By Water & Blood

Questions on Exodus 18: Why God allowed the sorcerers to do the same

Why then did God allow the sorcerers to do the same things as Moses?

There are some even now among those who live in impiety who say that the divine Moses worked wonders by sorcery. For this reason God granted the sorcerers to do certain things, so that the difference might be shown. For they themselves changed the rods into serpents; but Moses’ rod swallowed theirs. And they too changed the water into blood, but they were unable to bring the water back to its former nature. And they brought forth the frogs, yet they could not also rid the Egyptians’ houses of them. For disciplining the Egyptians he also granted the sorcerers to work; but for stopping the punishment, no longer. For when the king of the Egyptians, being punished by God, was not content with the God-sent plagues but also ordered the sorcerers to increase the punishment, through these too God punished him, almost saying: since you delight in being punished, I discipline you both through my servants and punish you through your own. But seeing him harden still more, he checked their working; and those who had brought forth the greater creature, the frog, were unable to bring forth the smallest, the gnat, but called the plague the finger of God. The boils, however, he also brought upon their bodies, so that both they and their senseless king might learn that they not only cannot check the God-sent plagues, but are themselves punished together with the others.

It is therefore shameless to say that Moses worked wonders by some magic, when the magicians cry out that the signs were of divine power. For if what was done by him were illusion, they too ought to have produced an illusion and exposed their fellow craftsman; but as it is they cry out explicitly, “This is the finger of God.”