Questions From Readers

● In the first of the ten plagues Moses turned all the water of Egypt into blood. The Egyptian priests then appeared to imitate the feat. But where could they have gotten water?

Regarding the first plague, Jehovah told Moses: “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your rod and stretch your hand out over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their Nile canals and over their reedy pools and over all their impounded waters, that they may become blood.’ And there will certainly be blood in all the land of Egypt and in the wooden vessels and in the stone vessels.” Moses and Aaron obeyed, “and the blood came to be in all the land of Egypt.”​—Ex. 7:19-21.

The account next says: “Nevertheless, the magic-practicing priests of Egypt proceeded to do the same thing with their secret arts.” (Ex. 7:22) So what water did the priests use?

Some commentators have reasoned that the first plague did not affect all the water in Egypt. (Compare Exodus 9:25; 10:5.) They have said that the reference to water in “the wooden vessels and in the stone vessels” does not need to be understood as meaning that all the water already in containers became blood. If this is so, then the point of the final expression in Ex 7 verse nineteen would be that, with the Nile and the water in all its canals and pools having been turned into blood, then, once the unaffected water in containers had been used up, there would be no unaffected water with which to refill them. Hence, according to this line of reasoning, the magic-practicing priests could have performed their trickery on some water that had been taken from the Nile before the plague.

However, there is another possibility that accords with the facts. Exodus 7:24 says: “And all the Egyptians went digging round about the Nile River for water to drink, because they were unable to drink any water of the Nile River.” Unaffected water, then, could apparently be collected by digging wells in the moist soil in the area of the Nile. If Egyptians could obtain drinking water from these wells, perhaps the magic-practicing priests used a limited amount of such water in order to work their magic that had the effect of dissuading Pharaoh from releasing the Hebrews.