What is the context?
God tells Moses and Aaron to take soot from a furnace, and Moses throws it into the air in Pharaoh’s sight. It becomes fine dust, and festering boils break out on people and animals. The account moves from earlier disturbances and losses into painful affliction of their bodies.
The magicians are affected too and cannot stand before Moses. Those who had tried to match the signs cannot protect themselves from this judgment. The USCCB notes observe that the exact disease is uncertain; the passage describes the sores and their effect.
The LORD hardens Pharaoh’s heart, and he does not listen. This fulfills the warning God gave before Moses returned to confront him.
How is this passage commonly understood?
The magicians’ inability to stand is understood as a public exposure of their limits. The explanation of God hardening Pharaoh remains a point of difference. Calvin emphasizes God actively governing the outcome while Pharaoh remains willingly resistant. Wesley understands it as judgment upon repeated self-hardening, with God giving Pharaoh over and permitting Satan to blind and harden him. These are the teachers’ different explanations of the action named in verse 12.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
A later parallel appears in Revelation 16:2, where painful sores fall upon those who bear the beast’s mark and worship its image. Both passages use bodily affliction within an account of God judging resistance to Him.
The parallel connects this plague with the wider biblical warning about judgment and misplaced allegiance. In Exodus, the people who had relied on their magic cannot escape the sores themselves; in Revelation, the allegiance attached to the judgment is made explicit. The circumstances differ, but both accounts expose the failure of powers that oppose God.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.