Sunday Nuggets: The Pharaoh Of Egypt, By Uchenna Obaji

Since everyone that ascended the traditional stool in ancient Egypt was called pharaoh, it is difficult to differentiate one pharaoh from another. But the scriptures are very clear, the pharaoh that reigned at the time of Joseph was different from the whose sad contest with Moses represented the darkest moment in the history of Egypt.

At the time of Joseph, the pharaoh was humble and opened to divine ideas capable of preserving nations in many years of famine. Even as a heathen, he didn't struggle with the idea that God could chose an alien fugitive to address the affairs of his kingdom and beyond. He recognised the grace upon Joseph and allowed his God to preserve them.

The pharaoh that reigned at the time of Moses was profane, amoral and arrogant. His failure and the calamity he brought upon the nation of Egypt is a sad reminder that a single bad leader is capable of sinking a nation no matter what their predecessors had achieved.

Pharaoh was privy to God's agenda for his people - a privilege he took for granted. He didn't doubt it, he only felt that he was strong enough to wrestle and resist God.  As the fusillades of national disaster kept buffeting Egypt, her citizens turned to one another and mourned together. They didn't know that it was their king who was experimenting with their lives.

The signs were there that Moses was representing a divine authority; he subdued all the magicians all that pharaoh trusted but the king arrogantly thought it was weakness to bow to higher authority. He watched his people in agony; every family lost their farm to locust and firstborn to death before he accepted defeat.

But that was for some hours, he later gathered whatever was left of his strongest men and military and pursued Israelis down to the red sea where no one returned to tell him the story. That was how a bad leader made a shipwreck of nation that once fed other nations.