The Bible has four instances of the phrase “the finger of God,” three of which are found in the Old Testament and one in the New. It is equated with God’s supernatural power since it has a direct influence on global events. Exodus contains the earliest mention of God’s finger. To get Pharaoh to release the Israelites who had been imprisoned for four centuries, Moses had just let the third plague loose on Egypt. The Lord gave Moses the command to order Aaron to “strike the dust of the earth, so that it may become gnats in all the land of Egypt,” by extending his staff. “This is the finger of God,” the magicians under Pharaoh said to him when they were unable to perform the same miracle.
The term “the finger of God” is also used in Exodus in connection to the stone tablets that Moses was handed. The covenant law, which was “inscribed by the finger of God,” was recorded on these tablets. In Deuteronomy 9:10, Moses recounts the similar scenario. Since God is spirit and does not have “fingers,” it is not appropriate to assume that God physically touched the tablets. Rather, the term “the finger of God” is an anthropomorphism that suggests God caused the commandments to be inscribed on the stone. The 1956 movie The Ten Commandments depicts the writing as coming from a finger of fire, which is probably as good a rendering of the actual act as any. However God accomplished it, the letters were devised and formed by Him, the writing was His, and the engraving on the stones was done by His own power.
The New Testament reference to the finger of God is from Jesus Himself. After freeing a blind and mute man from a demon, Jesus said to His critics, “If I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you”. In a parallel passage, the phrase is the Spirit of God rather than the finger of God. In both accounts, the meaning is that Jesus performed miracles by the overt power of God, the same power that caused the gnats to swarm and the writing to appear on the tablets of stone.
The finger of God is a reference to God’s unlimited power as He intervenes directly in the affairs of men. The working of the finger of God is unmistakable. No device of man can compete with that power, as even the heathen magicians came to recognize in Moses’ day.