QUOTE : That deliverance entailed not just leaving behind the land of Egypt, but leaving behind the ways of Egypt. Each of the ten plagues was more than just a dramatic sign to Pharaoh that he must release the Hebrews. Each was a symbolic defeat of an Egyptian deity. Osiris, whose bloodstream was believed to be the Nile, bleeds out before his worshipers when Yahweh turns the Nile to blood. In reverence to Heqet, the frog-goddess of birth, Egyptians regarded frogs as sacred and not to be killed. Yahweh slays them by the thousands. Egyptian gods governing fertility, crops, livestock, and health are all shown to be impotent before the mighty outstretched arm of Israel’s God. In the ninth plague of darkness, Yahweh demonstrates his rule over the sun god Ra, whom Pharaoh was believed to embody. And in the final plague, the death of the firstborn, God shows himself supreme over the entire Egyptian pantheon by demonstrating his power over life and death.