THE FIFTH PLAGUE.
Exo 9:1-7.
Our Lord when on earth came not to destroy men's lives. And yet
it was necessary, for our highest instruction, that we should not
think of Him as revealing a Divinity wholly devoid of sternness.
Twice, therefore, a gleam of the fires of justice fell on the eyes
which followed Him--through the destruction once of a barren tree,
and once of a herd of swine, which property no Jew should have
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
brutality or the recklessness of their proprietors. If all men were
humane, self-controlled, and (as a natural result) prosperous, what
a weight would be uplifted from the lower levels also of created
life, all of which groaneth and travaileth in pain together until
now! The dumb animal world is partner with humanity, and shares its
fate, as each animal is dependent on its individual owner.
We have already seen the whole life of Egypt stricken, but now
the lower creatures are to perish, unless Pharaoh will repent. He is
once more summoned in the name of "Jehovah, God of the Hebrews," and
warned that the hand of Jehovah, even a very grievous murrain (for
so the verse 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 Egypt, where they were as yet chiefly
employed for war. Asses, still so familiar to the traveller, were
the usual beasts of burden, and were owned in great numbers by the
rich, although rash controversialists have pretended that, as being
unclean, they were not tolerated in the land.
Camels, it is said, are not to be found on the monuments, but yet
they were certainly known and possessed by Egypt, though there were
many reasons why they should be held chiefly on the frontiers, and
perhaps in connection with the Arabian mines and settlements. Upon
all these "in the field" the plague should come.
The murrain still works havoc in the Delta, chiefly at the
period, beginning with December, when the floods are down and the
cattle are turned out into the pastures, which would this year have
been signally unwholesome. It was not, then, the fact of a cattle
plague which was miraculous, but its severity, 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" (Exo 9:6, Exo 9:25). It is an inconsistency very serious in
the eyes of people who are too stupid or too uncandid to observe
that, just before, the mischief was limited to those cattle which
were "in the field" (Exo 9:3). There were great stalls in suitable
places, to give them shelter during the inundations; and all that
had not yet been driven out to graze are expressly exempted from the
plague.
Much of Pharaoh's own property perished, but he was the last man
in the country who would feel personal inconvenience by the loss,
and therefore nothing was more natural than that his selfish "heart
was heavy, and he did not let the people go." Not even such an
effort was needed as in the previous plague, when we read that he
made his heart heavy, by a deliberate act.
There was nothing to indicate that he had now reached a
crisis--that God Himself in His judgment would henceforth make bold
and resolute against crushing adversities the heart which had been
obdurate against humanity, against evidence, against honour and
plighted faith. Nothing is easier than to step over the frontier
between great nations. And in the moral world also the Rubicon is
passed, the destiny of a soul is fixed, sometimes without a
struggle, unawares.
Instead of spiritual conflict, there was intellectual curiosity.
"Pharaoh sent, and behold there was not so much as one of the cattle
of the Israelites dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was heavy, and he
did not let the people go." This inquiry into a phenomenon which was
surprising indeed, but yet quite unable to affect his 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" (Mar 6:16), 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 confronted
Herod, He, Who had explained Himself to Pilate, was absolutely
silent. And this warns us not to think that an interest in religious
problems is itself of necessity religious. One may understand all
mysteries, and yet it may profit him nothing. And many a reprobate
soul is controversial, acute, and keenly orthodox.
THE SIXTH PLAGUE.
Exo 9:8-12.
At the close of the second triplet, as of the first, stands a
plague without a warning, but not without the clearest connection
between the blow and Him who deals it.
To the Jews Egypt was a furnace in which they were being
consumed--whether literally in human sacrifice, or metaphorically in
the hard labour which wasted them (Deu 4:20). And now the brothers
were 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 sacrifices were thus
presented to their evil genius, Typhon. If this were its meaning,
the irony was keen, when at the same action a feverish inflammation
breaking out in blains spread over all the nation.
But, apart from any such reference to their cruel idolatry, it
was right that they should suffer in the flesh. When the higher
nature is dead, there is no appeal so sharp and certain as to the
physical sensibility. And moreover, there are other sins which have
their root 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, but, just as truly, strife, jealousies,
wraths, factions, divisions, heresies (Col 2:18; Gal 5:19-20). From
such evil tempers, stimulated by evil appetites, the slaves of Egypt
had suffered bitterly; and now the avenging rod fell upon the bodies
of their tyrants.
And we may perhaps detect especial suffering, certainly an
especial triumph to be commemorated, in the failure of the magicians
even to stand before the king. It is implied that they had done so
until now, and this confirms the belief that after the third plague
they had not acknowledged Jehovah, but merely said in their defeat,
"This is the finger of a god." Until now Jannes and Jambres (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" (2Ti 3:8-9). 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 resurrection appeared not
unto all the people (hiding this crowning evidence from the eyes
which had in vain beheld so much), so "the Lord made strong the
heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had
spoken unto Moses." In this last expression is the explicit
statement that it was now that the prediction attained fulfilment,
in the manner which we have discussed already.
But even this strength of heart did not reach the height of
attempting any reprisals upon the torturers. The sense of the
supernatural was their defence: Moses was as a god unto Pharaoh, and
Aaron was his prophet.
In the narrative of this plague there is an expression which
deserves attention for another reason. The ashes, it says, "shall
become dust." Is there no controversy, turning upon the too 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 become dust," and soon after, "It
is the Lord's passover"? Do these announce transubstantiations? Did
two handfuls of ashes literally become the blains upon the bodies of
all the Egyptians?
THE SEVENTH PLAGUE.
Exo 9:13-35.
The hardening of Pharaoh's heart, we have argued, was not the
debauching of his spirit, but only the strengthening of his will.
"Wait on the Lord and be of good courage"; "Be strong,
O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of
Josadak the high priest; and be strong, all ye people" (Psa
27:14; Hag 2:4), 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 even to the rational fears of Pharaoh. He had only
provided against a terror-stricken submission, as wholly immoral and
valueless, as the ceasing to resist of one who has swooned through
fright. Now, to give such an one a stimulant and thus to enable him
to exercise his volition, would be different from inciting him to
rebel.
The seventh plague, then, is ushered in by an expostulation more
earnest, resolute and minatory than attended any of the previous
ones. And this is the more necessary because human life is now for
the first time at stake. First the king is solemnly reminded that
Jehovah, Whom he no longer can refuse to know, is the God of the
Hebrews, has a claim upon their services, and demands them. In
oppressing the nation, therefore, Pharaoh usurped what belonged to
the Lord. Now, this is the eternal charter of the rights of all
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, that God is
receiving the loyal homage of a life spontaneously devoted; that a
man and not a machine is glorifying God in this body and spirit
which are God's. For the body is but a chattel. This is why the
Christian doctrine of the religious equality of all men in Christ
carries with it the political assertion of the equal secular rights
of the whole human race. I must not transfer to myself the solemn
duty of my neighbour to offer up to God the sacrifice not only of
his chastened spirit but also of his obedient life.
And these words were also a lifelong admonition to every
Israelite. He held his liberties from God. He was not free to be
violent and wanton, and to say "I am delivered to commit all these
abominations." The dignities of life were bound up with its
responsibilities.
Well, it is not otherwise today. As truly as Moses, the champions
of our British liberties were earnest and God-fearing men. Not for
leave to revel, to accumulate enormous fortunes, and to excite by
their luxuries the envy and rage of neglected brothers, 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 nerves men to heroic
effort. It is for the freedom of the soul that men dare all things.
And liberty is doomed wherever men forget that the true freeman is
the servant of Jehovah. On these terms the first demand for a
national emancipation was enforced.
And next, Pharaoh is warned that God, who at first threatened to
destroy his firstborn, but had hitherto come short of such a deadly
stroke, had not, as he might flatter himself, exhausted His power to
avenge. Pharaoh should yet experience "all My plagues." And
there is a dreadful significance in the phrase which threatens to
put these plagues, with regard to others "upon thy servants and upon
thy people," but with regard to Pharaoh himself "upon thine heart."
There it was that the true scourge smote. Thence came ruin and
defeat. His infatuation was more dreadful than hail in the cloud and
locusts on the blast, than the darkness at noon and the midnight
wail of a bereaved nation. For his infatuation involved all these.
The next assertion is not what the Authorised Version made it,
and what never was fulfilled. It is not, "Now I will stretch out My
hand to smite thee and thy people with pestilence, and thou shalt be
cut 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, and that My name may be declared throughout all the earth" (Exo
9:15-16). The course actually taken was more for the glory of God,
and a better warning to others, than a sudden stroke, however
crushing.
And so we find, many years after all this generation has passed
away, that a strangely distorted version of these events is current
among the Philistines in Palestine. In the days of Eli, when the ark
was brought into the camp, they said, "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" (1Sa 4:8). And this, along with the impression which
Rahab declared that the Exodus and what followed it had made, may
help us to understand what a mighty influence upon the wars of
Palestine the scourging of Egypt had, how terror fell upon all the
inhabitants of the land, and they melted away (Jos 2:9-10).
And perhaps it may save us from the unconscious egoism which
always deems that I myself shall not be treated quite as severely as
I deserve, to mark how the punishment of one affects the interests
of all.
Added to all this is a kind of half-ironical clemency, an
opportunity of escape if he would humble himself so far as to take
warning even to a small extent. The plague was to be of a kind
especially rare in Egypt, and of utterly unknown severity--such hail
as had not been in Egypt since the day it was founded until now. But
he and his people might, if they would, hasten to bring in their
cattle and all that they had in the field. Pharaoh, after his 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 Pharaoh made his
servants and his cattle flee into the houses; and this is the first
hint that the plagues, viewed as discipline, were not utterly vain.
The existence of others who feared Jehovah beside the Jews prepares
us for the "mixed multitude" who came up along with them (Exo
12:38), and whose ill-instructed and probably very selfish adhesion
was quite consistent with such sensual discontent as led the whole
congregation into sin (Num 11:4).
To make the connection between Jehovah and the impending storm
more obvious still, Moses stretched his rod toward heaven, and there
was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, such as slew man and
beast, and smote the trees, and destroyed all the vegetation which
had yet grown up. The heavens, the atmosphere, were now enrolled in
the conspiracy against Pharaoh: they too served Jehovah.
In such a storm, the terror was even greater than the peril. When
a great writer of our own time called attention to the elaborate
machinery by which God in nature impresses man with the sense of a
formidable power above, he chose a thunderstorm as the most striking
example of his meaning.
"Nothing appears to me more remarkable than the array of scenic
magnificence by which the imagination is appalled, in myriads of
instances when the actual danger is comparatively small; so that the
utmost possible impression of awe shall be produced upon the minds
of all, though direct suffering is inflicted upon few. Consider, for
instance, the moral effect of a single thunderstorm. Perhaps two or
three persons may be struck dead within a space of a hundred square
miles; and their death, unaccompanied 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 rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot
wheels of death;--on how many minds do not these produce an
impression almost as great as the actual witnessing of the fatal
issue! and how strangely are the expressions of the threatening
elements fitted to the apprehensions of the human soul! The lurid
colour, the long, irregular, convulsive sound, the ghastly shapes of
flaming and heaving cloud, are all true and faithful in their appeal
to our instinct of danger."--Ruskin, Stones of Venice, III.
197-8.
Such a tempest, dreadful anywhere, would be most appalling of all
in the serene atmosphere of Egypt, to unaccustomed spectators, and
minds troubled by their guilt. Accordingly we find that Pharaoh was
less terrified by the absolute mischief done than by the "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 terror to pour out orthodox
phrases and professions with suspicious fluency. The main point was
the bargain which he proposed: "Intreat the Lord, for there hath
been enough of mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go,
and ye shall stay no longer."
Looking attentively at all this, we discern in it a sad
resemblance to some confessions of these latter days. Men are driven
by affliction to acknowledge God: they confess the offence which is
palpable, and even add that God is righteous and that they are not.
If 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 are much more anxious for the removal of the rod than for
the cleansing of the guilt; and if this can be accomplished through
the mediation of another, they have as little desire as Pharaoh had
for any personal approach to God, Whom they fear, and if possible
repel.
And by these signs, every experienced observer expects that if
they are delivered out of trouble they will forget their vows.
Moses was exceedingly meek. And therefore, or else because the
message of God implied that other plagues were to succeed this, he
consented to intercede, yet adding the simple and dignified protest,
"As for thee and thy people, I know that ye will not yet fear
Jehovah God."[17] And so it
came to pass. The heart of Pharaoh was made heavy, and he would not
let Israel go.
Looking back upon this miracle, we are reminded of the mighty
part which atmospheric changes have played in the history of the
world. Snowstorms saved Europe from the Turk and from Napoleon: the
wind 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,
"Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow? or hast thou seen the
treasuries of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of
trouble, against the day of battle and war?" (Job 38:22-23).
FOOTNOTES:
[16] The passage in Deuteronomy had
not this event specially in mind, or it would have used the same
term for a furnace. The word for ashes implies what can be blown
upon the wind.
[17] Except in one passage (Genesis
2:4 to 3:23) these titles of Deity are nowhere else combined in the
books of Moses.