Group Exercise--Plagues of Exodus

Group Activity Structural Description of the Plagues of Exodus

The task of structural description asks you to give the closest, most detailed description you can of a text or thing--in this case, the description of the ten plagues visited on Egypt by God. There are many similarities between the plagues--each features God's announcement of the plague, followed by a description of the plague itself, and the response of the Egyptians--but there are slight differences which indicate shifts in meaning from one plague to another. This exercise should help us to see how the plagues work as a structural whole and what this proliferation of signs means in the context of Exodus.

Choose one member of the group to record the group's consensus. As we might not have time to finish consideration of this material in today's class, the conclusions of your group should also be brought to class on Friday.

For each of the plagues assigned to your group, perform the following tasks:

divide it into discreet parts (indicated by chapter and verse number)
name each part with a label that summarizes the function of that part
distinguish between elements that seem alike but are slightly different by including the necessary details

One challenge of this assignment is to account for as many details of the text as you can, so that we derive the best idea of how this list of plagues works.