What Really Made the Nile Turn Red?

It was the first of the Ten Plagues – and it wasn’t pretty. The great River was bleeding and undrinkable. In a land with no rain, people were desperate. It was an ecological disaster – and it became even worse.

Hungary's Red Sludge
Photo Credit: Newscom

There were no industries to blame – no BP Oil Spill, no Hungarian Alumina tailings leak. This was a natural disaster with serious religious undertones.

Scientifically, there are various perfectly natural explanations. The Nile normally floods every year in late summer. If the annual flood were excessively high, it may have brought microorganisms such as Pfiesteria piscicida which could redden and poison the river and cause conditions that would kill the fish. Epidemiological theories and counter-theories abound.

But the Bible brings its ethical lens over this natural event and sees behind the blood-red Nile the even bloodier hand of Pharaoh, his arrogant heart and supposed divinity, his scorn for slaves, his policies of injustice, his refusal to honor the supreme authority of Yahweh. The corrupt social and religious ecology of Egypt led to the ecological disaster of the bleeding river.

Social well-being requires – to borrow the words of Hosea a thousand years later, justice, mercy and humility. Through Moses, Yahweh first gave Pharaoh leave to release his Hebrew slaves. When Pharaoh refused, God upped the ante.

Pharaoh was believed to be responsible for the Nile’s life-giving flood-season. The annual inundation was called ‘the arrival of Hapi’, the spirit or god of the Nile. No wonder that’s where Yahweh began. Turning the Nile to blood meant that Yahweh was shedding Hapi’s lifeblood.

The plague lasted a week followed by an infestation of frogs before Pharaoh pled for mercy. When Yahweh relented, Pharaoh reversed himself, and the showdown intensified. Through nine more rounds, strike after strike of shock and awe that the Bible calls ‘signs and wonders’. As signs they pointed to the impotence of Pharaoh and his magicians and the whole pantheon of Egypt’s gods. As wonders they leave us shaking our heads at the sheer folly and stubborn pride of a king who refused to accept God’s supreme authority and insistence on justice for all.

This ancient story of natural disaster resonates with timeless truth. As Lynn White Jr. wrote in Science in 1967, human ecology reflects our beliefs about our nature and our destiny. Our spiritual attitudes generate effects in the natural and social world. What we sow, we reap.

No wonder the Bible calls us to care for the whole of creation in a spirit of humility, gratitude and love.