When Moses turns the water of the Nile to blood, the Egyptians don’t have any water to drink.  Do the Israelites?  We’re not told.  In the second plague, frogs creep from the Nile and fill the land of Egypt.  Do they infest Goshen, where the Israelites live?  Again, we’re not told.

It’s not until the third plague that Yahweh sets apart Goshen to protect Israel from the plague of insects. Apparently, the Israelites suffer along with Egyptians during the first two plagues.  When Yahweh comes to deliver Israel, he first curses both Israel and Egypt.  Why?

The plagues are Yahweh’s weapons in his war against the gods of Egypt.  When Yahweh launches His invasion, Israel has become Egyptian by worshipping Egypt’s gods.  Yahweh delivers Israel from Egypt, but first he has to shatter Israel’s own idols. The plagues prove to Pharaoh that Yahweh is the living God; but Yahweh has to show His own people that idols are nothing.

Every exodus is a war against idols, and every deliverance begins when God breaks the gods we’ve place before Him.  If you are hoping to be freed from some Egypt, from some slavery, from some power that you can’t overcome on your own, expect the Lord to begin by attacking the idols that you have embraced so closely that you don’t know where you end and the idol begins.  To bring us out of Egypt He has to first extract the Egypt out of us.

It may feel as if the Lord is attacking you, but His aim is to pry you from your idols, so that you can throw them aside and follow Him through the wilderness to the promised land.