Israel in Egypt premiered at London's King's Theatre in the Haymarket on April 4, 1739 with Élisabeth Duparc "La Francesina", William Savage, John Beard, Turner Robinson, Gustavus Waltz, and Thomas Reinhold.

Israel in Egypt and Messiah also share the unusual characteristic among Handel oratorios in that, unlike the others, they do not have casts of named characters singing dialogue and performing an unstaged drama, but contain many choruses set to biblical texts.

"[3][5] Other composers Handel parodied in Israel in Egypt were Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Caspar Kerll, Francesco Antonio Urio, Nicolaus Adam Strungk and Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow.

Much more than the previous works by Handel which were designed, like Israel in Egypt, to attract paying audiences to a commercial venture in a privately owned theatre, the piece lays overwhelming emphasis on the chorus.

[7] However, London audiences at that time were not used to such extensive choral pieces presented as commercial entertainment, and perhaps particularly the opening dirge, of about thirty minutes in length, for the death of Joseph, adapted from the funeral anthem for a recently deceased Queen, contributed to the failure of Israel in Egypt at its first performance.

[3][4] Handel quickly revised the work, omitting the opening "Lamentations" section and adding Italian-style arias of the kind contemporary audiences expected and enjoyed.

A series of plagues falls on Egypt: the rivers turn to blood; a plague of frogs affects the land; lice crawled on man and beast; wild animals destroy everything; the Egyptian livestock get sick and die; blotches and blisters break out on the skin of man and beast; hailstorms blight the country; locusts appear and destroy all the crops; palpable darkness descends; and, finally, the eldest born sons of all the Egyptians are struck down dead.