The removal of the infliction was the signal for the monarch's recall of his promise, and his relapsing into his former obduracy. A fifth plague was therefore sent on his land, that of a virulent pestilence (in), by which the cattle of the Egyptians were destroyed, while those of the Israelites escaped. On this, the Pharaoh, hardened by his repeated acts of resistance to the divine will and judgments, seems to have looked with a feeling almost of indifference, and Moses was consequently commanded to inflict a severe personal affliction upon the Pharaoh and his people ; he was to take handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh,' and as the result of this there came a boil, breaking forth with blains, upon man and upon beast,' and affecting even the magicians, so that they could not stand before Moses ' (ix. S 12). The boil vie sheheen) was a scab or pustule, which might or might not break out into an ulcer ous sore (Lev. xiii. 18, li.) With this, in one of its worst forms, Job was afflicted 7), and by this Hezekiah was brought to the verge of life (2 Kings xx. 7 ; Is. xxxviii. ; it was an eruption of a very painful kind, accompanied with a burning itch, and tending to produce a permanent state of foul and wasting disease. One species of it which seized upon the legs and knees, and was regarded as in curable, was peculiar to Egypt, and was hence called 'the botch of Egypt' (Dent. xxviii. 27, 35). In the case before us this eruption had a tendency to break out into larger swellings (i )2 from unused Inn, to boil up, to.rwell), and became proba bly the disease called elephantiasis, a disease said to be peculiar to Egypt (Winer, R. IV B. s. v. Aussatz), or the black leprosy, a disease which also affects cattle under the name of melandria (Jahn, Archaeol. Th. I. i. 381, ff.) It was something evidently more severe and deadly than the endemic Nile-fever, or eruption which visits Egypt periodi cally about the time of the overflowing of the Nile, and with which some writers would identify it.
When this painful visitation was withdrawn, the Pharaoh was found still obdurate and fixed in his resolution not to let the people go. An impression, however, seems to have been made on some of the people, for we read that before inflicting another plague God gave warning of it to the nation, and the effect of this was to make it apparent that whilst some treated the warning with indifference, there were others who feared the Lord, and took the means suggested for the protection of their servants and cattle from the threatened judgment. This consisted in a fearful storm of hail, accompanied with thunder and lightning, such as had never be fore been witnessed in that land, and by which im mense destruction, both of vegetable produce and animal life, was produced. In Goshen, however, where the Israelites were, the storm was not felt ; in it was there no hail.' This was the first of a series of severer and more appalling visitations than those which had preceded ; God was now about to send all his plagues upon the heart of the Pharaoh, that he might know that there is none like Jehovah in all the earth (ix. 14), i.e., He would now by the terror of his judgments compel that submission which the less awful inflictions previously sent had failed to effect (ix. 13-26).
Appalled by the awful scene before him, and throughout his land, the Pharaoh once more pro mised submission to the command of Gad if the visitation were withdrawn. But no sooner had this taken place than his heart was again hardened, and he again refused to let the people go. This
brought on him and his people the eighth plague. that of locusts. The prospect of this fearful inflic tion [ARBEH] alarmed the servants of the Pharaoh, and they suggested a compromise with Moses, pro posing that the men should be allowed to go with him to offer sacrifice to Jehovah in the wilderness, while by retaining the females they made sure of the men's returning to their servitude. This pro posal, when communicated to Moses by the king, was indignantly rejected, and both parties separated in anger. Then came the threatened infliction ; Moses stretched his rod over the land of Egypt, and ' the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night, and when it was morning the east wind brought the locusts.' This was so terrible an infliction that the Pharaoh was bowed before it ; he ' called for Moses and Aaron in haste, and he said I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you ; now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat the Lord your God that He take away from me this death only.' His request was complied with, and the locusts were removed ; but only to give the king another opportunity of chewing how insincere was his penitence, and how obdurate his heart. This brought on him the ninth plague, that of dark ness. This darkness, which was of the intensest kind, lasted three days, and spread over the whole land of Egypt, with the exception of the part in habited by the Israelites. Moses was again sum moned before the king, but no agreement was come to between them, and they again parted in anger, to see each other no more (Exod. x.) Then came the final infliction on Egypt, the death of the first born throughout the land, `from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on the throne, unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon, and all the first-born of cattle.' This appalling visitation broke the yoke of Israel ; the Egyptians literally thrust away' the people whom they had so long kept in cruel bondage.
II. i. In proceeding to offer a few observations of a general nature on this series of inflictions, we start with the observation that they were of a mira culous character. As such, the historian obviously intends us to regard them, and they are elsewhere spoken of as the `wonders' (C71C1n) which God wrought in the land of Ham (Ps. cv. 27), as his miracles (wrilt..6=) in Egypt (Ps. cvi. 7), as his signs and prodigies (tynnvi ronN) which he sent into the midst of Egypt (Ps. cxxxv. 9), etc. It is only under this aspect that we can accept the narra tive as historical. It is true that many of them ap pear to have been of the same kind with phenomena natural to the country ; but this cannot be said of all of them ; and in the case of those of which it can be said, the presence of the supernatural is seen not only in the unparalleled degree to which the in fliction reached, but still more in the complete command which was exercised by Moses as the agent of Jehovah over the coming and going of the visitation. The exemption of the Israelites from the general calamity is also clearly assigned to the miraculous. The only alternative, therefore, allowed to us, is to reject the whole narrative as mythic, or to accept it as miraculous. The at tempts made by Eichhorn and the older rational ists, to give natural explanations of these plagues, only exhibit the deplorable expedients to which an unsound hypothesis may compel able men to resort.