The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus

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ay, 'His foolhardiness is My doing and cannot go beyond My will: thou art safe.' And the same encouragement belongs to all who do the sacred will: not a hair of their head shall truly perish, since life and death are the

r wilfulness: the most valuable crops of all had escaped; so that these judgments, however dire, were not quite bey

judgments, it is added that Israel should teach the story to poster

the apostates under Sinai would not reject so illustrious a memory: their feast was nominally to Jehovah

works that Thou didst in their days and in the old time before them?" Have we forgotten that national mercies call aloud for national thanksgiving? And in the family, and in the secret life of e

for it, to remember that once this narrative was challenged, because locusts, it was said, are unknown in Egypt. They are mentioned in the inscriptions. Great misery was caused by them in 1463, and just three hundred years later Niebuhr was himself at Cairo during a plague of them. Equally arbitrary is the objection that Joel predicted locusts "such as there hath not been ever the

appreciated, familiarity would not have steeled them against it. The ravages of the locust are terrible indeed

"they shall cover the eye of the earth,"-a phrase peculiar to the Pentateuch (ver. 15; Num. xxii. 5, 11); "and they shall eat the residue of that which

Moses abruptly left, awaiting no negoc

rts were hardened as well as his. For that is a hard heart that does not remonstrate against wrong, however plainly God reveals His displeasure, until new troubles are at hand, and which even

id his finger accurately upon the disease when he reproached him for refusing to humble himself. And if his behaviour seem unnatural, it is worth observation that Napoleon, the greatest modern example of proud, intellectual, godless infatuation, allowed himself to be crushed at Leipsic through just the same reluctance to do thoroughly and without self-deception what he found it necessary to

t they will all go, with all their property, his passion overcomes him, he feels that to consent is to lose them for ever, and he exclaims, "So be Jehovah with you as I will let you go and your little ones: look to it, for evil is b

little later, "Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy manservant and thy maidservant ... and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow" (Deut. xvi. 11). There was no insincerity in the demand; and although the suspicions of the king were naturally excited by the exultant and ever-rising hopes of the Hebrews, and

ve that as he raised his hand, the hail-storm burst in thunder, and the curtain fell upon the sky. Now there only arose a gentle east wind (unlike the "exceeding strong west wind" that followed), but it blew steadily all that day and all the following night. The forebodings of Egypt would understand it well: the prolonged period during which the curse was being steadily

is only wise too late, and, let us add, too fitfully. If Pharaoh had only submitted before the plague instead o

e sinned against the Lord your God, and against you." This last clause was bitter to his lips, but the need for their intercession was urgent: life and death were at stake upon the removal of this dense clo

ray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat Jehovah y

trong west wind." Now, the locust can float very well upon an easy breeze, and so it had been wafted over the Red Sea; bu

his fears being conquered, his own rebellious will w

incerity of panic, and forgotten with all the levity of security. It shows also, in the hesitating and abortive half-submission of the tyrant, the greater folly of many

self-surrender, needed by Pharaoh

INTH

21–

curious light upon his first scorn of Jehovah, and his long continued resistance; and also upon the threat of vengeance to be executed upon th

sculptured effigy of this king-a weak and cruel face, with the receding forehead of his rac

Lands, Beloved

ms, Beloved o

n with dominio

the Sun in th

with his hand stretched out in worship, and under it is writ

ristic of this king, either by himself or by

ke so many minor forces of earth and

this. Moreover, the experience of every man teaches him that each method has its own impressiveness: the announcement of punishment awes, and a surprise alarms, and when they are alternated, every possible door of access to the conscience is approached. I

concentrated and brief as to give a graphic rendering of

in their dwellings" (vers. 21–3). We are not told anything of the emotions of the king, as the prophet strides into his presence, and before the cowering court, silently raises his hand and quenches the day. We may infer his temper, if we please, from the frantic outbreak of menace and rage in which he presently warns the man whose coming is the same thing as calamity to s

n that if pestilence had not destroyed them, it was because God would plague them with all His plagues. They would reflect upon all their defeated duties, and how the sun himself was now withdrawn a

kness and of the

darkness, as d

adow of death wi

ght is as darkne

her vii. 8). Thus to destroy "the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples and the veil that is spread over all nations," is the same thing as to "swallow up death," being the visible destruction of the embodied de

rough its effect upon the imagination this dreadful plague wa

e put down.... For they, that promised to drive away terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at" (vers. 7, 8). In another place the Egyptians are declared to be worse than the men of Sodom, because they brought into bondage friends and not strangers, and grievously afflicted those whom they had received with feasting; "therefore even with blindness were these stricken, as those were at the doors of the righteous man." (xix. 14–17). And we may well believe that the long night was haunted with special terrors, if we add this wise explanation: "For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very

the wall like the blind, yea, we grope as those that have no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the twilight" (lix. 10). Here the sinful nation is reduced to the misery of Egypt. But if she were obedient she would enjoy all the immunities of her forefathe

for the righteous, and the obscuration of the judg

bmit once more, and this time every one shall go; yet he cannot make a frank concession: the flocks and herds (most valuable after the ravages of the murrain and the hail) must remain as a hostage for their return. But Moses is inflexible: not a hoof shall be left behind; and then the frenzy of a baffled autocrat breaks out int

one. He was always ready to intercede; he never "reviles the ruler," nor transgresses the limits of courtesy toward his s

he shame with the proud king, who begins by insulting him, goes on to impose on him, and ends by the most

TNO

c, says of Napoleon's dialogue with M. de Merfeld, that he "used an expression which, if uttered a

in Ps. lxxviii. 49 (see R.V.), though