THE EIGHTH PLAGUE.
Exo 10:1-20.
The Lord would not command His servant again to enter the
dangerous presence of the sullen prince, without a reason which
would sustain his faith: "For I have made heavy his heart." The
pronoun is emphatic: it means to say, '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 servants
of their God. Thus, in the storm of human passion, as of the winds,
He says, "It is I, be not afraid"; making the wrath of man to praise
Him, stilling alike the tumult of the waves and the madness of the
people.
It is possible that even the merciful mitigations of the last
plague were used by infatuated hearts to justify their wilfulness:
the most valuable crops of all had escaped; so that these judgments,
however dire, were not quite beyond endurance. Just such a course of
reasoning deludes all who forget that the goodness of God leadeth to
repentance.
Besides the reasons already given for lengthening out the train
of judgments, it is added that Israel should teach the story to
posterity, and both fathers and children should "know that I am
Jehovah."
Accordingly it became a favourite title--"The Lord which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt." Even the apostates under Sinai
would not reject so illustrious a memory: their feast was nominally
to Jehovah; and their idol was an image of "the gods which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt" (Exo 32:4-5).
Has our land no deliverances for which to be thankful?
Instead of boastful self-assertion, should we not say, "We have
heard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have declared unto us,
the noble 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
each, are there no rescues, no emancipations, no enemies overcome by
a hand not our own, which call for reverent acknowledgment? "These
things were our examples, and are written for our admonition."
The reproof now spoken to Pharaoh is sterner than any previous
one. There is no reasoning in it. The demand is peremptory: "How
long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself?" With it is a sharp and
short command: "Let My people go, that they may serve Me." And with
this is a detailed and tremendous threat. It is strange, in the face
of the knowledge accumulated since the objection called 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 like,
neither shall be any more after them, even to the years of many
generations" (Exo 2:2), whereas we read of these that "before them
there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be
such" (Exo 10:14). The objection is whimsical in its absurdity, when
we remember that Joel spoke distinctly of Zion and the holy mountain
(Exo 2:1), and Exodus of "the borders of Egypt" (Exo 10:14).
But it is true that locusts are comparatively rare in Egypt; so
that while the meaning of the threat would be appreciated,
familiarity would not have steeled them against it. The ravages of
the locust are terrible indeed, and coming just in time to ruin the
crops which had escaped the hail, would complete the misery of the
land.
One speaks of the sudden change of colour by the disappearance of
verdure where they alight as being like the rolling up of a carpet;
and here we read "they shall cover the eye of the earth,"--a phrase
peculiar to the Pentateuch (Exo 10:15; Num 22:5, Num 22:11); "and
they shall eat the residue of that which has escaped, ... and they
shall fill thy houses, and the ... houses of all the Egyptians,
which neither thy fathers nor thy fathers' fathers have seen."
After uttering the appointed warning, Moses abruptly left,
awaiting no negociations, plainly regarding them as vain.
But now, for the first time, the servants of Pharaoh interfered,
declared the country to be ruined, and pressed him to surrender. And
yet it was now first that we read (Exo 10:1) that their hearts 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 then has
no regard for the wrongs of Israel, but only for the woes of Egypt.
It is a hard heart, therefore, which intends to repent upon its
deathbed; for its motives are identical with these.
Pharaoh's behaviour is that of a spoiled child, who is indeed the
tyrant most familiar to us. He feels that he must yield, or else why
should the brothers be recalled? And yet, when it comes to the
point, he tries to play the master still, by dictating the terms for
his own surrender; and breaks off the negociation rather than do
frankly what he must feel that it is necessary to do. Moses laid 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 consent to
do. "Napoleon," says his apologist, Thiers, "at length determined to
retreat--a resolution humbling to his pride. Unfortunately, instead
of a retreat frankly admitted ... he determined on one which from
its imposing character should not be a real retreat at all, and
should be accomplished in open day." And this perversity, which
ruined him, is traced back to "the illusions of pride."
Well, it was quite as hard for the Pharaoh to surrender at
discretion, as for the Corsican to stoop to a nocturnal retreat.
Accordingly, he asks, "Who are ye that shall go?" and when Moses
very explicitly and resolutely declares that 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 before you"--that is to say, Your intentions are bad. "Go ye
that are men, and serve the Lord, for that is what ye desire,"--no
more than that is implied in your demand, unless it is a mere
pretence, under which more lurks than it avows.
But he and they have long been in a state of war: menaces,
submissions, and treacheries have followed each other fast, and he
has no reason to complain if their demands are raised. Moreover, his
own nation celebrated religious festivals in company with their
wives and children, so that his rejoinder is an empty outburst of
rage. And of a Jewish feast it was said, a 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" (Deu 16:11). 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
the defiant attitude of Moses, yet even now there is as little
reason to suspect bad faith as to suppose that Israel, once
released, could ever have resumed the same abject attitude toward
Egypt as before. They would have come back victorious, and therefore
ready to formulate new demands; already half emancipated, and
therefore prepared for the perfecting of the work.
And now, at a second command as explicit as that which bade him
utter the warning, Moses, anxiously watched by many, stretched out
his hand over the devoted realm. At the gesture, the spectators felt
that a fiat had gone forth. But the result was strangely different
from that which followed his invocation, both of the previous and
the following plague, when we may believe 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 wafted toward them was an awful measure of the wide
regions over which the power of Jehovah reached; and when it was
morning, the east wind brought the locusts, that dreadful curse
which Joel has compared to a disciplined and devastating invader,
"the army of the Lord," and the first woe that heralds the Day of
the Lord in the Apocalypse (Joe 2:1-11; Rev 9:1-11).
The completeness of the ruin brought a swift surrender, but it
has been well said that folly is the wisdom which is only wise too
late, and, let us add, too fitfully. If Pharaoh had only submitted
before the plague instead of after it![18]
If he had only respected himself enough to be faithful, instead of
being too vain really to yield!
It is an interesting coincidence that, since he had this time
defied the remonstrances of his advisers, his confession of sin is
entirely personal: it is no longer, "I and my people are sinners,"
but "I have 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 cloud of creatures which penetrated
everywhere, leaving everywhere an evil odour, and of which a later
sufferer complains, "We could not eat, but we bit a locust; nor open
our mouths, but locusts filled them."
Therefore he went on to entreat volubly, "Forgive, I pray thee,
my sin only this once, and intreat Jehovah your God that He may take
away from me this death only."
And at the prayer of Moses, the Lord caused the breeze to veer
and rise into a hurricane: "The Lord turned an exceeding strong west
wind." Now, the locust can float very well upon an easy breeze, and
so it had been wafted over the Red Sea; but it is at once beaten
down by a storm, and when it touches the water it is destroyed. Thus
simply was the plague removed.
"But the Lord made strong Pharaoh's heart," and so, his fears
being conquered, his own rebellious will went on upon its evil way.
He would not let Israel go.
This narrative throws light upon a thousand vows made upon sick
beds, but broken when the sufferer recovers; and a thousand prayers
for amendment, breathed in all the sincerity 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 professing Christians, who will, for Christ's sake, surrender
all their sins except one or two, and make any confession except
that which really brings low their pride.
Thoroughness, decision, depth, and self-surrender, needed by
Pharaoh, are needed by every soul of man.
THE NINTH PLAGUE.
Exo 10:21-29.
We have taken it as settled that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was
Menephtah, the Beloved of the God Ptah. If so, his devotion to the
gods throws a curious light upon his first scorn of Jehovah, and his
long continued resistance; and also upon the threat of vengeance to
be executed upon the gods of Egypt, as if they were a resisting
power. But there is a special significance in the ninth plague, when
we connect it with Menephtah.
In the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes there is to be seen, fresh
and lifelike, the admirably sculptured effigy of this king--a weak
and cruel face, with the receding forehead of his race, but also
their nose like a beak, and their sharp chin. Over his head is the
inscription--
"Lord of the Two Lands, Beloved of the God Amen; Lord of Diadems,
Beloved of the God Ptah: Crowned by Amen with dominion of the world:
Cherished by the Sun in the great abode."
This formidable personage is delineated by the court sculptor
with his hand stretched out in worship, and under it is written "He
adores the Sun: he worships Hor of the solar horizons."
The worship, thus chosen as the most characteristic of this king,
either by himself or by some consummate artist, was to be tested
now.
Could the sun help him? or was it, like so many minor forces of
earth and air, at the mercy of the God of Israel?
There is a terrible abruptness about the coming of the ninth
plague. Like the third and sixth, it is inflicted unannounced; and
the parleying, the driving of a bargain and then breaking it, by
which the eighth was attended, is quite enough to account for 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. If the heart of Pharaoh
was now beyond hope, it does not follow that all his people were
equally hardened. What an effect was produced upon those courtiers
who so earnestly supported the recent demand of Moses, when this new
plague fell upon them unawares!
But not only is there no announcement: the narrative is so
concentrated and brief as to give a graphic rendering of the
surprise and terror of the time. Not a word is wasted:--
"The Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven,
that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness
that may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven;
and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days:
they saw not one another, neither rose any from his place three
days; but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings" (Exo
10:21-23). 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 see his face no more. Nothing is said, again,
about the evil angels by which, according to later narratives, that
long night was haunted.[19]
And after all it is more impressive to think of the blank, utter
paralysis of dread in which a nation held its breath, benumbed and
motionless, until vitality was almost exhausted, and even Pharaoh
chose rather to surrender than to die.
As the people lay cowering in their fear, there was plenty to
occupy their minds. They would remember the first dreadful threat,
not yet accomplished, to slay their firstborn; and the later
assertion 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
at the waving of the prophet's hand. And then a ghastly foreboding
would complete their dread. What was it that darkness typified, in
every Oriental nation--nay, in all the world? Death! Job speaks of
"The land of darkness and of the shadow of death; A land of thick
darkness, as darkness itself; A land of the shadow of death without
any order, And where the light is as darkness" (Job 10:21-22).
With us, a mortal sentence is given in a black cap; in the East,
far more expressively, the head of the culprit was covered, and the
darkness which thus came upon him expressed his doom. Thus "they
covered Haman's face" (Est 7:8). 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 death-sentence (Isa 25:7-8).
And now this veil was spread over all the radiant land of Egypt.
Chill, and hungry, and afraid to move, the worst horror of all that
prolonged midnight was the mental agony of dire anticipation.
In other respects there had been far worse calamities, but
through its effect upon the imagination this dreadful plague was a
fit prelude to the tenth, which it hinted and premonished.
In the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom there is a remarkable study of
this plague, regarded as retribution in kind. It avenges the
oppression of Israel. "For when unrighteous men thought to oppress
the holy nation, they being shut up in their houses, the prisoners
of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night, lay exiled
from the eternal Providence" (xvii. 2). It expresses in the physical
realm their spiritual misery: "For while they supposed to lie hid in
their secret sins, they were scattered under a thick veil of
forgetfulness" (ver. 3). It retorted on them the illusions of their
sorcerers: "as for the illusions of art magick, they were 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 timorous, and
being pressed by conscience, always forecasteth grievous things.
For"--and this is a sentence of transcendent merit--"fear is nothing
else than a betrayal of the succours that reason offereth" (xvii.
11, 12). Therefore it is concluded that their own hearts were their
worst tormentors, alarmed by whistling winds, or melodious song of
birds, or pleasing fall of waters, "for the whole world shined with
clear light, and none were hindered in their labour: over them only
was spread a heavy night, an image of that darkness which should
afterward receive them: yet were they unto themselves more grievous
than the darkness" (vers. 20, 21).
Isaiah, too, who is full of allusions to the early history of his
people, finds in this plague of darkness an image of all mental
distress and spiritual gloom. "We look for light, but behold
darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity: we grope for the
wall like the blind, yea, we grope as those that have no eyes: we
stumble at noonday as in the twilight" (Isa 59:10). Here the sinful
nation is reduced to the misery of Egypt. But if she were obedient
she would enjoy all the immunities of her forefathers amid Egyptian
gloom: "Then shall thy light rise in darkness and thy obscurity as
the noonday" (Isa 58:10); "Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross
darkness the people, but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His
glory shall be seen upon thee" (Isa 60:2).
And, indeed, in the spiritual light which is sown for the
righteous, and the obscuration of the judgment of the impure, this
miracle is ever reproduced.
The history of Menephtah is that of a mean and cowardly prince.
Dreams forbade him to share the perils of his army; a prophecy
induced him to submit to exile, until his firstborn was of age to
recover his dominions for him; and all we know of him is admirably
suited to the character represented in this narrative. He will now
submit 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 into
wild menaces; "Get thee from me; take heed to thyself; see my face
no more; for in the day thou seest my face thou shalt die." The
assent of Moses was grim: the rupture was complete. And when they
once more met, it was the king that had changed his purpose, and on
his face, not that of Moses, was the pallor of impending death.
In the conduct of the prophet, all through these stormy scenes,
we see the difference between a meek spirit and a craven one. He was
always ready to intercede; he never "reviles the ruler," nor
transgresses the limits of courtesy toward his superior in rank; and
yet he never falters, nor compromises, nor fails to represent
worthily the awful Power he represents.
In the series of sharp contrasts, all the true dignity is with
the servant of God, all the meanness and the shame with the proud
king, who begins by insulting him, goes on to impose on him, and
ends by the most ignominious of surrenders, crowned with the most
abortive of treacheries and the most abject of defeats.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Oddly enough, the same
historian already quoted, relating the story of the same day at
Leipsic, says of Napoleon's dialogue with M. de Merfeld, that he
"used an expression which, if uttered at the Congress of Prague,
would have changed his lot and ours. Unfortunately, it was now too
late."
[19] Such is probably not the
meaning in Psa 78:49 (see R.V.), though from it the tradition may
have sprung.