Now, although the hardening of Pharaoh on the part of Jehovah was only the complement of Pharaoh's hardening of his own heart, in the verse before us the former aspect alone is presented, because the principal object was not only to prepare Moses for the opposition which he would meet with from Pharaoh, but also to strengthen his weak faith, and remove at the very outset every cause for questioning the omnipotence of Jehovah. If it was by Jehovah Himself that Pharaoh was hardened, this hardening, which He not only foresaw and predicted by virtue of His omnisciencej but produced and inflicted through His omnipotence, could not possibly hinder the performance of His will concerning Israel, but must rather contribute to the realization of His purposes of salvation and the manifestation of His glory (cf. chap. ix. 16, x. 2, xiv. 4, 17, 18).
Vers. 22, 23. In order that Pharaoh might form a true estimate of the solemnity of the divine command, Moses was to make known to him not only the relation of Jehovah to Israel, but also the judgment to which he would be exposed if he refused to let Israel go. The relation in which Israel stood to Jehovah was expressed by God in the words, " Israel is My firstborn son." Israel was Jehovah's son by virtue of his election to be the people of possession (Deut. xiv. 1, 2). This election began with the call of Abraham to be the father of the nation in which all the families of the earth were to be blessed. On the ground of this promise, which was now to be realized in the seed of Abraham by the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, the nation of Israel is already called Jehovah's " son," although it was through the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai that it was first exalted to be the people of Jehovah's possession out of all the nations (xix. 5, 6). The divine sonship of Israel was therefore spiritual in its nature; it neither sprang from the fact that
God, as the Creator of all nations, was also the Creator, or Begetter, and Father of Israel, nor was it founded, as Baumgarten supposes, upon " the physical generation of Isaac, as having its origin, not in the power of nature, but in the power of grace." The relation of God, as Creator, to man His creature, is never referred to in the Old Testament as that of a father to a son; to say nothing of the fact that the Creator of man is Elohim^ and not Jehovah. Wherever Jehovah is called the Father, Begetter, or Creator of Israel (even in Deut. xxxii. 18; Jer. ii. 27; Isa. Ixiv. 8; Mai. i. 6 and ii. 10), the fatherhood of God relates to the election of Israel as Jehovah's people of possession. But the election upon which the vloOecrla of Israel was founded, is not presented in the aspect of a " begetting through the Spirit;" it is spoken of rather as acquiring or buying (i^JP), making ('"i^V), founding or establishing (p3, Deut. xxxii. 6). Even the expressions, " the Rock that begat thee," " God that bare thee" (Deut. xxxii. 18), do not point to the idea of spiritual generation, but are to be understood as referring to the creation; just as in Ps. xc. 2, where Moses speaks of the mountains as "brought forth" and the earth as "born." The choosing of Israel as the son of God was an adoption flowing from the free grace of God, which involved the loving, fatherly treatment of the son, and demanded obedience, reverence, and confidence towards the Father (Mai. i. 6). It was this which constituted the very essence of the covenant made by Jehovah with Israel, that He treated it with mercy and love (Hos. xi. 1; Jer. xxxi. 9, 20), pitied it as a father pitieth his children (Ps. ciii. 13), chastened it on account of its sins, yet did not withdraw His mercy from it (2 Sam. vii. 14, 15; Ps. Ixxxix. 31—35), and trained His son to be a holy nation by the love and severity of paternal discipline. — Still Israel was not only a son, but the ^'first-horn sori*^ of Jehovah, In this title the calling of the heathen is implied. Israel was not to be Jehovah's only son, but simply the first-born, who was peculiarly dear to his Father, and had certain privileges above the rest. Jehovah was about to exalt Israel above all the nations of the earth (Deut. xxviii. 1). Now, if Pharaoh would not let Jehovah's first-born son depart, he would pay the penalty in the life of his own first-bom (cf. xii. 29). In this intense earnestness of the divine command, Moses had a strong support to his faith. If Israel was Jehovah's first-born son, Jehovah could not relinquish him, but must deliver His son from the bondage of Egypt.
Vers. 24-26. But if Moses was to carry out the divine commission v/ith success, he must first of all prove himself to be a faithful servant of Jehovah in his own house. This he was to learn from the occurrence at the inn: an occurrence which has many obscurities on account of the brevity of the narrative, and has received many different interpretations. When Moses was on the way, Jehovah met him at the resting-place (po, see Gen. xlii. 27), and sought to kill him. In what manner, is not stated: whether by a sudden seizure with some fatal disease, or, what is more probable, by some act proceeding directly from Himself, which threatened Moses with death. This hostile attitude on the part of God was occasioned by his neglect to circumcise his son; for, as soon as Zipporah cut off (circumcised) the foreskin of her son with a stone, Jehovah let him go. ")iv="i^v, a rock, or stone, here a stone knife, with which, according to hereditary custom, the circumcision commanded by Joshua was also performed; not, however, because " stone knives were regarded as less dangerous than those of metal," nor because " for symbolical reasons preference was given to them, as a simple production of nature, over the metal knives that had been prepared by human hands and were applied to daily use." For if the Jews had detected any religious or symbolical meaning in stone, they would never have given it up for iron or steel, but would have retained it, like the Ethiopian tribe of the Alnaii, who used stone knives for that purpose as late as 150 years ago; whereas, in the Talmud, the use of iron or steel knives for the purpose of circumcision is spoken of, as though they were universally employed. Stone knives belong to a time anterior to the manufacture of iron or steel; and wherever they were employed at a later period, this arose from a devoted adherence to the older and simpler custom (see my Commentary on Josh. v. 2). From the word "her son^^ it is evident that Zipporah only circumcised one of the two sons of Moses (ver. 20); so that the other, no doubt the elder, had already been circumcised in accordance with the law. Circumcision had been enjoined upon Abraham by Jehovah as a covenant sign for all his descendants; and the sentence of death was pronounced upon any neglect of it, as being a breach of the covenant (Gen. xvii. 14). Although in this passage it is the uncircumcised themselves who are threatened with death, yet in the case of children the punishment fell upon the parents, and first of all upon the father, who had neglected to keep the commandment of God. Now, though Moses had probably omitted circumcision simply from regard to his Midianitish wife, who disliked this operation, he had been guilty of a capital crim^, which God could not pass over in the case of one whom He had chosen to be His messenger, to establish His covenant with Israel. Hence He threatened him with death, to bring him to a consciousness of his sin, either by the voice of conscience or by some word which accompanied His attack upon Moses; and also to show him with what earnestness God demanded the keeping of His commandments. Still He did not kill him; for his sin had sprung from weakness of the flesh, from a sinful yielding to his wife, which could both be explained and excused on account of his position in the Midianite*s house. That Zipporah's dislike to circumcision had been the cause of the omission, has been justly inferred by commentators from the fact, that on Jehovah's attack upon Moses, she proceeded at once to perform what had been neglected, and, as it seems, ^th inward repugnance. The expression, " She threw (the foreskin of her son) at his (Moses') feet," points to this (p y^3n, as in Isa. XXV. 12). The suffix in ivJi (^his feet) cannot refer to the son, not only because such an allusion would give no reasonable sense, but also because the suffix refers to Moses in the immediate context, both before (in in^pn, ver. 24) and after (in ^^p, ver. 26); and therefore it is simpler to refer it to Moses here. From this it follows, then, that the words, " a blood- bridegroom art thou to me," were addressed to Moses, and not to the boy. Zipporah calls Moses a blood-bridegroom, " because she had been compelled, as it were, to acquire and purchase him anew as a husband by shedding the blood of her son" (Glass), "Moses had been as good as taken from her by the deadly attack which had been made upon him. She purchased his life by the blood of her son; she received him back, as it were, from the dead, and married him anew; he was, in fact, a bridegroom of blood to her" {Kurtz). This she said, as the historian adds, after God had let Moses go, niT^Dp, " with reference to the circumcisions." The plural is used quite generally and indefinitely, as Zipporah referred not merely to this one instance, but to circumcision generally. Moses was apparently induced by what had occurred to decide not to take his wife and children with him to Egypt, but to send them back to his father-in-law. We may infer this from the fact, that it was not till after Israel had arrived at Sinai that he brought them to him again (chap, xfiii. 2).
Vers. 27-31. After the removal of the sin, which had excited the threatening wrath of Jehovah, Moses once more received a token of the divine favour in the arrival of Aaron, under the direction of God, to meet him at the Mount of God (chap. iii. 1). To Aaron he related all the words of Jehovah, with which He had sent (commissioned) him (JV^ with a double accusative, as in 2 Sam. xi. 22; Jer. xlii. 5), and all the signs which He had commanded him (p)^ also with a double accusative, as in Gen. vi. 22). Another proof of the favour of God consisted of the believing reception of his mission on the part of the elders and the people of Israel. " The people believed" (J9^l]) when Aaron communicated to them the words of Jehovah to Moses, and did the signs in their presence. " And when they heard that Jehovah had visited the children of Israel, and had looked upon their affliction, they bowed and, worshipped^ {Knobel is wrong in proposing to alter ^Vpc^ into ^npb^, according to the Sept. rendering, koX e')(apri). The faith of the people, and the worship by which their faith was expressed, proved that the promise of the fatJiers still lived in their hearts. And although this faith did not stand the subsequent test (chap, v.), yet, as the first expression of their feelings, it bore witness to the fact that Israel was willing to follow the call of God.
The two events which form the contents of this section, — viz. (1) the visit of Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh to make known the commands of their God, with the harsh refusal of their request on the part of Pharaoh, by an increase of the tributarylabours of Israel (chap, v.); and (2) the further revelations of Jehovah to Moses, with the insertion of the genealogies of Moses and Aaron, — not only hang closely together so far as the subject-matter is concerned, inasmuch as the fresh declara tions of Jehovah to Moses were occasioned by the complaint of Moses that his first attempt had so signally failed, but both of them belong to the complete equipment of Moses for his divine mission. Their visit to Pharaoh was only preliminary in its character. Moses and Aaron simply made known to the king the will of their God, without accrediting themselves by miraculous signs as the messengers of Jehovah, or laying any particular emphasis upon His demand. For this first step was only intended to enlighten Moses as to the attitude of Pharaoh and the people of Israel in relation to the work of God, which He was about to perform. Pharaoh answered the demand addressed to him, that he would let the people go for a few days to hold a sacrificial festival in the desert, by increasing their labours; and the Israelites complained in consequence that their good name had been made abhorrent to the king, and their situation made worse than it was. Moses might have despaired on this account; but he laid his trouble before the Lord, and the Lord filled his despondent heart with fresh courage through the renewed and strengthened promise that He would now for the first time display His name Jehovah perfectly — that He would redeem the children of Israel with outstretched arm and with great judgments— would harden Pharaoh's heart, and do many signs and wonders in the land of Eg}^pt, that the Egyptians might learn through the deliverance of Israel that He was Jehovah, Le* the absolute God, who works with unlimited freedom (cf. p. 75). At the same time God removed the difficulty which once more arose in the mind of Moses, namely, that Pharaoh would not listen to him because of his want of oratorical power, by the assurance, ^' I make thee a god for Pharaoh^ and Aaron shall he thy prophet^^ (chap. vii. 1), which could not fail to remove all doubt as to his own incompetency for so great and severe a task. With this promise Pharaoh was completely given up into Moses' power, and Moses invested with all the plenipotentiary authority that was requisite for the performance of the work entrusted to him.
Chap. V. Pharaoh's answer to the request of Moses AND Aaron. — V^ers. 1-5. When the elders of Israel had listened with gladness and gratitude to the communications of Moses and Aaron respecting the revelation which Moses had received from Jehovah, that He was now about to deliver His people out of their bondage in Egypt; Moses and Aaron proceeded to Pharaoh, and requested in the name of the God of
Israel, that he would let the people of Israel go and celebrate a festival in the wilderness in honour of their God. When we consider that every nation presented sacrifices to its deities, and celebrated festivals in their honour, and that they had all their own modes of worship, which were supposed to be appointed by the gods themselves, so that a god could not be worshipped acceptably in every place; the demand presented to Pharaoh on the part of the God of the Israelites, that he would let His people go into the wilderness and sacrifice to Him, appears so natural and reasonable, that Pharaoh could not have refused their request, if there had been a single trace of the fear of God in his heart. But what was his answer? " Who is Jehovah, that I should listen to His voice, to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah" There was a certain truth in these last words. The God of Israel had not yet made Himself known to him. But this was no justification. Although as a heathen he might naturally measure the power of the God by the existing condition of ilis people, and infer from the impotence of the Israelites that their God must be also weak, he would not have dared to refuse the petition of the Israelites, to be allowed to sacrifice to their God or celebrate a sacrificial festival, if he had had any faith in gods at all. — Ver. 3. The messengers founded their request upon the fact that the God of the Hebrews had met them (XlpJj vid. chap. iii. 18), and referred to the punishment which the neglect of the sacrificial festival demanded by God might bring upon the nation. ^iVaaj'IB: " lest He strike us (attack us) with pestilence or sword.^^ y^B: to strike, hit against any one, either by accident or with a hostile intent; ordinarily construed with 3, also with an accusative, 1 Sam. x. 5, and chosen here probably with reference to K")!?? = "^^JP^ ''Pestilence or sword: " these are mentioned as expressive of a violent death, and as the means employed by the deities, according to the ordinary belief of the nations, to punish the neglect of their worship. The expression " God of the Hebrews," for " God of Israel" (ver. 1), is not chosen as being "more intelligible to the king, because the Israelites were called Hebrews by foreigners, more especially by the Egyptians (i. 16, ii. 6)," as Knohel supposes, but to con vince Pharaoh of the necessity for their going into the desert to keep the festival demanded by their God. In Egypt they might sacrifice to the gods of Egypt, but not to the God of the
Hebrews. — Vers. 4, 5. But Pharaoh would hear nothing of any worship. He believed that the wish was simply an excuse for procuring holidays for the people, or days of rest from their labours, and ordered the messengers off to their slave duties: " Get you unto your burdens^ For as the people were very numerous, he would necessarily lose by their keeping holiday. He called the Israelites " the people of the land,'' not " as being his own property, because he was the lord of the land" (Baumgarten), but as the working class, " land-people," equivalent to " common people," in distinction from the ruling castes of the Egyptians (vid. Jer. Hi. 25; Ezek. vii. 27).
Vers. 6-18. As Pharaoh possessed neither fear of God (evae^eta) nor fear of the gods, but, in the proud security of his might, determined to keep the Israelites as slaves, and to use them as tools for the glorifying of his kingdom by the erection of magnificent buildings, he suspected that their wish to go into the desert was nothing but an excuse invented by idlers, and prompted by a thirst for freedom, which might become dangerous to his kingdom, on account of the numerical strength of the people. He therefore thought that he could best extinguish such desires and attempts by increasing the oppression and adding to their labours. For this reason he instructed his bailiffs to abstain from delivering straw to the Israelites who were engaged in making bricks, and to let them gather it for themselves; but yet not to make the least abatement in the number (njbriD) to be delivered every day. DV3 ^''^^^l', " those who urged the people ouj* were the bailiffs selected from the Egyptians and placed over the Israelitish workmen, the general managers of the work. Under them there were the D''ipb^ (^Ut. writers, ypa/jL/jLaTelsLXX,, from "1^^ to write), who were chosen from the Israelites (vid, ver. 14), and had to distribute the work among the people, and hand it over, when finished, to the royal officers. I^^jn/i pp; to make bricks, not to burn them; for the bricks in the ancient monuments of Egypt, and in many of the pyramids, are not burnt but dried in the sun (Herod, ii. 136; Hengst, Egypt and Books of Moses, pp. 2 and 79 sqq.). ^^?: a denom, verb from ^p_, to gather stubble, then to stubble, to gather (Num. xv. 32, 33). |nri, of uncertain etymology, is chopped straw; here, the stubble that was left standing when the corn was reaped, or the straw that lay upon the ground. This they chopped up and mixed with the clay, to give greater durability to the bricks, as may be seen in bricks found in the oklest monuments (cf. Hgst. p. 79). — Ver. 9. ''Let the work he heavy (press heavily) upon the people^ and they shall make with it (i.e. stick to their work), and not look at lying words^ By " lying words" the king meant the words of Moses, that the God of Israel had appeared to him, and demanded a sacrificial festival from His people. In ver. 11 special emphasis is laid upon Cirix "yg;" "G^o, ye yourselves, fetch your straw^^ not others for you as heretofore; "for nothing is taken (diminished) from your workr The word ^3 for has been correctly explained by Kimchi as supposing a parenthetical thought, et quidem alacriter vobis eundum est. — Ver. 12. "p Wpp: "to gather stubble for straw;" not " stubble /or, in the sense of instead of straw," for p is not equivalent to nnjn, but to gather the stubble left in the fields for the chopped straw required for the bricks. — Ver. 13. i^V^ Di^ "1?"^., the quantity fixed for every day, ''just as when the straw was (there)," i.e. was given out for the work. — Vers. 14 sqq. As the Israelites could not do the work appointed them, their overlookers were beaten by the Egyptian bailiffs; and when they complained to the king of this treatment, they were repulsed with harshness, and told " Ye are idle, idle; therefore ye say. Let us go and sacrifice to Jehovah^ HKDni ^^V: " and thy people sin;^^ i.e, not " thy people (the Israelites) must be sinners," which might be the meaning of t^tjn according to Gen. xliii. 9, but " thy (Egyptian) people sin." " Thy peopW^ must be understood as applying to the Egyptians, on account of the antithesis to " thy servants," which not only refers to the Israelitish overlookers, but includes all the Israelites, especially in the first clause. riKDH is an unusual feminine form, for njjDn (yid. Gen. xxxiii. 11); and ^V. is construed as a feminine, as in Judg. xviii. 7 and Jer. viii. 5.
Vers. 19—23. When the Israelitish overlookers saw that they were in evil (jns as in Ps. x. 6, i.e. in an evil condition), they came to meet Moses and Aaron, waiting for them as they came out from the king, and reproaching them with only making the circumstances of the people worse. — Ver. 21. " Jehovah look upon you and judge^^ (i.e. punish you, because) " ye have made the smell of us to stink in the eyes of Pharaoh and his servants,^ i.e, destroyed our good name with the king and his servants, and turned it into hatred and disgust. n^7.) a pleasant smell, is a figure employed for a good name or repute, and the figurative use of the word explains the connection with the eyes instead of the nose. " To give a sword into their hand to kill us" Moses and Aaron, they imagined, through their appeal to Pharaoh had made the king and his counsellers suspect them of being restless people, and so had put a weapon into their hands for their oppression and destruction. What perversity of the natural heart! They call upon God to judge, whilst by their very complaining they show that they have no confidence in God and His power to save. Moses turned (2^*1 ver. 22) to Jehovah with the question, " Whi/ hast Thou done evil to this people,'* — increased their oppression by my mission to Pharaoh, and yet not delivered them? " These are not words of contumacy or indignation, but of inquiry and prayer" {Aug. quofst. 14). The question and complaint proceeded from faith, which flies to God when it cannot understand the dealings of God, to point out to Him how incomprehensible are His ways, to appeal to Him to help in the time of need, and to remove what seems opposed to His nature and His will.
Chap, vi.-vii. 7. Equipment of Moses and Aaron as MESSENGERS OF Jehovah. — Ver. 1. In reply to the complaining inquiry of Moses, Jehovah promised him the deliverance of Israel by a strong hand (cf. iii. 19), by which Pharaoh would be compelled to let Israel go, and even to drive them out of his land. Moses did not receive any direct answer to the question, " Why hast Thou so evil-entreated this people? " He was to gather this first of all from his own experience as the leader of Israel. For the words were strictly applicable here: " What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John xiii. 7). If, even after the miraculous deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and their glorious march through the desert, in which they had received so many proofs of the omnipotence and mercy of their God, they repeatedly rebelled against the guidance of God, and were not content with the manna provided by the Lord, but lusted after the fishes, leeks, and onions of Egypt (Num. xi.); it is certain that in such a state of mind as this, they would never have been willing to leave Egypt and enter into a covenant with Jehovah, without a very great increase in the oppression they endured in Egypt. — The brief but comprehensive promise was still further explained by the Lord (vers. 2-9), and Moses was instructed and authorized to cany out the divine purposes in concert with Aaron (vers. 10-13, 28-30, chap. vii. 1—6). The genealogy of the two messengers is then introduced into the midst of these instructions (vi. 14-27); and the age of Moses is given at the close (vii. 7). This section does not contain a different account of the calling of Moses, taken from some other source than the previous one; it rather presupposes chap, iii.-v., and completes the account commenced in chap. iii. of the equipment of Moses and Aaron as the executors of the divine will with regard to Pharaoh and Israel. For the fact that the first visit paid by Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh was simply intended to bring out the attitude of Pharaoh towards the purposes of Jehovah, and to show the necessity for the great judgments of God, is distinctly expressed in the words, " Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh." But before these judgments commenced, Jehovah announced to Moses (ver. 2), and through him to the people, that henceforth He would manifest Himself to them in a much more glorious manner than to the patriarchs, namely, as Jehovah; whereas to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He had only appeared as El Shaddai. The words, " By My name Jehovah was I not known to them," do not mean, however, that the patriarchs were altogether ignorant of the name Jehovah. This is obvious from the significant use of that name, which was not an unmeaning sound, but a real expression of the divine nature, and still more from the unmistakeable connection between the explanation given by God here and Gen. xvii. 1. When the establishment of the covenant commenced, as described in Gen. xv., with the institution of the covenant sign of circumcision and the promise of the birth of Isaac, Jehovah said 'o Abram, " I am El Shaddai, God Almighty," and from that time forward manifested Himself to Abram and his wife as the Almighty, in the birth of Isaac, which took place apart altogether from the powers of nature, and also in the preservation, guidance, and multiplication of his seed. It was in His attribute as El Shaddai that God had revealed His nature to the patriarchs; but now He was about to reveal Himself to Israel as Jehovah, as the absolute Being working with unbounded freedom in the performance of His promises. For not only had He established His covenant with the fathers
(ver. 4), but He had also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, and remembered His covenant (ver. 5; 0^1. — Q^^, not only — but also). The divine promise not only commences in ver. 2, but concludes at ver. 8, with the emphatic expression, " I Jehovah," to show that the work of Israel's redemption resided in the power of the name Jehovah. In ver. 4 the covenant promises of Gen. xvii. 7, 8, xxvi. 3, xxxv. 11, 12, are all brought together; and in ver. 5 we have a repetition of chap. ii. 24, with the emphatically repeated ^^8< (/). On the ground of the erection of His covenant on the one hand, and, what was irreconcilable with that covenant, the bondage of Israel on the other, Jehovah was now about to redeem Israel from its sufferings and make it His own nation. This assurance, which God would carry out by the manifestation of His nature as expressed in the name Jehovahj contained three distinct elements: (a) the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt, which, because so utterly different from all outward appearances, is described in three parallel clauses: bringing them out from under the burdens of the Egyptians; saving them from their bondage; and redeeming them with a stretched-out arm and with great judgments; — (h) the adoption of Israel as the nation of God; — (c) the guidance of Israel into the land promised to the fathers (vers. 6—8). n^^^tDJ jniT, a stretched-out arm, is most appropriately connected with Dvhj D^pSK^, great judgments; for God raises, stretches out His arm, when He proceeds in judgment to smite the rebellious. These expressions repeat with greater emphasis the " strong hand" of ver. 1, and are frequently connected with it in the rhetorical language of Deuteronomy (e.g. chap. iv. 34, v. 15, vii. 19). The " great judgments " were the plagues, the judgments of God, by which Pharaoh was to be compelled to let Israel go. — Ver. 7. The adoption of Israel as the nation of God took place at Sinai (xix. 5). 'l^^ ^'?^^J ""^^j " '^ith regard to which I have lifted up My hand to give it " (ver. 8). Lifting up the hand {sc, towards heaven) is the attitude of swearing (Deut. xxxii. 40 cf. Gen. xiv. 22); and these words point back to Gen. xxii. 16 sqq. and xxvi. 3 (cf. chap. xxiv. 7 and 1. 24).
Vers. 9-13. When Moses communicated this solemn assurance of God to the people, they did not listen to him 0^"^ "^-fpts, lit, ''for shortness of breath;" not " from impatience" (like!?"i"^VP, Pro v. xiv. 29, in contrast to D''S^< ^^f), but from anguish, inward pressure, which prevents a man from breathing properly. Thus the early belief of the Israelites was changed into the despondency of unbelief through the increase of their oppression. This result also produced despondency in Moses' mind, so that he once more declined the commission, which followed the promise, viz. to go to Pharaoh and demand that he would let Israel go out of his land (ver. 11). If the children of Israel would not listen to him, how should Pharaoh hear him, especially as he was uncircumcised in the lips (ver. 12)? ^]^^^ ^V. is one whose lips are, as it were, covered with a foreskin, so that he cannot easily bring out his words; in meaning the same as " heavy of mouth" in chap. iv. 10. The reply of God to this objection is given in chap. \ii. 1-5. For, before' the historian gives the decisive answer of Jehovah which removed all further hesitation on the part of Moses, and completed his mission and that of Aaron to Pharaoh, he considers it advisable to introduce the genealogy of the two men of God, for the purpose of showing clearly their genealogical relation to the people of Israel. — Ver. 13 forms a concluding summary, and prepares the way for the genealogy that follows, the heading of which is given in ver. 14.^
Vers. 14-27. The genealogy of Moses and Aaron. — " These are their (Moses' and Aaron's) father s-housesJ'^ "n^3 rii^K father' s-houses (not fathers' house) is a composite noun, so formed that the two words not only denote one idea, but are treated grammatically as one word, like D^nvjrn'^^ idol-houses (1 Sam. xxxi. 9), and niD3"n^5 high-place-houses (cf. Ges. § 108, 3; Ewald, § 27'Oc). Father^ s-house was a technical term applied to a collection of families, called by the name of a common ancestor. The father' s-houses were the larger divisions into which the families (mishpachoth), the largest subdivisions of the tribes of Israel, were grouped. To show clearly the genealogical position of Levi, the tribe-father of Moses and Aaron, among the sons of Jacob, the genealogy commences with Reuben, the firstbom of Jacob, and gives the names of such of his sons and those of Simeon as were the founders of families (Gen. xlvi. 9, 10).
' The organic connection of this genealogy with the entire narrative has been so conclusively demonstrated by Ranke^ in his Unterss. ub. d. Pent. i. p. 68 sqq. and ii. 19 sqq., that even Knobel has admitted it, and thrown away the fragmentary hypothesis.
Then follows Levi; and not only are the names of his three sons given, but the length of his life is mentioned (ver. 16), also that of his son Kohath and his descendant Amram, because they were the tribe-fathers of Moses and Aaron. But the Amram mentioned in ver. 20 as the father of Moses, cannot be the same person as the Amram who was the son of Kohath (ver. 18), but must be a later descendant. For, however the sameness of names may seem to favour the identity of the persons, if we simply look at the genealogy before us, a comparison of this passage with Num. iii. 27, 28 will show the impossibility of such an assump-
tion. "According to Num. iii. 27, 28, the Kohathites were divided (in Moses' time) into the four branches, Amramites, Izharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites, who consisted together of 8600 men and boys (women and girls not being included). Of these, about a fourth, or 2150 men, would belong to the Amramites. Now, according to Ex. xviii. 3, 4, Moses himself had only two sons. Consequently, if Amram the son of Kohath, and tribe-father of the Amramites, was the same person as Amram the father of Moses, Moses must have had 2147 brothers and brothers' sons (the brothers' daughters, the sisters, and their daughters, not being reckoned at all). But as this is absolutely impossible, it must be granted that Amram the son of Kohath was not the father of Moses, and that an indefinitely long list of generations has been omitted between the former and his descendant of the same name" (Tiele, Chron, des A. T, p. 36).^
The enumeration of only four generations, viz. Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses, is unmistakeably related to Gen. xv. 16, where it is stated that the fourth generation would return to Canaan. Amram's wife Jochebed, who is merely spoken of in general terms as a daughter of Levi (a Levitess) in chap. ii. 1 and Num. xxvi. 59, is called here the nin " aunt" (father's sister) of Amram, a marriage which was prohibited in the Mosaic law (Lev. xviii. 12), but was allowed before the giving of the law;
* The objections of M. Baumgarten to these correct remarks have been conclusively met by Kurtz (Hist, of 0. C. vol. ii. p. 144). We find a similar case in the genealogy of Ezra in Ezra vii. 3, which passes over from Azariah the son of Meraioth to A zariah the son of Johanan, and omits five links between the two, as we may see from 1 Chron vi. 7-11. In the same way the genealogy before us skips over from Amram the son of Kohath to Amram the father of Moses without mentioning the generations between.
80 that there is no reason for following the LXX, and Vulgate, and rendering the word, in direct opposition to the usage of the language, patruelis, the father s brother's daughter. Amram's sons are placed according to their age: Aaron, then Moses, as Aaron was three years older than his brother. Their sister Miriam was older still (vid, ii. 4). In the iXX., Vulg., and one Hebrew MS., she is mentioned here; but this is a later interpolation. In vers. 21 sqq. not only are the sons of Aaron mentioned (ver. 23), but those of two of Amram's brothers, Izhar and Uzziel (vers. 21, 22), and also Phinehas, the son of Aaron's son Eleazar (ver. 25); as the genealogy was intended to trace the descent of the principal priestly families, among which again special prominence is given to Aaron and Eleazar by the introduction of their wives. On the other hand, none of the sons of Moses are mentioned, because his dignity was limited to his own person, and his descendants fell behind those of Aaron, and were simply reckoned among the non-priestly families of Levi. The Korahites and Uzzielites are mentioned, but a superior rank was assigned to them in the subsequent history to that of other Levitical families (cf. Num. xvi., xvii., xxvi. 11, and iii. 30 with Lev. x. 4). Aaron's j?\^ife Elisheha was of the princely tribe of Judah, and her brother Naashon was a tribeprince of Judah (cf. Num. ii. 3). nn« ^K^Kl (ver. 25), a frequent abbreviation for ninsT!''! '•K^'^i heads of the father's-houses of the Levites. In vers. 26 and 27, with which the genealogy closes, the object of introducing it is very clearly shown in the expression, '' These are that Aaron and Moses/^ at the beginning of ver. 26; and again, " These are that Moses and Aaron^^ at the close of ver. 27. The reversal of the order of the names is also to be noticed. In the genealogy itself Aaron stands first, as the elder of the two; in the conclusion, which leads over to the historical narrative that follows, Moses takes precedence of his elder brother, as being the divinely appointed redeemer of Israel. On the expression, "according to their armies," see chap. vii. 4.
Ver. 28-vii. 7. In vers. 28-30 the thread of the history, which was broken off at ver. 12, is again resumed. "i3'n Di^3, on the day, Le, at the time, when God spake. Di^ is the construct state before an entire clause, which is governed by it without a relative particle, as in Lev. vii. 35, 1 Sam. xxv. 15 {vid, Ewald^
§ 286i). Moses' last difficulty (vi. 12, repeated in ver. 30) was removed by God with the words: " See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet" (chap, vii. 1). According to chap. iv. 16, Moses was to be a god to Aaron; and in harmony with that, Aaron is here called the prophet of Moses, as being the person who would announce to Pharaoh the revelations of Moses. At the same time Moses was also made a god to Pharaoh; i.e. he was promised divine authority and power over Pharaoh, so that henceforth there was no more necessity for him to be afraid of the king of Egypt, but the latter, notwithstanding all resistance, would eventually bow before him. Moses was a god to Aaron as the revealer of the divine will, and to Pharaoh as the executor of that will. — In vers. 2-5 God repeats in a still more emphatic form His assurance, that notwithstanding the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, He would bring His people Israel out of Egypt, nj^. (ver. 2) does not mean ut dimittat or mittat {Vulg. Ros.; " that he send," Eng. ver.); but ^ is vav consec. per/., " a7id so he will send." On ver. 3 cf. chap. iv. 21.— Ver. 4. "T-nx 'nm: " I will lay My hand on Egypt," i.e. smite Egypt, " and bring out My armies, My people, the children of Israel." nixny-^armies) is used of Israel, with reference to its leaving Egypt equipped (chap. xiii. 18) and organized as an army according to the tribes (cf. vi. 26 and xii. 51 with Num. i. and ii.), to contend for the cause of the Lord, and fight the battles of Jehovah. In this respect the Israelites were called the hosts of Jehovah. The calling of Moses and Aaron was now concluded. Vers. 6 and 7 pave the way for the account of their performance of the duties consequent upon their call.
The negotiations of Moses and Aaron as messengers of Jehovah with the king of Egypt, concerning the departure of Israel from his land, commenced with a sign, by which the messengers of God attested their divine mission in the presence of Pharaoh (chap. vii. 8-13), and concluded with the announcement of the last blow that God would inflict upon the hardened king (chap. xi. 1-10). The centre of these negotiations, or rather the main point of this lengthened section, which is closely connected throughout, and formally rounded off by chap. xi. 9, 10 into an inward unity, is found in the nine plagues which the messengers of Jehovah brought upon Pharaoh and his kingdom at the command of Jehovah, to bend the defiant spirit of the king, and induce him to let Israel go out of the land and serve their God. If we carefully examine the account of these nine penal miracles, we shall find that they are arranged in three groups of three plagues each. For the first and second, the fourth and fifth, and the seventh and eighth were announced beforehand by Moses to the king (vii. 15, viii. 1, 20, ix. 1, 13, x. 1), whilst the third, sixth, and ninth were sent without any such announcement (viii. 16, ix. 8, x. 21). Again, the first, fourth, and seventh were announced to Pharaoh in the morning, and the first and fourth by the side of the Nile (vii. 15, viii. 20), both of them being connected with the overflowing of the river; whilst the place of announcement is not mentioned in the case of the seventh (the hail, chap. ix. 13), because hail, as coming from heaven, was not connected with any particular locality. This grouping is not a merely external arrangement, adopted by the writer for the sake of greater distinctness, but is founded in the facts themselves, and the effect which God intended the plagues to produce, as we may gather from these circumstances — that the Egyptian magicians, who had imitated the first plagues, were put to shame with their arts by the third, and were compelled to see in it the finger of God (viii. 19), — that they were smitten themselves by the sixth, and were unable to stand before Moses (ix. 11), — and that after the ninth, Pharaoh broke off all further negotiation with Moses and Aaron (x. 28, 29). The last plague, commonly known as the tenth, which Moses also announced to the king before his departure (xi. 4 sqq.), differed from the nine former ones both in purpose and form. It was the first beginning of the judgment that was coming upon the hardened king, and was inflicted directly by God Himself, for Jehovah " went out through the midst of Egypt, and smote the first-born of tHe Egyptians both of man and beast " (xi. 4, xii. 29); whereas seven of the previous plagues were brought by Moses and Aaron, and of the two that are not expressly said to have been brought by them, one, that of the dog-flies, was simply sent by Jehovah (viii. 21, 24), and the other, the murrain of beasts, simply came from His hand (ix. 3, 6). The last blow (V^l xi. 1), which brought about the release of Israel, was also distinguished from the nine plagues, as the direct judgment of God, by the fact that it was not effected through the medium of any natural occur rence, as was the case with all the others, which were based upon the natural phenomena of Egypt, and became signs and wonders through their vast excess above the natural measure of such natural occurrences and their supernatural accumulation, blow after blow following one another in less than a year, and also through the peculiar circumstances under which they were brought about. In this respect also the triple division is unmistakeable. The first three plagues covered the whole land, and fell upon the Israelites as well as the Egyptians; with the fourth the separation commenced between Egyptians and Israelites, so that only the Egyptians suffered from the last six, the Israelites in Goshen being entirely exempted. The last three, again, were distinguished from the others by the fact, that they were far more dreadful than any of the previous ones, and bore visible marks of being the forerunners of the judgment which would inevitably fall upon Pharaoh, if he continued his opposition to the will of the Almighty God.
In this graduated series of plagues, the judgment of harden ing was inflicted upon Pharaoh in the manner explained above. In the first three plagues God showed him, that He, the God of Israel, was Jehovah (vii. 17), i.e. that He ruled as Lord and King over the occurrences and powers of nature, which the Egyptians for the most part honoured as divine; and before His power the magicians of Egypt with their secret arts were put to shame. These three wonders made no impression upon the king. The plague of frogs, indeed, became so troublesome to him, that he begged Moses and Aaron to intercede with their God to deliver him from them, and promised to let the people go (viii. 8). But as soon as they were taken away, he hardened his heart, and would not listen to the messengers of God. Of the three following plagues, the first (i.e. the fourth in the entire series), viz. the plague of swarming creatures or dog-flies, with which the distinction between the Egyptians and Israelites commenced, provmg to Pharaoh that the God of Israel was Jehovah in the midst of the land (viii. 22), made such an impression upon the hardened king, that he promised to allow the Israelites to sacrifice to their God, first of all in the land, and when Moses refused this condition, even outside the land, if they would not go far away, and Moses and Aaron would pray to God for him, that this plague might be taken away by God from him and from his people (viii. 25 sqq.). But this concession was only forced out of him by suffering; so that as soon as the plague ceased he withdrew it again, and his hard heart was not changed by the two following plagues. Hence still heavier plagues were sent, and he had to learn from the last three that there was no god in the whole earth like Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews (ix. 14). The terrible character of these last plagues so affected the proud heart of Pharaoh, that twice he acknowledged he had sinned (ix. 27, x. 16), and gave a promise that he would let the Israelites go, restricting his promise first of all to the men, and then including their families also (x. 11, 24). But when this plague was withdrawn, he resumed his old sinful defiance once more (ix. 34, 35, x. 20), and finally was altogether hardened, and so enraged at Moses persisting in his demand that they should take their flocks as well, that he drove away the messengers of Jehovah and broke off all further negotiations, with the threat that he would kill them if ever they came into his presence again (x. 28, 29).
Chap. vii. 8-13. Attestation of the divine mission OF Moses and Aaron. — By Jehovah's directions Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, and proved by a miracle (HD^D chap. iv. 21) that they were the messengers of the God of the Hebrews. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh, and it became a serpent. Aaron's staff was no other than the wondrous staff of Moses (chap. iv. 2-4). This is perfectly obvious from a comparison of vers. 15 and 17 with vers. 19 and 20. If Moses was directed, according to vers. 15 sqq., to go before Pharaoh with his rod which had been turned into a serpent, and to annoimce to him that he would smite the water of the Nile with the staff in his hand and turn it into blood, and then, according to vers. 19 sqq., this miracle was carried out by Aaron taking his staff and stretching out his hand over the waters of Egypt, the staff which Aaron held over the water cannot have been any other than the staff of Moses which had been turned into a serpent. Consequently we must also understand by the staff of Aaron, which was thrown down before Pharaoh and became a serpent.
the same wondrous staff of Moses, and attribute the expression *^ thy (Le, Aaron's) staff" to the brevity of the account, i,e. to the fact that the writer restricted himself to the leading facts, and passed over such subordinate incidents as that Moses gave his staff to Aaron for him to work the miracle. For the same reason he has not even mentioned that Moses spoke to Pharaoh by Aaron, or what he said, although in ver. 13 he states that Pharaoh did not hearken unto them, i.e, to their message or their words. The serpent, into which the staff was changed, is not called ti'nj here, as in ver. 15 and chap. iv. 3, but T?^ (LXX. SpaKCDv, dragon), a general term for snake-like animals. This difference does not show that there were two distinct records, but may be explained on the ground that the miracle performed before Pharaoh had a different signification from that which attested the divine mission of Moses in the presence of his people. The miraculous sign mentioned here is distinctly related to the art of snake-charming, which was carried to such an extent by the Psylli in ancient Egypt (cf. Bochart, and Ilengstenberg, Egypt and Moses, pp. 98 sqq. transl.). It is probable that the Israelites in Egypt gave the name T^!!^ (Eng. ver. dragon), which occurs in Deut. xxxii. 33 and Ps. xci. 13 as a parallel to iria (Eng. ver. asp), to the snake with which the Egyptian charmers generally performed their tricks, the Hayeh of tlie Arabs. What the magi and conjurers of Egypt boasted that they could perform by their secret or magical arts, Moses was to effect in reality in Pharaoh's presence, and thus manifest himself to the king as Elohim (ver. 1), i.e. as endowed with divine authority and power. All that is related of the Psylli of modem times is, that they understand the art of turning snakes into sticks, or of compelling them to become rigid and apparently dead (for examples see Ilengstenberg); but who can tell what the ancient Psylli may have been able to effect, or may have pretended to effect, at a time when the demoniacal power of heathenism existed in its unbroken force? The magicians summoned by Pharaoh also turned their sticks into snakes (ver. 12); a fact which naturally excites the suspicion that the sticks themselves were only rigid snakes, though, with our very limited acquaintance with the dark domain of heathen conjuring, the possibility of their working " lying wonders after the working of Satan," i.e, supernatural things (2 Thess. ii. 9), cannot be absolutely denied. The words,
" They also, the chartummim of Egypt, did in like manner with their enchantments," are undoubtedly based upon the assumption, that the conjurers of Egypt not only pretended to possess the art of turning snakes into sticks, but of turning sticks into snakes as well, so that in the persons of the conjurers Pharaoh summoned the might of the gods of Egypt to oppose the might of Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews. For these magicians, whom the Apostle Paul calls Jannes and Jambres, according to the Jewish tradition (2 Tim. iii. 8), were not common jugglers, but C^^DDn " wise men," ntien educated in human and divine wisdom, and D^Dpirij UpoypafifuiTeU, belonging to the priestly caste (Gen. xli. 8); so that the power of their gods was manifested in their secret arts (cpi^? from l^n? to conceal, to act secretly, like D^pJ' in ver. 22 from lo^ij), and in the defeat of their enchantments by Moses the gods of Egypt were overcome by Jehovah (chap, xii. 12). The supremacy of Jehovah over the demoniacal powers of Egypt manifested itself in the very first miraculous sign, in the fact that Aaron's staff swallowed those of the magicians; though this miracle made no impression upon Pharaoh (ver. 13).
When Pharaoh hardened his heart against the first sign, notwithstanding the fact that it displayed the supremacy of the messengers of Jehovah over the might of the Egyptian conjurers and their gods, and refused to let the people of Israel go; Moses and Aaron were empowered by God to force the release of Israel from the obdurate king by a series of penal miracles. These D^nsb were not purely supernatural wonders, or altogether unknown to the Egyptians, but were land-plagues with which Egypt was occasionally visited, and were raised into miraculous deeds of the Almighty God, by the fact that they burst upon the land one after another at an unusual time of the year, in unwonted force, and in close succession. These plagues were selected by God as miraculous signs, because He intended to prove thereby to the king and his servants, that He, Jehovah, was the Lord in the land, and ruled over the powers of nature with unrestricted freedom and omnipotence. For this reason God not only caused them to burst suddenly upon the land according to His word, and then as suddenly to disappear according to His omnipotent will, but caused them to be produced by Moses and Aaron and disappear again at their word and prayer, that Pharaoh might learn that these men were appointed by Him as His messengers, and were endowed by Him with divine power for the accomplishment of His will.
Chap. vii. 14-25. — The water of the Nile turned INTO BLOOD. — In the morning, when Pharaoh went to the Nile, Moses took his staff at the command of God; went up to him on the bank of the river, with the demand of Jehovah that he would let His people Israel go; and because hitherto (niD"lV) he had not obeyed, announced this first plague, which Aaron immediately brought to pass. Both time and place are of significance here. Pharaoh went out in the morning to the Nile (ver. 15, chap, viii. 20), not merely to take a refreshing walk, or to bathe in the river, or to see how high the water had risen, but without doubt to present his daily worship to the Nile, which was honoured by the Egyptians as their supreme deity (yid. chap. ii. 5). At this very moment the will of God with regard to Israel was declared to him; and for his refusal to comply with the will of the Lord as thus revealed to him, the smiting of the Nile with the staff made known to him the fact, that the God of the Hebrews was the true God, and possessed the power to turn the fertilizing water of this object of their highest worship into blood. The changing of the water into blood is to be interpreted in the same sense as in Joel iii. 4, where the moon is said to be turned into blood; that is to say, not as a chemical change into real blood, but as a change in the colour, which caused it to assume the appearance of blood (2 Kings iii. 22). According to the statements of many travellers, the Nile water changes its colour when the water is lowest, assumes first of all a greenish hue and is almost undrinkable, and then, while it is rising, becomes as red as ochre, when it is more wholesome again. The causes of this change have not been sufficiently investigated. The reddening of the water is attributed by many to the red earth, which the river brings down from Sennaar (cf. Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses, pp. 104 sqq. transl.; Laborde, comment, p. 28); but Ehrenherg came to the conclusion, after microscopical examinations, that it was caused by cryptogamic plants and infusoria. This natural phenomenon was here intensified into a miracle, not only by the fact that the change took place immediately in all the branches of the river at Moses' word and through the smiting of the Nile, but even more by a chemical change in the water, which caused the fishes to die, the stream to stink, and, what seems to indicate putrefaction, the water to become undrinkable; whereas, according to the accounts of travellers, which certainly do not quite agree with one another, and are not entirely trustworthy, the Nile water becomes more drinkable as soon as the natural reddening begins. The change in the water extended to " the streams" or different arms of the Nile; " the rivers,^* or Nile canals; " the ponds," or large standing lakes formed by the Nile; and all " the pools of water" lit. every collection of their waters, i.e. all the other standing lakes and ponds, left by the overflowings of the Nile, with the water of which those who lived at a distance from the river had to content themselves. " So that there was blood in all the land of Egypt, both in the wood and in the stone;" i.e* in the vessels of wood and stone, in which the water taken from the Nile and its branches was kept for daily use. The reference is not merely to the earthen vessels used for filtering and cleansing the water, but to every vessel into which water had been put. The " stone " vessels were the stone reservoirs built up at the corners of the streets and in other places, where fresh water was kept for the poor (cf. OedmanrCs verm. Samml. p. 133). The meaning of this supplementary clause is not that even the water which was in these vessels previous to the smiting of the river was turned into blood, in which Kurtz perceives " the most miraculous part of the whole miracle;" for in that case the " wood and stone " would have been mentioned immediately after the "gatherings of the waters;" but simply that there was no more water to put into these vessels that was not changed into blood. The death of the fishes was a sign, that the smiting had taken away from the river its life-sustaining power, and that its red hue was intended to depict before the eyes of the Egyptians all the terrors of death; but we are not to suppose that there was any reference to the innocent blood which the Egyptians had poured into the river through the drowning of the Hebrew boys, or to their own guilty blood which was afterwards to be shed. — Ver. 22. This miracle was also imitated by the magicians. The question, where they got any water that was still unchanged, is not answered in the biblical text. Kurtz is of opinion that they took spring water for the purpose; but he has overlooked the fact, that if spring water was still to be had, there would be no necessity for the Egyptians to dig wells for the purpose of finding drinkable water. The supposition ih^X the magicians did not try their arts till the miracle wrought by Aaron had passed away, is hardly reconcilable with the text, which places the return of Pharaoh to his house after the work of the magicians. For it can neither be assumed, that the miracle wrought by the messengers of Jehovah lasted only a few hours, so that Pharaoh was able to wait by the Nile till it was over, since in that case the Egyptians would not have thought it necessary to dig wells; nor can it be regarded as probable, that after the miracle was over, and the plague had ceased, the magicians began to imitate it for the purpose of showing the king that they could do the same, and that it was after this that the king went to his house without paying any heed to the miracle. We must therefore follow the analogy of chap. ix. 25 as compared with chap. x. 5, and not press the expression, ''every collection of water" (ver. 19), so as to infer that there was no Nile water at all, not even what had been taken away before the smiting of the river, that was not changed, but rather conclude that the magicians tried their arts upon water that was already drawn, for the purpose of neutralizing the effect of the plague as soon as it had been produced. The fact that the clause, " Pharaoh^s heart was hardened," is linked with the previous clause, " the magicians did so, etc.," by a vav consecutive^ unquestionably implies that the imitation of the miracle by the magicians contributed to the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. The expression, "to this also^^ in ver. 23, points back to the first miraculous sign in vers. 10 sqq. This plague was keenly felt by the Egyptians; for the Nile contains the only good drinking water, and its excellence is unanimously attested by both ancient and modern writers (Hengstenberg ut S2ip, pp. 108, 109, transl.). As they could not drink of the water of the river from their loathing at its stench (ver. 18), they were obliged to dig round about the river for water to drink (ver. 24). From this it is evident that the plague lasted a considerable time; according to ver. 25, apparently seven days. At least this is the most natural interpretation of the words, '' and seven days were fuljilled after that Jehovah had smitten the river J*
It is true, there is still the possibility that this verse may be connected with the following one, ''when seven days were fulfilled... Jehovah said to Moses^ But this is not probable; for the time which intervened between the plagues is not stated anywhere else, nor is the expression, " Jehovah said," with which the plagues are introduced, connected in any other instance with what precedes. The narrative leaves it quite undecided how rapidly the plagues succeeded one another. On the supposition that the changing of the Nile water took place at the time when the river began to rise, and when the reddening generally occurs, many expositors fix upon the month of June or July for the commencement of the plague; in which case all the plagues down to the death of the first-born, which occurred in the night of the 14th Abib, i.e. about the middle of April, would be confined to the space of about nine months. But this conjecture is a very uncertain one, and all that is tolerably sure is, that the seventh plague (the hail) occurred in February (yid. chap. ix. 31, 32), and there were (not three weeks, but) eight weeks therefore, or about two months, between the seventh and tenth plagues; so that between each of the last three there would be an interval of fourteen or twenty days. And if w^e suppose that there was a similar interval in the case of all the others, the first plague would take place in September or October, — that is to gay, after the yearly overflow of the Nile, which lasts from June to September.
Chap. viii. 1-15. The plague of FROGS, or the second plague, also proceeded from the Nile, and had its natural origin in the putridity of the slimy Nile water, whereby the marsh waters especially became filled with thousands of frogs. iT?.")?-^ is the small Nile frog, the Dofda of the Egyptians, called rana Mosaica or Nilotica by Seetzen, which appears in large numbers as soon as the waters recede. These frogs (Xn.")avn in chap. viii. 6, used collectively) became a penal miracle from the fact that they came out of the water in unparalleled numbers, in consequence of the stretching out of Aaron's staff over the waters of the Nile, as had been foretold to the king, and that they not only penetrated into the houses and inner rooms ("bed-chamber"), and crept into the domestic utensils, the beds ('"^^P), the ovens, and the kneading-troughs (not the " dough " as Luther renders it), but even got upon the men themselves. — Yer. 7. This miracle was also imitated by the Egyptian augiirs with their secret arts, and frogs were brought upon the land by them. But if they were able to bring the plague, they could not take it away. The latter is not expressly stated, it is true; but it is evident from the fact that Pharaoh was obliged to send for Moses and Aaron to intercede with Jehovah to take them away. The king would never have applied to Moses and Aaron for help if his charmers could have charmed the plague away. Moreover the fact that Pharaoh entreated them to intercede with Jehovah to take away the frogs, and promised to let the people go, that they might sacrifice to Jehovah (ver. 8), was a sign that he regarded the God of Israel as the author of the plague. To strengthen the impression made upon the king by this plague with reference to the might of Jehovah, Moses said to him (ver. 9), " Glorify thyself over me, when I shall entreat for thee" i.e. take the glory upon thyself of determining the time when I shall remove the plague through my intercession. The expression is elliptical, and "^bfc^P (saying) is to be supplied, as in Judg. vii. 2. To give Jehovah the glory, Moses placed himself below Pharaoh, and left him to fix the time for the frogs to be removed through his intercession. — Ver. 10. The king appointed the following day, probably because he hardly thought it possible for so great a work to be performed at once. Moses promised that it should be so: " According to thy word (sc. let it be), that thou may est know that there is not (a God) like Jehovah our God J' He then went out and cried, i.e. called aloud and earnestly, to Jehovah concerning the matter (p^i 7^) of the frogs, which he had set, i.e. prepared, for Pharaoh (Dib^ as in Gen. xlv. 7). In consequence of his intercession God took the plague away. The frogs died off (JO nio, to die away out of, from), out of the houses, and palaces, and fields, and were gathered together by bushels (D"'")Dn from "jpHj the omer, the largest measure used by the Hebrews), so that the land stank with the odour of their putrefaction. Though Jehovah had thus manifested Himself as the Almighty God and Lord of the creation, Pharaoh did not keep his promise; but when he saw that there was breathing-time (nnpj avdyfrv^t^, relief from an overpowering pressure), literally, as soon as he " got air," he hardened his heart, so that he did not hearken to Moses and Aaron C^Sp^il inf. abs, as in Gen. xli. 43).
Chap. viii. 16-19. The gnats, or the third plague. — The D33, or 0^33 (also D33, probably an old singular form, Evmld, § 163/), were not " Zice," but a'/cvl(f)e<;, sciniphes, a species of gnats, so small as to be hardly visible to the eye, but with a sting which, according to Philo and Origen, causes a most painful irritation of the skin. They even creep into the eyes and nose, and after the harvest they rise in great swarms from the inundated ricefields. This plague was caused by the fact that Aaron smote the dust of the ground with his staff, and all the dust throughout the land of Egypt turned into gnats, which were upon man and beast (ver. 17). "Just as the fertilizing water of Egypt had twice become a plague, so through the power of Jehovah the soil so richly blessed became a plague to the king and his people.'* — Ver. 18. " The magicians did so with their enchantments (i.e. smote the dust with rods), to bring forth gnats, but could not." The cause of this inability is hardly to be sought for, as Knohel supposes, in the fact that " the thing to be done in this instance, w^as to call creatures into existence, and not merely to call forth and change creatures and things in existence already, as in the case of the staff, the water, and the frogs." For after this, they could neither call out the dog-flies, nor protect their own bodies from the boils; to say nothing of the fact, that as gnats proceed from the eggs laid in the dust or earth by the previous generation, their production is not to be regarded as a direct act of creation any more than that of the frogs. The miracle in both plagues was just tlie same, and consisted not in a direct creation, but simply in a sudden creative generation and supernatural multiplication, not of the gnats only, but also of the frogs, in accordance with a previous prediction. The reason why the arts of the Egyptian magicians were put to shame in this case, we have to seek in the omnipotence of God, restraining the demoniacal powers which the magicians had made subservient to their purposes before, in order that their inability to bring out these, the smallest of all creatures, which seemed to arise as it were from the dust itself, might display in the sight of every one the impotence of their secret arts by the side of the almighty creative power of the true God. This omnipotence the magicians were compelled to admit: they were compelled to acknowledge, " This is the finger of GodP " But they did not make this acknowledgment for the purpose of giving glory to
God Himself, but simply to protect their own honour, that Moses and Aaron might not be thought to be superior to them in virtue or knowledge. It was equivalent to saying, it is not by Moses and Aaron that we are restrained, but by a divine power y which is greater than either"*^ {Bochart), The word Elohim is decisive in support of this view. If they had meant to refer to the God of Israel, they would have used the name Jehovah, The " finger of God " denotes creative omnipotence (Ps. viii. 3; Luke xi. 20, cf. Ex. xxxi. 18). Consequently this miracle also made no impression upon Pharaoh.
As the Egyptian magicians saw nothing more than the finger of God in the miracle which they could not imitate, that is to say, the work of some deity, possibly one of the gods of the Egyptians, and not the hand of Jehovah the God of the Hebrews, who had demanded the release of Israel, a distinction was made in the plagues which followed between the Israelites and the Egj'ptians, and the former were exempted from the plagues: a fact which was sufficient to prove to any one that they came from the God of Israel. To make this the more obvious, the fourth and fifth plagues were merely announced by Moses to the king. They were not brought on through the mediation of either himself or Aaron, but were sent by Jehovah at the appointed time; no doubt for the simple purpose of precluding the king and his wise men from the excuse which unbelief might still suggest, viz. that they were produced by the powerful incantations of Moses and Aaron.
Chap. viii. 20-32. The fourth plague, the coming of which Moses foretold to Pharaoh, like the first, in the morning, and by the water (on the bank of the Nile), consisted in the sending of " heavy vermin^^ probably DOG-FLIES, nny, literally a mixture, is rendered fcvvofivui (dog-fly) by the LXX., Trdfifivia (all-fly), a mixture of all kinds of flies, by Symmachus, These insects are described by Philo and many travellers as a very severe scourge {yid, Hengstenherg ut sup, p. 113). They are much more numerous and annoying than the gnats; and when enraged, they fasten themselves upon the human body, especially upon the edges of the eyelids, and become a dreadful plague.
"123: a heavy multitude, as in chap. x. 14, Gen. 1. 9, etc. Theso swarms were to fill " the houses of the Egyptians^ and even thA land upon which they (the Egyptians) were^^ i.e. that part of the land which was not occupied by houses; whilst the land of Goshen, where the Israelites dwelt, would be entirely spared. n7Dn (to separate, to distinguish in a miraculous way) is conjugated with an accusative, as in Ps. iv. 4. It is generally followed by r? (chap. ix. 4, xi. 7), to distinguish between. "ipV: to stand upon a land, i.e. to inhabit, possess it; not to exist, or live (chap. xxi. 21). — Ver. 23. " And I will put a deliverance between My people and thy people." nna does not mean Sca^ oToX?7, divisio (LXX., Vulg.), but redemption, deliverance. Exemption from this plague was essentially a deliverance for Israel, which manifested the distinction conferred upon Israel above the Egyptians. By this plague, in which a separation and deliverance was established between the people of God and the Egyptians, Pharaoh was to be taught that the God who sent this plague was not some deity of Egypt, but " Jehovah in the midst of the land" (of Egypt); i.e. as Knobel correctly interprets it, (a) that Israel's God was the author of the plague; (b) that He had also authority over Egypt; and (c) that He possessed supreme authority: or, to express it still more concisely, that Israel's God was the Absolute God, who ruled both in and over Egypt with free and boundless omnipotence. — Vers. 24 sqq. This plague, by which the land was destroyed (nnK'ri)^ or desolated, inasmuch as the flies not only tortured, " devoured" (Ps. Ixxviii. 45) the men, and disfigured them by the swellings produced by their sting, but also killed the plants in which they deposited their eggs, so alarmed Pharaoh that he sent for Moses and Aaron, and gave them permission to sacrifice to their God " in the land." But Moses could not consent to this restriction. "7i5 is not appointed so to do" (P3J does not mean aptum, conveniens, but statutuniy rectum), for two reasons: (1) because sacrificing in the land would be an abomination to "the Egyptians, and would provoke them most bitterly (ver. 26); and (2) because they could only sacrifice to Jehovah their God as He had directed them (ver. 27). The abomination referred to did not consist in their sacrificing animals which the Egyptians regarded as holy. For the word nnyin (abomination) w^ould not be applicable to the sacred animals. Moreover, the cow was the only animal offered in sacrifice by the Israelites, which the Egyptian regarded as sacred. The abomination would rather be this, that the Israelites would not carry out the rigid regulations observed by the Egyptians with regard to the cleanness of the sacrificial animals (yid. Hengstenherg^ p. 114), and in fact would not observe the sacrificial rites of the Egyptians at all. The Egyptians would be very likely to look upon this as an insult to their religion and their gods; " the violation of the recognised mode of sacrificing would be regarded as a manifestation of contempt for themselves and their gods*' {Calvin), and this would so enrage them that they would stone the Israelites. The \[} before nnTi in ver. 26 is the interjection lo! but it stands before a conditional clause, introduced without a conditional particle, in the sense of if, which it has retained in the Chaldee, and in which it is used here and there in the Hebrew (e.g. Lev. xxv. 20). — Vers. 28-32. These reasons commended themselves to the heathen king from his own religious standpoint. He promised, therefore, to let the people go into the wilderness and sacrifice, provided they did not go far away, if Moses and Aaron would release him and his people from this plague through their intercession. Moses promised that the swarms should be removed the following day, but told the king not to deceive them again as he had done before (ver. 8). But Pharaoh hardened his heart as soon as the plague was taken away, just as he had done after the second plague (ver. 15), to which the word "aZso" refers (ver. 32).
Chap. ix. 1-7. The Jifth plague consisted of a severe murrain, which carried off the cattle ("^^PP, the living property) of the Egyptians, that were in the field. To show how Pharaoh was accumulating guilt by his obstinate resistance, in the announcement of this plague the expression, " If thou refuse to let them go^^ (cf. viii. 2), is followed by the words, " and wilt hold them (the Israelites) stiir ("liy still further, even after Jehovah has so emphatically declared His will). — Ver. 3. " The hand of Jehovah will be Q^'')'^, which only occurs here, as the participle of n\ij generally takes its form from njrij Neh. vi. 6, Eccl. ii. 22) against thy cattle.. as a very severe plague ("^^'[1 that which sweeps away, a plague), i,e. will smite them with a severe plague. A distinction was again made between the Israelites and the Egyptians. " Of all (the cattle) belonging to the children of Tsraelf not one ("i^l ver. 4, = *inj< ver. 6) shall die" A definite time was also fixed for the coming of the plague, as in the case of the previous one (viii. 23), in order that, whereas murrains occasionally occur in Egypt, Pharaoh might discern in his one the judgment of Jehovah. — Ver. 6. In the words '''all the cattle of the Egyptians died" all is not to be taken in an absolute sense, but, according to popular usage, as denoting such a quantity, that what remained was nothing in comparison; and, according to ver. 3, it must be entirely restricted to the cattle in the field. For, according to vers. 9 and 19, much of the cattle of the Egyptians still remained even after this murrain, though it extended to all kinds of cattle, horses, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep, and differed in this respect from natural murrains. — Ver. 7. But Pharaoh's heart still continued hardened, though he convinced himself by direct inquiry that the cattle of the Israelites had been spared.
Vers. 8-12. The sixth plague smote man and beast with BOILS BREAKING FORTH IN BLISTERS. — T^^ (a common disease in Egypt, Deut. xxviii. 27) from the unusual word |n^ {incaluit) signifies inflammation, then an abscess or boil (Lev. xiii. 18 sqq.; 2 Kings xx. 7). ny^ynXj from y^3, to spring up, swell up, signifies blisters, <^Xu/rrt8e9 (LXX), pustulce. The natural substratum of this plague is discovered by most commentators in the so-called Nile-blisters, which come out in innumerable little pimples upon the scarlet-coloured skin, and change in a short space of time into small, round, and thickly-crowded blisters. This is called by the Egyptians Hamm el Nil, or the heat of the inundation. According to Dr Bilharz, it is a rash, which occurs in summer, chiefly towards the close at the time of the overflowing of the Nile, and produces a burning and pricking sensation upon the skin; or, in Seetzeris words, " it consists of small, red, and slightly rounded elevations in the skin, which give strong twitches and slight stinging sensations, resembling those of scarlet fever" (p. 209). The cause of this eruption, which occurs only in men and not in animals, has not been determined; some attributing it to the water, and others to the heat. Leyrer^ in Herzogs Cyclopaedia, speaks of the " Anthrax which stood in a causal relation to the fifth plague; a black, burning abscess, which frequently occurs after a murrain, especially the cattle distemper, and which might be called to mind by the name ai/^paf, coal, and the symbolical sprinkling of the soot of the furnace." In any case, the manner in which this plague was produced was significant, though it cannot be explained with positive certainty, especially as we are unable to decide exactly what was the natural disease which lay at the foundation of. the plague. At the command of God, Moses and Aaron took " handfuls of soot, and sprinkled it towards the heaven, so that it became dust over all the land of Egypt^^ i.e. flew like dust over the land, and became boils on man and beast. I^^SC' n**? ' soot or ashes of the smelting-furnace or lime-kiln. 1^23 is not an oven or cooking stove, but, as Kimchi supposes, a smelting-furnace or lime-kiln; not so called, however, a metallis domandis, but from tJ*^3 in its primary signification to press together, hence (a) to soften, or melt, (b) to tread down. Burders view seems inadmissible; namely, that this symbolical act of Moses had some relation to the expiatory rites of the ancient Egyptians, in which the ashes of sacrifices, particularly human sacrifices, were scattered about. For it rests upon the supposition that Moses took the ashes from a fire appropriated to the burning of sacrifices — a supposition to which neither |^^3 nor n^B is appropriate. For the former does not signify a fire-place, still less one set apart for the burning of sacrifices, and the ashes taken from the sacri fices for purifying purposes were called "iSfc<, and not n"'S (Num. xix. 10). Moreover, such an interpretation as this, namely, that the ashes set apart for purifying purposes produced impurity in the hands of Moses, as a symbolical representation of the thought, that " the religious purification promised in the sacrificial worship of Egypt was really a defilement," does not answer at all to the effect produced. The ashes scattered in the air by Moses did not produce defilement, but boils or blisters; and we have no ground for supposing that they were regarded by the Egyptians as a religious defilement. And, lastly, there was not one of the plagues in which the object was to pronounce condemnation upon the Egyptian worship or sacrifices; since Pharaoh did not wish to force the Egyptian idolatry upon the Israelites, but simply to prevent them from leaving the country.
The ashes or soot of the smelting-furnace or lime-kiln bore, no doubt, the same relation to the plague arising therefrom, as the water of the Nile and the dust of the ground to the three plagues which proceeded from them. As Pharaoh and his people owed their prosperity, wealth, and abundance of earlhly goods to the fertilizing waters of the Nile and the fruitful soil, so it was from the lime-kilns, so to speak, that those splendid cities and pyramids proceeded, by which the early Pharaohs endeavoured to immortalize the power and glory of their reigns. And whilst in the first three plagues the natural sources of the land were changed by Jehovah, through His servants Moses and Aaron, into sources of evil, the sixth plague proved to the proud king that Jehovah also possessed the power to bring ruin upon him from the workshops of those splendid edifices, for the erection of which he had made use of the strength of the Israelites, and oppressed them so grievously with burd(ensome toil as to cause Egypt to become like a furnace for smelting iron (Deut. iv. 20), and that He could make the soot or ashes of the limekiln, the residuum of that fiery heat and emblem of the furnace in which Israel groaned, into a seed which, when carried through the air at His command, would produce burning boils on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. These boils were the first plague which attacked and endangered the lives of men; and in this respect it was the first foreboding of the death which Pharaoh would bring upon himself by his continued resistance. The priests were so far from being abie to shelter the king from this plague by their secret arts, that they were attacked by them themselves, were unable to stand before Moses, and were obliged to give up all further resistance. But Pharaoh did not take this plague to heart, and was given up to the divine sentence of hardening.
As the plagues had thus far entirely failed to bend the unyielding heart of Pharaoh under the will of the Almighty God, the terrors of that judgment, which would infallibly come upon him, were set before him in three more plagues, which were far more terrible than any that had preceded them. That these were to be preparatory to the last decisive blow, is proved by the great solemnity with which they were announced to the hardened king (vers. 13-16). This time Jehovah was about to " send all His strokes at the heart of Pharaoh, and against his servants and his people'' (ver. 14). '^^r^'^ does' not signify " against thy person," for ^p is not used for K'G^, and even the latter is not a periphrasis for " person;" but the strokes were to go to the king^s heart. " It announces that they will be plagues that will not only strike the head and arms, but penetrate the very heart, and inflict a mortal wound" (Calvin), From the plural " strokes^* it is evident that this threat referred not only to the seventh plague, viz. the hail, but to all the other plagues, through which Jehovah was about to make known to the king that " there was none like Him in all the earth;" i.e. that not one of the gods whom the heathen worshipped was like Him, the only true God. For, in order to show this, Jehovah had not smitten Pharaoh and his people at once with pestilence and cut them oJBf from the earth, but had set him up to make him see, Le, discern or feel His power, and to glorify His name in all the earth (vers. 15, 16). In ver. 15 '1i^ ^^^c^ (I have stretched out, etc.) is to be taken as the conditional clause \ ^^ If 1 had now stretched out My hand and smitten thee... thou wouldest have been cut off J* '^'^mDV^ forms the antithesis to '^nsri, and means to cause to stand or continue, as in 1 Kings xv. 4, 2 Chron. ix. 8 {Bcerrjp^Oijf: LXX.). Causing to stand presupposes setting up. In this first sense the Apostle Paul has rendered it i^Tjyeipa in Rom. ix. 17, in accordance with the purport of his argument, because " God thereby appeared still more decidedly as absolutely determining all that was done by Pharaoh" (Philippi on Rom. ix. 17). The reason why God had not destroyed Pharaoh at once was twofold: (1) that Pharaoh himself might experience (riNin to cause to see, Le. to experience) the might of Jehovah, by which he was compelled more than once to give glory to Jehovah (ver. 27, chap. x. 16, 17, xii. 31); and (2) that the name of Jehovah might be declared throughout all the earth. As both the rebellion of the natural man against the word and will of God, and the hostility of the world-power to the Lord and His people, were concentrated in Pharaoh, so there were manifested in the judgments suspended over him the patience and grace of the living God, quite as much as His holiness, justice, and omnipotence, as a warning to impenitent sinners, and a support to the faith of the godly, in a manner that should be typical for all times and circumstances of the kingdom of God in conflict with the ungodly world. The report of this glorious manifestation of Jehovah spread at once among all the surrounding nations (cf. xv. 14 sqq.), and travelled not only to the Arabians, but to the Greeks and Romans also, and eventually with the Gospel of Christ to all the nations of the earth (vid. Tholuck on Rom. ix. 17).
Chap. ix. 17-35. The seventh plague. — To break down Pharaoh's opposition, Jehovah determined to send such a hail as had not been heard of since the founding of Egypt, accompanied by thunder and masses of fire, and to destroy eveiy man and beast that should be in the field. <?^^P'? ^^iJ^: " thou still danvmest thyself up against My people*^ <c^'^P'? ' to set one's self as a dam, i.e. to oppose; from P?D, to heap up earth as a dam or rampart. " To-morrow about this time" to give Pharaoh time for reflection. Instead of " from the day that Egypt was founded until now," we find in ver. 24 " since it became a nation,^* since its existence as a kingdom or nation. — Ver. 19. The good advice to be given by Moses to the king, to secure the men and cattle that were in the field, i.e. to put them under shelter, which was followed by the God-fearing Egyptians (ver. 21), was a sign of divine mercy, which would still rescue the hardened man and save him from destruction. Even in Pharaoh's case the possibility still existed of submission to the will of God; the hardening was not yet complete. But as he paid no heed to the word of the Lord, the predicted judgment was fulfilled (vers. 22-26). " Jehovah gave voices" (^Vp); called " voices of God" in ver 28. This term is applied to the thunder (cf. xix. 16, xx. 18; Ps. xxix. 3-9), as being the mightiest manifestation of the omnipotence of God, which speaks therein to men (Rev. x. 3, 4), and warns them of the terrors of judgment. These terrors were heightened by masses of fire, which came down from the sky along with the hail that smote man and beast in the field, destroyed the vegetables, and shattered the trees. " And fire ran along upon the ground;" ^^nn is a Kal, though it sounds like Hithpael, and signifies grassari^ as in Ps. Ixxiii. 9. — Ver. 24. ''Fire mingled;" lit, collected together, i.e, formed into balls (cf. Ezek. i. 4). " The lightning took the form of balls of fire, which came down like burning torches." — Ver. 25. The expressions, " every herb" and " every tree" are not to be taken absolutely, just as in ver. 6, as we may see from chap. x. 5. Storms are not common in Lower or Middle Egypt, but they occur most frequently between the months of December and April; and hail sometimes accompanies them, though not with great severity. In themselves, therefore, thunder, lightning, and hail were not unheard of. They also came at the time of year when they usually occur, namely, when the cattle were in the field, i.e, between January and April, the only period in which cattle are turned out for pasture (for proofs, see Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses). The supernatural character of this plague was manifested, not only in its being predicted by Moses, and in the exemption of the land of Goshen, but more especially in the terrible fury of the hail-storm, which made a stronger impression upon Pharaoh than all the previous plagues. For he sent for Moses and Aaron, and confessed to them, " / have sinned this time: Jehovah is righteous; land my people are the sinners" (vers. 27 sqq.). But the very limitation " this time" showed that his repentance did not go very deep, and that his confession was far more the effect of terror caused by the majesty of God, which was manifested in the fearful thunder and lightning, than a genuine acknowledgment of his guilt. This is apparent also from the words which follow: " Pray to Jehovah for me, and let it be enough (3"} satis, as in Gen. xlv. 28) of the being (ri^np) of the voices of God and of the hail;" i.e. there has been enough thunder and hail, they may cease now. — Ver. 29. Moses promised that his request should be granted, that he might know " that the land belonged to Jehovah*^ i.e, that Jehovah ruled as Lord over Egypt (cf. viii. 18); at the same time he told him that the fear manifested by himself and his servants was no true fear of God. '^* ^JQD K"i^ denotes the true fear of God, which includes a voluntary subjection to the divine will. Observe the expression, Jehovahy Elohim: Jehovah, who is Elohim, the Being to be honoured as supreme, the true God.
The account of the loss caused by the hail is introduced very appropriately in vers. 31 and 32, to show how much had been lost, and how much there was still to lose through continued refusal. " The flax and the barley were smitten, for the barley was ear, and the flax was p)3^ (blossom); i.e. they were neither of them quite ripe, but they were already in ear and blossom, so that they were broken and destroyed by the hail. " The wheat," on the other hand, **' and the spelt were not broken down, because they were tender, or late" (ri7''afc<); i,e. they had no ears as yet, and therefore could not be broken by the hail. These accounts are in harmony with the natural history of Egypt. According to Plinyy the barley is reaped in the sixth month after the sowing-time, the wheat in the seventh. The barley is ripe about the end of February or beginning of March; the wheat, at the end of March or beginning of April. The flax is in flower at the end of January. In the neighbourhood of Alexandria, and therefore quite in the north of Egypt, the spelt is ripe at the end of April, and farther south it is probably somewhat earlier; for, according to other accounts, the wheat and spelt ripen at the same time (vid. Hengstenberg, p. 119). Consequently the plague of hail occurred at the end of Januaiy, or at the latest in the first half of February; so that there were at least eight weeks between the seventh and tenth plagues. The hail must have smitten the half, therefore, of the most important field-produce, viz. the barley, which was a valuable article of food both for men, especially the poorer classes, and for cattle, and the flax, which was also a very important part of the produce of Egypt; whereas the spelt, of which the Egyptians preferred to make their bread (Herod, 2, 36, 77), and the wheat were still spared. — Vers. 33- 35. But even this plague did not lead Pharaoh to alter his mind. As soon as it had ceased on the intercession of Moses, he and his servants continued sinning and hardening their hearts.
Chap. X. 1-20. The eighth plague; the locusts. — ^Vers. 1-6. As Pharaoh's pride still refused to bend to the will of God, Moses was directed to announce another, and in some respects a more fearful, plague. At the same time God strengthened Moses^ faith, by telling him that the hardening of Pharaoh and his servants was decreed by Him, that these signs might be done among them, and that Israel might perceive by this to all generations that He was Jehovah (cf. vii. 3-5). We may learn from Ps. Ixxviii. and cv. in what manner the Israelites narrated thesi signs to their children and children's children, nhk fT'K^, to set or prepare signs (ver. 1), is interchanged with Dib^ (ver. 2) in the same sense (yid, chap. viii. 12). The suffix in ^^Ip^i (ver. 1) refers to Egypt as a country; and that in D3 (ver. 2) to the Egyptians. In the expression, " thou may est tell^^ Moses is addressed as the representative of the nation, ^^yj?"?: to have to do with a person, generally in a bad sense, to do him harm (1 Sam. xxxi. 4). " How I have put forth My might" {De Wette). — Ver. 3. As Pharaoh had acknowledged, when the previous plague was sent, that Jehovah was righteous (ix. 27), his crime was placed still more strongly before him: " How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before MeV (niiV? for ribyn?, as in chap, xxxiv. 24). — Vers. 4 sqq. To punish this obstinate refusal, Jehovah would bring locusts in such dreadful swarms as Egypt had never known before, which would eat up all the plants left by the hail, and even fill the houses. " They will cover the eye of the earths This expression, which is peculiar to the Pentateuch, and only occurs again in ver. 15 and Num. xxii. 5, 11, is based upon the ancient and truly poetic idea, that the earth, with its covering of plants, looks up to man. To substitute the rendering " surface'' for the " eye," is to destroy the real meaning of the figure; " face" is better. It was in the swarms that actually hid the ground that the fearful character of the plague consisted, as the swarms of locusts consume everything green. " The residue of the escape" is still further explained as " that which remaineth unto you from the hail," viz. the spelt and wheat, and all the vegetables that were left (vers. 12 and 15). For "all the trees that sprout" (ver. 5), we find in ver. 15, " all the tree-fruits and everything green upon the trees."
Vers. 7-11. The announcement of such a plague of locusts, as their forefathers had never seen before since their existence upon earth, i.e. since the creation of man (ver. 6), put the servants of Pharaoh in such fear, that they tried to persuade the king to let the Israelites go. " How long shall this (Moses) he a snare tousf,.. Seest thou not yet, that Egypt is destroyed?'* t^piOj a snare or trap for catching animals, is a figurative expression for destruction. CJTJ^'? (ver. 7) does not mean the men, but the people. The servants wished all the people to be allowed to go as Moses had desired; but Pharaoh would only consent to the departure of the men (D^"»32n, ver. 11). — Ver. 8. As Moses had left Pharaoh after announcing the plague, he was fetched back again along with Aaron, in consequence of the appeal made to the king by his servants, and asked by the king, how many wanted to go to the feast. ^P) ^p, " who and who still further are the going ones;^* i,e, those who wish to go? Moses required the whole nation to depart, without regard to age or sex, along with all their flocks and herds. He mentioned " young and old, sons and daughters;" the wives as belonging to the men being included in the " t^g." Although he assigned a reason for this demand, viz. that they were to hold a feast to Jehovah, Pharaoh was so mdignant, that he answered scornfully at first: ''Be it so;
Jehovah be with yoxi when I let you and your little ot.es go;'* i.e. may Jehovah help you in the same way in which I let you and your little ones go. This indicated contempt not only for Moses and Aaron, but also for Jehovah, who had nevertheless proved Himself, by His manifestations of mighty power, to be a God who would not suffer Himself to be trifled with. After this utterance of his ill-will, Pharaoh told the messengers of God that he could see through their intention. ''Evil is before your face;^^ i.e. you have evil in view. He called their purpose an evil one, because they wanted to withdraw the people from his service. " Not so,* i.e. let it not be as you desire. " Go then^ you men, and s^rve JehovahJ* But even this concession was not seriously meant. This is evident from the expression, " Go then,^* in which the irony is unmistakeable; and still more so from the fact, that with these words he broke off all negotiation with Moses and Aaron, and drove them from his presence. K^i^l: " one drove them forth;" the subject is not expressed, because it is clear enough that the royal servants who were present were the persons who drove them away. " For this are ye seeking:" nrit< relates simply to the words " serve Jehovah," by which the king understood the sacrificial festival, for which in his opinion only the men could be wanted; not that " he supposed the people for whom Moses had asked permission to go, to mean only the men** (Knobel). The restriction of the permission to depart to the men alone was pure caprice; for even the Egyptians, according to Herodotus (2, 60), held religious festivals at which the women were in the habit of accompanying the men.
Vers. 12—15. After His messengers had been thus scornfully treated, Jehovah directed Moses to bring the threatened plague upon the land. " Stretch out thy hand over the land of Egypt with locusts;^^ i.e. so that the locusts may come, ripy, to go up: the word used for a hostile invasion. The locusts are represented as an army, as in Joel i. 6. Locusts were not an unknown scourge in Egypt; and in the case before us they were brought, as usual, by the wind. The marvellous character of the phenomenon was, that when Moses stretched out his hand over Egypt with the staff, Jehovah caused an east wind to blow over the land, which blew a day and a night, and the next morning brought the locusts Q^ brought;" inasmuch as the swarms of locusts are really brought by the wind). — Ver. 13. "-4n east wind: not vorof; (LXX.), the south wind, as Bochart supposed. Although the swarms of locusts are generally brought into Egypt from Libya or Ethiopia, and therefore by a south or south-west wind, they are sometimes brought by the east wind from Arabia, as Denon and others have observed (Hgstb. p. 120). The fact that the wind blew a day and a night before bringing the locusts, showed that they came from a great distance, and therefore proved to the Egyptians that the omnipotence of Jehovah reached far beyond the borders of Egypt, and ruled over every land. Another miraculous feature in this plague was its unparalleled extent, viz. over the whole of the land of Egypt, whereas ordinary swarms are confined to particular districts. In this respect the judgment had no equal either before or afterwards (ver. 14). The words, " Before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such,'^ must not be diluted into " a hyperbolical and proverbial saying, implying that there was no recollection of such noxious locusts," as it is by Rosenmiiller. This passage is not at variance with Joel ii. 2, for the former relates to Egypt, the latter to the land of Israel; and Joel's description unquestionably refers to the account before us, the meaning being, that quite as terrible a judgment would fall upon Judah and Israel as had formerly been inflicted upon Egypt and the obdurate Pharaoh. In its dreadful character, this Egyptian plague is a type of the plagues which will precede the last judgment, and forms the groundwork for the description in Rev. ix. 3-10; just as Joel discerned in the plagues which burst upon Judah in his own day a presage of the day of the Lord (Joel i. 15, ii. 1), i.e. of the great day of judgment, which is advancing step by step in all the great judgments of history or rather of the conflict between the kingdom of God and the powers of this world, and will be finally accomplished in the last general judgment.— Ver. 15. The darkening of the land, and the eating up of all the green plants by swarms of locusts, have been described by many eye-witnesses of such plagues. '' Locustarum plerumque tanta conspicitur in Africa frequentioy ut volantes instar nebulce soils radios operiant*^ {Leo Afric). " Solemque ohumhranV^ {Plinyy h, n. ii. 29).
Vers. 16-20. This plague, which even Pliny calls Deorum tree pestis, so terrified Pharaoh, that he sent for Moses and Aaron in haste, confessed his sin against Jehovah and them, and entreated them but this once more to procure, through their intercession with Jehovah their God, the forgiveness of his sin and the removal of " this deathJ'* He called the locusts death, as bringing death and destruction, and ruining the country. Mors etiam agrorum est et herbarum atque arhorum, as Bochart observes with references to Gen. xlvii. 19; Job xiv. 8; Ps. xlviii. 47. — Vers. 18, 19. To show the hardened king the greatness of the divine long-suffering, Moses prayed to the Lord, and the Lord cast the locusts into the Red Sea by a strong west wind. The expression ''Jehovah turned a very strong west wind^^ is a concise form, for "Jehovah turned the wind into a very strong west wind.'' The fact that locusts do perish in the sea is attested by many authorities. Gregatim suhlatce vento in maria aut stagna decidunt (Pliny); many others are given by Bochart and Volney, ''•"•VIJ^^*!: He thrust them, i.e. drove them with irresistible force, into the Red Sea. The Red Sea is called ^^D D^, according to the ordinary supposition, on account of the quantity of sea-weed which floats upon the water and lies upon the shore; but Knohel traces the name to a town which formerly stood at the head of the gulf, and derived its name from the weed, and supports his opinion by the omission of the article before Suph^ though without being able to prove that any such town really existed in the earlier times of the Pharaohs.
Vers. 21-29. Ninth plague: the darkness. — As Pharaoh's defiant spirit was not broken yet, a continuous darkness came over all the land of Egypt, with the exception of Goshen, without any previous announcement, and came in such force that the darkness could be felt. ^K^n W^l: " and one shall feel, grasp darkness.'* ^\}: as in Ps. cxv. 7, Judg. xvi. 26, 'sjr7)Xa(f>r}' Tov aKOTo^ (LXX.); not " feel in the dark," for ^^ has this meaning only in the Piel with 3 (Deut. xxviii. 29). npSK "ijK^n: darkness of obscurity, i.e. the deepest darkness. The combination of two words or synonyms gives the greatest intensity to the thought. The darkness was so great that they could not see one another, and no one rose up from his place. The Israelites alone " had light in their dwelling-places.'* The reference here is not to the houses; so that we must not infer that the Egyptians were unable to kindle any lights even in their houses. The cause of this darkness is not given in the text; but the analogy of the other plagues, which had all of them a natural basis,