The tendency to which reaction, among humankind, the divine is aware of and makes use of, as is evidenced by the spectacle of a plague, or a pestilence, when its origin is providential and when its purpose, in part, is to awe, though of course such an event will function not only as a spectacle, but as a means to an end, as we learn from Exodus, when the Israelites are delivered from slavery in Egypt after Yahweh sends, in terrible numbers, flies and locusts and frogs, and so forth, to punish Pharaoh for failing to heed the words of Moses.