God's Seventh Killing: "Hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die."

After God's unsuccessful attempt to kill Moses, he gets back to what he does best: mass murder.

But before getting into that, he decides to show off a bit with the amazing magic tricks that he taught to Moses. So Moses and Aaron do their tricks for the Pharaoh.

First Aaron performs the rod to serpent trick. But Pharaoh's magicians know that trick, too. Still, it ends well, since Aaron's rod/snake swallows theirs.

And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. Exodus 7:10-12

Even with such a great trick, the Pharaoh was still unconvinced. But then I guess that was because God hardened his heart again.

And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them. Exodus 7:13

But enough with the tricks. It's time for God to get serious. He begins with the famous ten plagues of Egypt.

Here are the first six.

1. Rivers turned to blood. (Pharaoh's magicians did this one too.)

2. Frogs. (The magicians know the frog trick too!)

3. Lice. (This is the first trick that the magicians couldn't do. I guess lice are harder to make than frogs.)

4. Flies (continuing the frogs and lice theme)

5. All cattle in Egypt die.

6. Boils and blains upon man and beast.

The Bible doesn't say whether anyone died from the first six plagues. Rivers of blood; frogs, lice, flies, dead animals as far as you can see; and boils covering every person and animal in Egypt. These things were probably unpleasant. But did it kill anyone? There's just no way of knowing.

But the Bible is clear about the seventh plague: hail.

Upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die. ... So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous... And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast. Exodus 9:19-25

So God killed everybody in Egypt who was out and about that day with fire and hail (except "in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were"). But how many people would that have been?

Well, Wikipedia says the Egyptian population to be 3 - 6 million at the time the Exodus supposedly happened. So if maybe 10% of the Egyptians were in the field at the time, that would mean that about 300 - 600 thousand would have been killed by God's hailstorm.

So I'll use 300,000.

---

Note: I originally used 30,000, but as busterggi pointed out in the comments, "Ancient Egypt was an agricultural society, almost everyone worked outdoors. Better set that estimate at more like 60%, remember women & children also worked in the fields."

So I bumped it up to 300,000, which is still probably a bit low.