Wisdom's Corner
God Against Hapi

People throughout time have worshipped false gods. The Egyptians of the Old Testament were no different. They had many gods that they believed ruled over many different parts of life.

You may have studied enough of the Bible to remember that God's people, the Israelites, had gone to Egypt because of a great famine. Joseph was the Pharoah's (King of Egypt) first assistant. Joseph had the authority of Pharaoh to make many decisions. The Israelites were Joseph's family.

But Joseph died and a Pharaoh came to power who did not like the Israelites. He started treating the Israelites very badly. Eventually after many years God sent Moses, an Israelite, as a messenger to Pharaoh (You may have studied about the life of Moses). Moses and his brother Aaron were to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.

Pharaoh refused to listen to Moses. So God gave Moses and Aaron the power to perform some tremendous miracles to convince Pharaoh that they represented the true God. The first miracle was turning the Nile River water into blood. You can read about this in Exodus chapter Seven.

The Nile waters were blood for seven days. The Egyptians had to dig holes just to try to find water to drink. They normally drank water from the Nile. All of the fish died. The Egyptians ate alot of fresh water fish (They thought eating salt water fish would make them spiritually impure). So they not only got thirsty they got hungry for fish during this week.

But there is more to this story than bad water and dead fish. The Egyptians had a god of the Nile, named Hapi. Hapi was pictured as holding a table on which are vases and flowers and fruit. This was to show that Hapi was the source of all good gifts. The Egyptians had a "Hymn of the Nile" which has the phrase, "Thou art the Lord of the poor and the needy. If thou wert overthrown in the heavens the gods would fall upon their faces and men would perish."

This miracle did indeed demonstrate the fall of Hapi. And it demonstrated the weakness of several other gods which we may discuss in the next issue. Hapi the Egyptian god of the Nile was powerless before the One True God.

I hope this helps you better understand how powerful the One True God is. Yet as powerful and great as He is, He loves each of us. He has given us His word, the Bible, so that we can know what to do to please Him.

Until next time, keep reading and studying your Bible. And if any of this is hard to understand, ask an adult to help you.

Mark McWhorter

Copyright 1999

Published by The Old Paths Bible School
(http://www.oldpaths.org)