Exodus states its own thesis about the plagues: 'against all the GODS OF EGYPT I will execute judgments — I am Jehovah' (12:12). Each blow lands on something Egypt held divine. The NILE was worshiped as HAPI, god of the inundation and giver of abundance, and bound up with Osiris — it is turned to blood (7:20). HEQET, the frog-headed goddess of birth, supplies the second plague, her sacred creature made unbearable by multiplication. The cattle plague strikes at HATHOR and the Apis bull; the boils at Imhotep and the healing deities; the darkness at RA himself, the sun-god from whom Pharaoh claimed descent; and the death of the firstborn at Pharaoh's own divinity and his heir. ⚠️ The correspondences are drawn with differing confidence by different writers — some are secure, others are neat schemes imposed later — but the framing is the Bible's own, not a modern invention.