations for the plagues—that they […]
