Ten Plagues of Egypt

A recent discussion on the Passover raised a question in my mind.

Before God killed the first born children, he sent nine other plagues. to Egypt .

1. Water turned to blood
2. Frogs
3. Gnats
4. Wild animals capable of harming people and livestock
5. Pestilence (diseases which exterminated the Eagyptian horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep and goats).
6. Incurable boils
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness for three days that was so thick people could actually feel it.

None of those plagues achieved the goal of getting the Israelite slaves freed so that they could leave Egypt.

Then with the tenth plague - the killing of the firstof each Egyptian family - that the goal was finallyachieved.

The question is that since God can see into the future,why bring the first nine plagues?

God MUST have known that they weren't going to accomplish anything. So why bring them in the first place?

Most of them cause some amount of pain and suffering to humans or animals. Yet God should have known that there was absolutely no point to having them take place.

Clearly God was saying to Himself, "This isn't going to accomplish anything but I'm going to bring another plague just so people can suffer".

So is God cruel? Incompetent? Or both?

There are no other alternatives.

Of course if you accept the obvious answer - none of this really happened - God can be perfect again.

Even the tenth plague - the one that go the slaves released - is very questionable in terms of moral values. Many of the first born victims were, undoubtedly, young innocent children. Surely there were better alternatives than killing them. One such alternative would be puttingthe children into a coma until the slaves were released and had safely acrossed the Red Sea. At that point the children could have been awakened.

So even with that plague, God is cruel, not very competent or both - **IF** you believe in that the Biblical story is accurate.

I don't expect any creationists to answer this question.After all there are no answers.

But I do wonder why they don't ask themselves such questions.