The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus

.

possessed. So now, when half the gloomy round of the plagues was being completed, it was necessary to prove that life itself was staked on this desperate hazard; and this was done first by the very same expedient-the destruction of life which was not human. There is something pathetic, if one thinks of it, in the extent to which domestic animals share our fortunes, and suffer through the

appears to say), is "upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the herds and upon the flocks." Here some particulars need observation. Herds and flocks were everywhere; but horses were a comparatively late introduction into Egy

by Egypt, though there were many reasons why they should be held chiefly on the frontiers, and perhaps i

, its coming at an appointed time, its assailing beasts of every kind, and its exempting those of Israel. We are told that "all the cattle of Egypt died," and yet that afterwards "the hail ... smote both man and beast" (ix. 6, 25). It is an inconsistency very serious in the eyes of people who are too st

e loss, and therefore nothing was more natural than that his selfish "heart was heavy, and he did not let the people go." N

dversities the heart which had been obdurate against humanity, against evidence, against honour and plighted faith. Nothing is easier than to step over th

action, recalls the spiritual condition of Herod, who was conscience-stricken when first he heard of Christ, and said, "It is John whom I beheaded" (Mark vi. 16), but afterwards felt merely vulgar curiosity and desire to behold a sign of Him. In the case of Pharaoh it was the next step to judicial infatuation. When Christ

IXTH

8–

ands a plague without a warning, but not without the cl

commanded to fill both hands with ashes of the furnace and throw them upon the wind,[16] either to symbolise the suffering which was to be spread wide over the land, or because the ashes of human sac

in the flesh besides sloth and bodily indulgence. Wrath and cruelty and pride are strangely stimulated and excited by self-indulgence. Not in vain does St. Paul describe a "mind of the flesh," and reckon among the fruits of the flesh not only uncleanness and drunkenness

s (two, to rival the two brothers) had withstood Moses, but now the contrast between the prophet and his victims writhing in their pain was too sharp for prejudice itself to overlook: their folly was "evident unto all men" (2 Tim. iii. 8, 9). But it was not destined that Pharaoh should yield even to so tremendous a coercion what he refused to moral influences; and as Jesus after His res

any reprisals upon the torturers. The sense of the supernatural was the

oo rigid and prosaic straining of a New Testament construction, which might be simplified by considering the Hebrew use of language, exemplified in such an assertion as "It shall becom

VENTH

13

), are clear proofs that what was implied in this word was not wickedness, but only that iron determination which his choice directed in a wicked channel. And therefore it was no mockery, no insincere appeal by one who had provided against the mischance of its succeeding, when God again addressed Himself to the reason, and e

humanity. Whoever encroaches on the just sphere of the free action of his neighbour deprives him, to exactly the same extent, of the power to glorify God by a free obedience. The heart glorifies God by submission to so hard a lot, but the co-operation of the "whole body and soul and spirit" does not visibly bear testimony to the regulating power of grace. The oppressor may contend (like some slave-owners) that he guides his human property better than it would guide itself. But one assertion he cannot make: namely, th

s from God. He was not free to be violent and wanton, and to say "I am delivered to comm

thers, while possessing more enormous powers to bless them than ever were entrusted to a class,-not for this our heroes bled on the field and on the scaffold. Tyrants rarely deny to rich men leave to be self-indulgent. And self-indulgence rarely ner

e might flatter himself, exhausted His power to avenge. Pharaoh should yet experience "all My plagues." And there is a dreadful significance in the phrase

was more dreadful than hail in the cloud and locusts on the blast, than the darkness at

off from the earth." It says, "Now I had done this, as far as any restraint for thy sake is concerned, but in very deed for this cause have I made thee to stand" (unsmitten), "for to show thee My power,

Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all manner of plagues in the wilderness" (1 Sam. iv. 8). And this, along with the impression which Rahab declared that

deems that I myself shall not be treated quite as severely as I dese

sore experience of the threats of Moses, would find it a hard trial in any case, whether to withdraw his property or to brave the stroke. To him it was a kind of challenge. To those of his subjects who had any proper feeling it was a merciful deliverance, and a profoundly skilful education of their faith, which began by an obedience probably hesitating, but had few doubts upon the morrow. We read that he who feared the Lord among the servants of

ere was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, such as slew man and beast, and smote the trees, and destroyed all the vegetation

called attention to the elaborate machinery by which God in nature impresses man with the sense

nied by the scenery of the storm, would produce little more than a momentary sadness in the busy hearts of living men. But the preparation for the judgment, by all that mighty gathering of the clouds; by the questioning of the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of the destroying angels before they draw their swords of fire; by the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noonday, and the rat

he "voices of God," when, unnerved for the moment, he confessed at least that he had sinned "this time" (a singularly weak repentance for his long and daring resistance, even if we explain it, "this time I confess that I have sinned"), and went on in his

possible, they shelter themselves from lonely condemnation by general phrases, such as that all are wicked; just as Pharaoh, although he would have scoffed at the notion of any national volition except his own, said, "I and my people are sinners." Above all, they

erver expects that if they are delivered

is, he consented to intercede, yet adding the simple and dignified protest, "As for thee and thy people, I know that ye wil

nd played almost as important a part in our liberation from James, and again in the defeat of the plans of the French Revolution to invade us, as in the destruction of the Armada. And so we read, "

TNO

in mind, or it would have used the same term for a furnace.

o iii. 23) these titles of Deity are now