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Knowing that "There Will Be Blood" is from Exodus 7:19 started me on a journey into the symbolism of this movie. Think of HT, the baby left in a basket and orphaned when his father is killed in the first well accident. Is the baby Moses? Like Moses he lives in Daniel, the Pharaoh's midst, an alien (deaf) most of his life, until he rejects the cruely of his father who has tortured him since he was stricken deaf in another well accident.
The notion of water turning to blood was a trick, one of many, that God suggested the Jews use to convince the Pharaoh that theirs was the true God and that if the Jews were not released the Egyptians would suffer. In this film Daniel, the Pharaoah (?) feigns accepting God at the urging of a false prophet --the very man (Paul-Ely) who shows him the way to the oil. But Daniel never believes. For, how could he believe in an obvious charlatan's God. In the end he does unmask the false prophet, and though we may be glad he does, his murderous rage destroys our sympathy with anything positive in his motives.
Now I must study Exodus, read "Oil", and look at some of Stanley Kubrick's movies again to understand more about the filmic muse and the narrative sources of this fine movie.