The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus

i.

mmanded, "Let My people go." It is an advancing lesson. He has felt the power of Jehovah: now he is to connect, even more closely, his suffering with his

lements because they had become intolerable; "as even the vessels were full of them, the water infested and the food uneatable, as they could scarcely set t

ossible for an Egyptian to adopt even such forlorn measures of self-defence as might suggest themselves. It was an unclean pest against which he was entirely helpless, and it extended the power of his enemy from the river to the land. The range of the grievance is dwelt upon in the warning: "the

d circumstances which made it easier to exhibit frogs than to exclude them, yet there was no comfort in such puerile emulation, and they offered no hope of relieving him. From the gods that were

are blind to this distinction. Pain is sometimes obviously due to ourselves, and it is natural to blame the conduct which led to it. But if we blame it only for being disastrous, we cannot hope that the fruits of the Spirit will result from a sensat

ive, in which Moses, however courteous, represents an offended God. It is more natural to take it as an open declaration that he was being imposed upon, yet would grant to the king whatever advantage the fraud impl

r his deliverance. Accordingly he fixed a future period, yet as near as he perhaps thought possible; and Moses, without any express authority, promised him that it should be so.

them." It is a graphic sentence: it implies rather than affirms their indignant remonstrances

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nd flies would scarcely make two several judgments), but these, which spring from marshy ground, would unfitly be connected with the dust whence Aaron was to evoke the

e his word and broke it found himself involved in fresh miseries without an opportunity of humbling himself aga

instantly followed by the plague. There was no doubt about the origin of the pest, and the new and al

no opportunity for pre-arranged sleight of hand. And this surely favours the opinion that they had not hitherto succe

no divinity had been at work before. But they rather ascribed what they saw to the action of some vaguely indicated deity, than confessed it to be

s heart was strong, and he hearkened not unto them." To this statement it is not added, "because th

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hree times: after each plague which arrives unexpectedly the next is introduced by a special warning. On each of these occasions, moreover, the appeal is made in the morning, at the hour when reason ought to be clearest and the passions least agitating; and this circumstance is perhaps alluded to in the favourite phrase

ncertain. There is a beetle which gnaws both man and beast, destroys clothes, furniture, and plants, and even now they "are often seen in millions" (Munk, Palestine, p. 120). "In a few minutes they filled the whole house.... Only after the most laborious exertions, and covering the floor of the hous

ne so far as to make it mean "all kinds of noxious animals and serpents and scorpions mixed together," and although it is palpably absurd to believe that Pharaoh should have survived if these had been upon him and upon his servants, yet the expression "a mixture," following after one kind of vermin had

rstand. The plague was especially to be expected in low flat ground: the king may not even have been aware of the previous freedom of Israel; and in any case its importance as an evidence had not been pressed upon h

ting relief before the Hebrews actually enjoy their liberty; and yet conceding as little as possible, and in hot haste to have that little done and the relief obtained. They may even serve their God on the sacred soil, so completely has He already defeated all His rivals. But this was not what was demanded; and Moses repeated the claim of a three days' journey, basing it upon the ground, still more insulting to the national religion, that "We will sacrifice to Jehovah our God the abomination o

d their right to worship their own God: all the rest would speedily have followed. But the terms which were rejected again and again did not continue for ever to bind the victorious party: the story of their actual d

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e case. But it is worth notice that in the Psalms the expression was twice rendered "d