Plague

A plague, in Scripture, is an affliction sent by God — epidemic disease, but also hail, thunder, and sudden death — that falls on a people as an act of judgment. The text applies the word to the hail and thunder over Egypt (Exodus 9:28–29), to the death of the firstborn “at midnight” (Exodus 12:29–30), to the deaths of the spies who “died by the plague before Yahweh” (Numbers 14:37), and to the outbreak in the camp that Aaron halts with incense (Numbers 16:46). The Hebrew word behind “plague” in these narratives carries the sense of a blow or a striking down, and that is how the text presents it: not as misfortune but as a stroke delivered by a hand.

Scripture consistently frames plague as Yahweh’s own action, with a stated purpose. Moses tells Pharaoh the hail will stop “that you may know that the earth is Yahweh’s” (Exodus 9:29), and the confrontation turns on Pharaoh’s refusal to “humble yourself before me” (Exodus 10:3). The plague on the spies falls “before Yahweh” (Numbers 14:37), and Aaron names its source plainly: “wrath has gone out from Yahweh! The plague has begun” (Numbers 16:46). The same hand falls on Israel as on Egypt, which is one reason the concept cannot be read simply as judgment on outsiders.

Plague in these accounts is also bounded and can be stayed. Moses intercedes and the thunder ceases (Exodus 9:28–29); Aaron makes atonement and the plague is stopped (Numbers 16:46); and when the destroying angel stretches out his hand toward Jerusalem, “Yahweh relented of the disaster” and says, “It is enough. Now withdraw your hand” (2 Samuel 24:16). The text presents intercession, atonement, and divine relenting as real within the plague narratives, not as afterthoughts.

Revelation takes up the same vocabulary for the end of the age: the two witnesses have power “to strike the earth with every plague” (Revelation 11:6), and the temple fills with smoke “until the seven plagues of the seven angels would be finished” (Revelation 15:8). The book closes by warning that God will add “the plagues which are written in this book” to anyone who adds to its words, and will take away the offender’s part in the tree of life (Revelation 22:18–19). Christian traditions differ markedly here: some read these plagues as a literal future sequence, others as symbolic portrayals of divine justice against evil, and still others as a typological replay of the Exodus, while traditions also differ over whether plagues function as present-day judgment at all or belong to God’s secret counsel.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.