Week 12 Psalm 78
Yesterday in picking & choosing I tried comparing the official version of The Plagues of Egypt Story in Exodus with a condensed version in Psalm 78. So anyway just as my reading-time ran out I spotted a cross-reference to Psalm 105 in the margin of my bible. I jotted it down and looked at it today and it turned out to be a pretty nice coincidence because Psalm 105 is another long History Psalm – just like 78 – and about halfway through it the writer started talking about…The Plagues of Egypt!
I’d already made a table comparing Exodus 7-11 and Psalm 78 – looking for similarities / differences in the list of plagues. So today I added a third column: “Plagues in Psalm 105”. Here’s the plagues I found there: Darkness Water-to-blood Frogs Flies Gnats Hail Locusts Death-of-firstborn. Eight of them.
Except for Darkness everything was roughly in the same order as 78.
In Psalm 78 Asaph skipped Gnats Animal-Plague Boils & Darkness.
The Psalm 105 writer also left out Boils & Animal-Plague – but included Gnats & Darkness
I can’t figure why some plagues were left off these lists. Can’t figure why Boils & Animal-Plagues were left off both lists. In the last couple of thousand years there’s likely been some creative guesses about why. But even good guesses are still in the guess category. So I wonder how much farther I’d be for guessing.
Note: It turns out that Psalm 106 is another long History Psalm too. I did a quick scan. I think it skipped the Ten Plagues completely.