Exodus chapter 7

1 Then the LORD said to Moses, See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.

I was reading up on this earlier, and one snippet of information I read was about the fact that the Egyptians worshipped the Nile, therefore by sending the plague of blood first, God was executing judgment on the gods of the Egyptians before He turned his attention to the people. It also put forward the idea that one of the reasons the Israelites left Egypt so wealthy was because the Egyptians had to buy water from them as there was no other way to get water that did not turn to blood.

Pharaoh was considered to be a god, and here, the Lord is telling Moses that he will make him as a god to Pharaoh. In that way, Pharaoh would see Moses as his equal, someone of the same standing with just as much power at his hands as Pharaoh had. Just as Aaron was the prophet for Moses, so the magicians were the prophets for Pharaoh.

The magicians of Pharaoh could do the same as Aaron, either by illusion and trickery or through satanic powers as they worshipped gods of the underworld as part of their religion. They too were able to turn their staffs into snakes (although Aaron's snake swallowed theirs!) and water into blood. They could not, however, turn the blood back into water and on reading this passage again, I realised that it doesn't actually say that the Nile turned back into water. It just says that seven days passed from when Aaron struck the Nile. Now when did the Nile, the other rivers, canals and so on turn back to water? I mean, we know they obviously did, but the bible doesn't, as far as I can see here, actually say. Also, the seven day period is significant, because seven is the number of completeness, so maybe the Nile turned back to water after seven days?

Either way, it is now a case of Moses trusting completely in God, obeying Him, and relying on Him in the battle with Pharaoh and the magicians for the lives of the Israelites.