So Moses and Aaron did even as the Lord had commanded. And he lifted up the staff and struck the water that was in the the Nile, in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, and all the water that was in the Nile was turned to blood.The plagues begin.
The vitality of water makes this, to me, one of the worst of the plagues. According to the text, every drop of water in any container was turned to blood, and it remained this way for seven days. A person can survive without water for three days under normal circumstances. Given the heat of Egypt, even in the Delta area, I would suspect this rule of thumb holds true. So suddenly you're looking at four days with the risk of dying of thirst. Most of the other plagues are more towards annoying than truly dangerous to the civilization, but the risks involved in losing your water supply are huge.
So, while you are going into the early stages of dehydration and possibly heat stroke, you and your neighbors have to go out and dig emergency wells, just to survive. I don't know what level the water table is in that area (probably pretty shallow, given the proximity to the river), but making a usable well takes careful work, to avoid contaminating your water with the surrounding soil. Not something you want to be doing when you're suffering from possible muscle weakness or dementia. I wonder how many died from this plague because, to quote an old poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "water, water every where, nor any drop to drink."
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