What is the most powerful part of God? His fingers do miracles and cast out demons, His breath gave us life, His right hand and extended arm do battle for us, and His face will kill you. Okay, I am not going there just because. So, back to the title of this post – The Finger of God. (Yes, I left out a few like His heart and voice.)

This study is from my Deuteronomy 911 background research. With His finger, God wrote the commands, laws, and instructions on a pair of stone tablets for His people to live in a community as free people. There are two references to this story: Deuteronomy 9:10 and Exodus 31:18. The phrase “finger of God” is used in two other places; this is consistent through all of the translations I looked at. Altogether, I think, they tell an interesting story.

Exodus 8:19 – Pharaoh’s magicians told him that the plague of gnats was from the finger of God. I looked at several commentaries and stopped! The main thought was that the magicians of Egypt would not have said that or believed in Moses’ God. Why not? They had to go get new walking sticks because the rod of God had swallowed theirs. They maybe did turn water to blood, but a bowl full is not the Nile and they could not undo Moses’ act. (Personally, I am thinking red coloring, but we will stay with blood.) The Egyptians had a frog goddess, so, who knows what experiments they had done to get frogs out of the water? Once again, they could offer no relief to the people. As one commentary noted, the gnats required them to create life. Jannes and Jambes (2 Timothy 3:8) were not up to that task and they knew they had been beaten. (See Frogs, Yeast, Plagues, The Wonders that Plagued Egypt, and Reflections)

A very common thought about fingers in our reference materials and commentaries is they point or scratch, and they do. Another use for the finger, in ancient times, was a unit of measurement or etsba. This is the width of the finger and not the length. Etsba or Strong’s H676 is the Hebrew for finger, you will have to look to find the measurement part. My Strong’s reference table lists a finger as a unit of length but gives no Hebrew name, and the given length has to be a finger width.

So, what if they were acknowledging the power of God and also saying this may just be a small measurement of that power? I doubt they converted, but other Egyptians did believe and got their people and animals out of the fields before the hailstorm (9:20). The magicians lasted until Exodus 9:11 and are not heard from again.

After they made that statement, God started treating Israel and Egypt differently. This leads to my BIG TAKEAWAY from this post. The three times the finger of God is used He is working to start His kingdom of priests and the holy nation. This one is measuring the Egyptians as guilty of enslaving His people and He will free them.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Exodus 31:18 and Deuteronomy 9:10

God used His extended finger to write on two stone tablets the rules His holy nation needed to live as free men and women. STOP! Think about that for a minute or two. The Father wrote for His people (twice) the commandments He had spoken to them. How do we know that God is everything He said He was in Exodus 34: 6+7? Moses broke all of the commandments at the same and God still loved and used him. If you want a good study, find the traditions and legends that surround those tablets.

Moses wrote a book; God wrote stone tablets. Why stone and not rock? Rock is unaltered and in its natural state. Stone has been shaped for man to use.

Luke 11:20

This verse says it all, the extended finger of God casting out demons by the power of God measures the Kingdom is nearby. Daktylos is the word for finger, Strong’s G1147, and it has Hebrew roots. Luke does not name the crowd in the passage, but they sound like the Pharisees. Because of that, I am sure that this is one of Jesus’ multilevel revelations for them. “Frogs” getting pushed out by the finger of God. The same powerful finger that wrote the Law is bringing in the kingdom of God. He is also claiming to have the power of the finger of God, even as He ignores their demand for a sign from Heaven. Yes, the Pharisees were not happy with that righteous reminder of the finger of God.