Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 11:1
And the LORD said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague [more] upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let [you] go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.
1. plague ] Heb. nga‘, from nga‘, to touch; lit. (severe) touch or stroke, Gen 12:17 , 1Ki 8:37-38, Psa 39:10; most commonly, of the severe stroke of leprosy (Leviticus 13-14). Not the word used Exo 9:14, or Exo 12:13: see p. 58.
when, &c.] the marg. is preferable: when he does let you go altogether (without, for instance, keeping back the flocks and herds, Exo 10:24), he will be glad to be rid of you, and will even thrust you out: see Exo 12:39, also Exo 12:33; Exo 6:1 Heb.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
1 8. Announcement of the last plague. From J and E.
1 3 (E). The sequel to Exo 10:27 (E).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Chapters Exo 7:14 to Exo 11:5
The first nine Plagues
The narrative of the Plagues, like that of the preceding chapters, is composite. The details of the analysis depend partly upon literary criteria, partly upon differences in the representation, which are not isolated, but recurrent, and which moreover accompany the literary differences and support the conclusions based upon them, the differences referred to often also agreeing remarkably with corresponding differences in the parts of the preceding narrative, especially in Exo 3:1 to Exo 7:13, which have already, upon independent grounds, been assigned to P, J, and E, respectively. No one source, however, it should be premised, in the parts of it that have been preserved, gives all the plagues.
The parts belonging to P are most readily distinguished, viz. (after Exo 7:8-13) Exo 7:19-20 a, 21b 22, Exo 8:5-7; Exo 8:15 b 19, Exo 9:8-12, Exo 11:9-10: the rest of the narrative belongs in the main to J, the hand of E being hardly traceable beyond Exo 7:15; Exo 7:17 b, 20 b, Exo 9:22-23 a, 31 32 (perhaps), 35a, Exo 10:12-13 a, 14 a, 15 b, 20, 21 23, 27, Exo 11:1-3.
Putting aside for the present purely literary differences, we have thus a threefold representation of the plagues, corresponding to the three literary sources, P, J, and E, of which the narrative is composed. The differences relate to not less than five or six distinct points, the terms of the command addressed to Moses, the part taken by Aaron, the demand made of the Pharaoh, the use made of the rod, the description of the plague, and the formulae used to express the Pharaoh’s obstinacy. Thus in P Aaron co-operates with Moses, and the command is Say unto Aaron (Exo 7:19, Exo 8:5; Exo 8:16; so before in Exo 7:9: even in Exo 9:8, where Moses alone is to act, both are expressly addressed); there is no interview with the Pharaoh, so that no demand is ever made for Israel’s release; the descriptions are brief; except in Exo 9:10, Aaron is the wonder-worker, bringing about the result by stretching out his rod at Moses’ direction (Exo 7:19, Exo 8:5 f., 16 f.; cf. Exo 7:9); the wonders wrought (‘signs and portents,’ Exo 7:3: P does not speak of them as ‘plagues’) are intended less to break down the Pharaoh’s resistance than to accredit Moses as Jehovah’s representative; they thus take substantially the form of a contest with the native magicians, who are mentioned only in this narrative (Exo 7:11 f., 22, Exo 8:7; Exo 8:18 f., Exo 9:11), and who at first do the same things by their arts, but in the end are completely defeated; the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is expressed by za izz ( was strong, made strong), Exo 7:22, Exo 8:19, Exo 9:12, Exo 11:10 (Son 7:13), and the closing formula is, and he hearkened not unto them, as Jehovah had spoken, Exo 7:22, Exo 8:15 b, 19, Exo 9:12 (Son 7:13). In J, on the contrary, Moses one (without Aaron) is told to go in before the Pharaoh, and he addresses the Pharaoh himself (in agreement with Exo 4:10-16, where Aaron is appointed to be Moses’ spokesman not with Pharaoh, as in P, but with the people), Exo 7:14-16, Exo 8:1; Exo 8:9-10; Exo 8:20; Exo 8:26; Exo 8:29, Exo 9:1; Exo 9:13; Exo 9:29, Exo 10:1; Exo 10:9; Exo 10:25, Exo 11:4-10 [116] ; a formal demand is regularly made, Let my people go, that they may serve me, Exo 7:16, Exo 8:1; Exo 8:20, Exo 9:1; Exo 9:13, Exo 10:3 (comp. before, Exo 4:23); the interview with the Pharaoh is prolonged, and described in some detail; Jehovah Himself brings the plague, after it has been announced by Moses, usually on the morrow, Exo 8:23, Exo 9:5 f., 18, Exo 10:4, without any mention of Aaron or his rod; sometimes the king sends for Moses and Aaron to crave their intercession, Exo 8:8; Exo 8:25, Exo 9:27, Exo 10:16; the plague is removed, as it is brought, without any human intervention; the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is expressed by kbd, hikbd ( was heavy, made heavy), Exo 7:14, Exo 8:15; Exo 8:32, Exo 9:7; Exo 9:34, Exo 10:1; and there is no closing formula: J also, unlike both P and E, represents the Israelites as living apart from the Egyptians, in the land of Goshen, Exo 8:22, Exo 9:26 (so before, Gen 45:10; Gen 46:28 f., &c.). The narrative generally is written (just as it is in Genesis, for instance) in a more picturesque and varied style than that of P; there are frequent descriptive touches, and the dialogue is abundant.
[116] Aaron, if he appears at all, is only Moses’ silent companion, Exo 8:8; Exo 8:12 (see vv. 9, 10), 25 (see vv. 26, 29), Exo 9:27 (see v. 29), Exo 10:8 (see v. 9). In Exo 10:3 it is doubtful if the plural, ‘and they said,’ is original: notice in v. 6b ‘and he turned.’
Some other, chiefly literary, characteristics of J may also be here noticed: refuseth ( ), esp. followed by to let the people go, Exo 7:14, Exo 8:2, Exo 9:2, Exo 10:3-4 (so before Exo 4:23); the God of the Heb 7:16 ; Heb 9:1 ; Heb 9:13 ; Heb 10:3 (so Exo 3:18; Exo 5:3); Thus saith Jehovah, said regularly to Pharaoh, Exo 7:17, Exo 8:1; Exo 8:20, Exo 9:1; Exo 9:13, Exo 10:3, Exo 11:4 (so Exo 4:22); behold with the participle (in the Heb.) in the announcement of the plague Exo 7:17, Exo 8:2; Exo 8:21, Exo 9:3; Exo 9:18, Exo 10:4 (so Exo 4:23); border, Exo 8:2, Exo 10:4; Exo 10:14; Exo 10:19; thou, thy people, and thy servants, Exo 8:3, Exodus 4, 9, 11, 21, 29, Exo 9:14 (see the note), cf. Exo 10:6; to intreat, Exo 8:8-9; Exo 8:28-29, Exo 9:28, Exo 10:17; such as hath not been, &c. Exo 9:18 b, 24 b, Exo 11:6 b, cf. Exo 10:6 b, 14 b; to sever, Exo 8:22, Exo 9:4, Exo 11:7; the didactic aim or object of the plague (or circumstance attending it) stated, Exo 7:17 a, Exo 8:10 b, 22 b, Exo 9:14 b, 16 b, 29 c, Exo 10:2 b, Exo 11:7 b.
The narrative of E has been only very partially preserved; so it is not possible to characterize it as fully as those of P or J. Its most distinctive feature is that Moses is the wonder-worker, bringing about the plague by his rod (in agreement with Exo 4:17; Exo 4:20 b, where it is said to have been specially given to him by God), Exo 7:15 b, 17 b, 20 b, Exo 9:23 a, Exo 10:13 a (cf. afterwards, Exo 14:16, Exo 17:5; Exo 17:9); only in the case of the darkness (Exo 10:21 f.) does he use his hand for the purpose. This feature differentiates E from both P (with whom the wonder-working rod is in Aaron’s hand), and J (who mentions no rod, and represents the plague as brought about directly, after Moses’ previous announcement of it, by Jehovah Himself). E uses the same word be or make strong, for ‘harden,’ that P does, but he follows the clause describing the hardening of the Pharaoh’s heart by the words, and he did not let the children of Israel (or them) go, Exo 9:35 (contrast J’s phrase, v. 34b), Exo 10:20; Exo 10:27 (cf. Exo 4:21 E). He also pictures the Israelites, not, as J does, as living apart in Goshen, but as having every one an Egyptian ‘neighbour’ (Exo 3:2, Exo 11:2, Exo 12:35 f.), and consequently as settled promiscuously among the Egyptians.
The scheme, or framework, of the plagues, as described by P, J, and E, is thus suggestively exhibited by Bntsch:
In P we have
And Jehovah said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod , and there shall be. And they did so: and Aaron stretched out his rod, and there was. And the magicians did so ( or could not do so) with their secret arts. And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened; and he hearkened not unto them, as Jehovah had spoken.
J’s formula is quite different
And Jehovah said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, Let my people go that they may serve me. And if thou refuse to let them go, behold I will. And Jehovah did so; and there came ( or and he sent, &c.). And Pharaoh called for Moses, and said unto him, Entreat for me, that. And Jehovah did so , and removed. But Pharaoh made his heart heavy, and he did not let the people go.
The formula of E is again different
And Jehovah said unto Moses, Stretch forth thy hand (with thy rod) toward , that there may be. And Moses stretched forth his hand ( or his rod) toward , and there was. But Jehovah made Pharaoh’s heart hard, and he did not let the children of Israel go.
It has long since been remarked by commentators that the plagues stand in close connexion with the actual conditions of Egypt; and were in fact just miraculously intensified forms of the diseases or other natural occurrences to which Egypt is more or less liable (see particulars in the notes on the different plagues). They were of unexampled severity; they came, and in some cases went, at the announcement, or signal, given by one of the Hebrew leaders; one followed another with unprecedented swiftness; in other respects also they are represented as having an evidently miraculous character.
What judgement, however, are we to form with regard to their historical character? The narratives, there are strong reasons for believing, were written long after the time of Moses, and do not do more than acquaint us with the traditions current among the Hebrews at the time when they were written: we consequently have no guarantee that they preserve exact recollections of the actual facts. That there is no basis of fact for the traditions which the narratives incorporate is in the highest degree improbable: we may feel very sure of this, and yet not feel sure that they describe the events exactly as they happened. ‘As the original nucleus of fact,’ writes Dillm. (p. 66 f., ed. 2, p. 77), ‘we may suppose that at the time of Israel’s deliverance Egypt was visited by various adverse natural occurrences, which the Israelites ascribed to the operation of their God, and by which their leaders, Moses and Aaron, sought to prove to the Egyptian court the superiority of their God above the king and gods of Egypt; it must however be admitted that in the Israelitish story ( Sage) these occurrences had for long been invested with a purely miraculous character. And if all had once been lifted up into the sphere of God’s unlimited power, the compiler could feel no scruple in combining the different plagues mentioned in his sources into a series of ten, in such a manner as to depict, in a picture drawn with unfading colours, not only the abundance of resources which God has at His disposal for helping His own people, and humiliating those who resist His will, but also the slow and patient yet sure steps with which He proceeds against His foes, and the growth of evil in men till it becomes at last obstinate and confirmed.’ The real value of the narratives, according to Dillmann, is thus not historical, but moral and religious. And from these points of view their typical and didactic significance cannot be overrated. The traditional story of the contest between Moses and the Pharaoh is applied so as to depict, to use Dillmann’s expression, ‘in unfading colours,’ the impotence of man’s strongest determination when it essays to contend with God, and the fruitlessness of all human efforts to frustrate His purposes.
Dr Sanday, whose historical bias, if he has one, always leads him to conservative conclusions, has expressed himself recently on the subject, in an essay on the Symbolism of the Bible, in words which are well worth quoting: ‘The early chapters of Genesis are not the only portion of the Pentateuchal history to which I think that we may rightly apply the epithet “symbolical.” Indeed I suspect that the greater part of the Pentateuch would be rightly so described in greater or less degree. The narrative of the Pentateuch culminates in two great events, the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Law from Mount Sinai. What are we to say of these? Are they historical in the sense in which the Second Book of Samuel is historical? I think we may say that they are not. If we accept as I at least feel constrained to accept at least in broad outline the critical theory now so widely held as to the composition of the Pentateuch, then there is a long interval, an interval of some four centuries or more, between the events and the main portions of the record as we now have it. In such a case we should expect to happen just what we find has happened. There is an element of folk-lore, of oral tradition insufficiently checked by writing. The imagination has been at work.
‘If we compare, for instance, the narrative of the Ten Plagues with the narrative of the Revolt of Absalom, we shall feel the difference. The one is nature itself, with all the flexibility and easy sequence that we associate with nature. The other is constructed upon a scheme which is so symmetrical that we cannot help seeing that it is really artificial. I do not mean artificial in the sense that the writer, with no materials before him, sat down consciously and deliberately to invent them in the form they now have; but I mean that, as the story passed from mouth to mouth, it gradually and almost imperceptibly assumed its present shape’ ( The Life of Christ in recent Research, 1907, p. 18f.).
The ‘Plagues’ are denoted by the following terms:
(1) maggphh, properly a severe blow, Exo 9:14 J (see the note).
(2) nga‘, a heavy touch or stroke, Exo 11:1 E (see the note).
(3) ngeph (cognate with No. 1), a severe blow, Exo 12:13 P (by implication, of the tenth plague only).
Nos 2 and 3 of these are rendered in LXX. , and Nos. 1, 2, 3 in the Vulg. plaga: hence the Engl. plague.
They are also spoken of as:
(4) ’thth, signs, LXX. (proofs of God’s power), Exo 8:23 J, Exo 10:1-2 J or the compiler of JE, Exo 7:3 P; probably also in Exo 4:17; Exo 4:28 E. Cf. Num 14:11; Num 14:22 (JE); also in the NT.
In Exo 4:8-9; Exo 4:30 (all J) the same word is used, not of the ‘plagues,’ but of ‘signs’ to be wrought, or, in v. 30, actually wrought, before the Pharaoh, to accredit Moses, as Jehovah’s representative. In Exo 4:17; Exo 4:28, the reference might be similarly, not to the ‘plagues,’ but to the antecedent credentials, to be given by Moses.
(5) mphthim, portents, LXX. (unusual phaenomena, arresting attention, and calling for explanation: see on Exo 4:21; and cf. Act 2:43, &c.), Exo 7:3, Exo 11:9-10 (all P); also, probably, Exo 4:21 E.
In Exo 7:9 P the same word is used, not of one of the ‘plagues,’ but of the preliminary portent of Aaron’s rod becoming a serpent, wrought before Pharaoh.
(6) niphl’th, wonders or marvels (extraordinary phaenomena), Exo 3:20 J.
N.B. In EVV., No. 5 is in Ex. confused with No. 6; elsewhere in the OT. it is confused with both No. 4 and No. 6 (cf. on Exo 4:21).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The Lord said – Or the Lord had said. The first three verses of this chapter are parenthetical. Before Moses relates the last warning given to Pharaoh, he feels it right to recall to his readers minds the revelation and command which had been previously given to him by the Lord.
When he shall let you go … – When at last he lets you depart with children, flocks, herds, and all your possessions, he will compel you to depart in haste. Moses was already aware that the last plague would be followed by an immediate departure, and, therefore, measures had probably been taken to prepare the Israelites for the journey. In fact, on each occasion when Pharaoh relented for a season, immediate orders would of course be issued by Moses to the heads of the people, who were thus repeatedly brought into a state of more or less complete organization for the final movement.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Exo 11:1
One plague more.
One more plague
I. Heaven will terribly plague the sinner. And the one plague more to come upon the impenitent sinner will be awful, it will be just; it will be the natural outcome of a wicked life, and will be inflicted by God.
II. It shows that heaven has a great resource of plagues with which to torment the sinner. The material universe, in its avery realm, is the resource of heaven for the plaguing of men. Men ask how God can punish the sinner in the world to come. He will not be at a loss for one plague more whereby to torment the finally impenitent. How foolish of man to provoke the anger of God!
III. It shows that heaven gives ample warning of the plagues it will inflict upon the sinner. Men do not walk ignorantly to hell.
IV. It shows that heaven has a merciful intention even in the infliction of its plagues. It designed the moral submission of Pharaoh by the threatened plague, and also the freedom of Israel. And so God plagues men that He may save them, and those whom they hold in the dire bondage of moral evil. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
One effort more
The old astronomer with his trusty glass is searching the heavens for a star, a lost star, he says. It ought to be there! he murmers, looking along the jewelled lines of some constellation. Not finding his diamond, he shakes his head, and is about to give up the search. Just one trial more! he murmers. He directs his glass towards the sky, and lo, there it is! Out of the dark depths of space flashes the pure, bright face of the lost star. Found! he cries. It was one effort more that did it. Yes, it is true in nature and in the world of grace that it is the one effort more that often restores to its orbit the lost star. It was the one more reaching out of the world of Christian sympathy that by a friendly tap and a kindly word arrested a drunkard and gave to temperance a star orator, Gough. A Sunday-school teacher touches on the shoulder and kindly asks a young man about his soul, and this one effort more of the Church of God brought Dwight L. Moody to the Saviour. God uses varied instruments:–One day, seeing some men in a field, I made my way to them, and found they were cutting up the trunk of an old tree. I said, That is slow work; why do you not split it asunder with the beetle and wedges? Ah, this wood is so cross-grained and stubborn that it requires something sharper than wedges to get it to pieces. Yes, I replied; and that is the way God is obliged to deal with obstinate, cross-grained sinners; if they will not yield to one of His instruments, you may depend on it He will make use of another. (G. Grigg.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XI
God purposes to bring another plague upon Pharaoh, after
which he should let the Israelites go, 1.
They are commanded to ask gold and silver from the Egyptians, 2.
The estimation in which Moses was held among the Egyptians, 3.
Moses predicts the destruction of the first-born of the
Egyptians, 4-6,
and Israel’s protection, 7.
On seeing which, Pharaoh and his servants should entreat
the Hebrews to depart, 8.
The prediction of his previous obstinacy, 9, 10.
NOTES ON CHAP. XI
Verse 1. The Lord said unto Moses] Calmet contends that this should be read in the preterpluperfect tense, for the Lord HAD said to Moses, as the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth verses appear to have been spoken when Moses had the interview with Pharaoh mentioned in the preceding chapter; See Clarke on Ex 10:29. If therefore this chapter be connected with the preceding, as it should be, and the first three verses not only read in the past tense but also in a parenthesis, the sense will be much more distinct and clear than it now appears.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The Lord said unto Moses; either,
1. Whilst Moses was not yet gone out of Pharaohs presence; so God might suggest this to his mind, as he did other things to Micaiah, when he was before Ahab and Jehoshaphat, 1Ki 22. Or rather,
2. Before his last coming to Pharaoh; and the words may be rendered thus, Now the Lord had said unto Moses. And this is here added as the reason why Moses spake so boldly to Pharaoh, because God had assured him of a good issue.
He shall surely thrust you out hence altogether; men, and women, and children, and cattle, and all that they had, which he would never do before.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. the Lord saidrather, “hadsaid unto Moses.” It may be inferred, therefore, that he hadbeen apprised that the crisis had now arrived, that the next plaguewould so effectually humble and alarm the mind of Pharaoh, that hewould “thrust them out thence altogether”; and thus theword of Moses (Ex 10:29), mustbe regarded as a prediction.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And the Lord said unto Moses,…. While in the presence of Pharaoh, by a secret impulse upon his mind; or he had said m, which some refer as far back as to his appearance to him in Midian, Ex 4:23, which is too remote; rather it refers to the last time he went to Pharaoh, being sent for by him; and the words may be rendered, “for the Lord had said” n; and so are a reason why Moses was so bold, and expressed himself with so much confidence and assurance to Pharaoh, that he would see his face no more:
yet will I bring one plague [more] upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; upon him and all his subjects, for the following one would affect all the families of Egypt, in which there was a son:
afterwards he will let you go hence; out of Egypt readily, at once, and not attempt to stop or retard your going:
when he shall let you go; declare his will, give leave and orders for it:
he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether; absolutely, entirely, without any exception or limitation, them, their wives, their children, their flocks and herds, and whatsoever belonged to them, without any restraint upon them in any respect, and without any condition of return, or fixing any time for it, but the dismission should be general, unlimited, and unconditional; or, “in thrusting he shall thrust you out” o, with force and vehemence, with urgency and in great haste.
m “dixerat”, some in Vatablus, Ainsworth, Cartwright; so Aben Ezra. n “Dixerat enim”, Junius Tremellius, Piscator, Rivet. o “expellendo expellet”, Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius so Fagius, Vatablus, Cartwright.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Proclamation of the Tenth Plague; or the Decisive Blow. – Exo 11:1-3. The announcement made by Jehovah to Moses, which is recorded here, occurred before the last interview between Moses and Pharaoh (Exo 10:24-29); but it is introduced by the historian in this place, as serving to explain the confidence with which Moses answered Pharaoh (Exo 10:29). This is evident from Exo 11:4-8, where Moses is said to have foretold to the king, before leaving his presence, the last plague and all its consequences. therefore, in Exo 11:1, is to be taken in a pluperfect sense: “ had said; ” and may be grammatically accounted for from the old Semitic style of historical writing referred to in the commentary on Gen 2:18-22, as Gen 2:1 and Gen 2:2 contain the foundation for the announcement in Gen 2:4-8. So far as the facts are concerned, Gen 2:1-3 point back to Exo 3:19-22. One stroke more ( ) would Jehovah bring upon Pharaoh and Egypt, and then the king would let the Israelites go, or rather drive them out. , “ when he lets you go altogether ( adverbial as in Gen 18:21), he will even drive you away.”
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Plagues of Egypt. | B. C. 1491. |
1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether. 2 Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold. 3 And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people.
Here is, I. The high favour Moses and Israel were in with God. 1. Moses was a favourite of Heaven, for God will not hide from him the thing he will do. God not only makes him his messenger to deliver his errands, but communicates to him his purpose (as the man of his counsel) that he would bring one plague more, and but one, upon Pharaoh, by which he would complete the deliverance of Israel, v. 1. Moses longed to see an end of this dreadful work, to see Egypt no more plagued and Israel no more oppressed: “Well,” says God, “now it is near an end; the warfare shall shortly be accomplished, the point gained; Pharaoh shall be forced to own himself conquered, and to give up the cause.” After all the rest of the plagues, God says, I will bring one more. Thus, after all the judgments executed upon sinners in this world, still there is one more reserved to be brought on them in the other world, which will completely humble those whom nothing else would humble. 2. The Israelites were favourites of Heaven; for God himself espouses their injured cause, and takes care to see them paid for all their pains in serving the Egyptians. This was the last day of their servitude; they were about to go away, and their masters, who had abused them in their work, would not have defrauded them of their wages, and have sent them away empty; while the poor Israelites were so fond of liberty that they would be satisfied with that, without pay, and would rejoice to get that upon any terms: but he that executeth righteousness and judgment for the oppressed provided that the labourers should not lose their hire, and ordered them to demand it now at their departure (v. 2), in jewels of silver and jewels of gold, to prepare for which God, by the plagues, had now made the Egyptians as willing to part with them upon any terms as, before, the Egyptians, by their severities, had made them willing to go upon any terms. Though the patient Israelites were content to lose their wages, yet God would not let them go without them. Note, One way or other, God will give redress to the injured, who in a humble silence commit their cause to him; and he will see to it that none be losers at last by their patient suffering any more than by their services.
II. The high favour Moses and Israel were in with the Egyptians, v. 3. 1. Even the people that has been hated and despised now came to be respected; the wonders wrought on their behalf put an honour upon them and made them considerable. How great do they become for whom God thus fights! Thus the Lord gave them favour in the sight of the Egyptians, by making it appear how much he favoured them: he also changed the spirit of the Egyptians towards them, and made them to be pitied of their oppressors, Ps. cvi. 46. 2. The man Moses was very great. How could it be otherwise when they saw what power he was clothed with, and what wonders were wrought by his hand? Thus the apostles, though otherwise despicable men, came to be magnified, Acts v. 13. Those that honour God he will honour; and with respect to those that approve themselves faithful to him, how meanly soever they may pass through this world, there is a day coming when they will look great, very great, in the eyes of all the world, even theirs who now look upon them with the utmost contempt. Observe, Though Pharaoh hated Moses, there were those of Pharaoh’s servants that respected him. Thus in Caesar’s household, even Nero’s, there were some that had an esteem for blessed Paul, Phil. i. 13.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
EXODUS – CHAPTER ELEVEN
Verses 1-3:
These verses are parenthetical, inserted between Ex 10:29 and 11:4 to show that the time had arrived for Jehovah to fulfill His word when He appeared to Moses in Horeb, Ex 3:20, 22. One more plague or “stroke” would smite Egypt. This would be of such a nature as to cause Pharaoh to let Israel (literally), “go altogether, he will assuredly thrust you out hence.”
In Ex 3:20, God mentioned only the women. Here He includes the men in His instructions, to borrow whatever they could from the Egyptians. Some have charged this was dishonest; that Israel had no intention of paying back what they had borrowed. This was not dishonest. It was merely God’s way of assuring that Israel was paid in full for the work they had done in Egypt and for which they had never received wages.
God moved in the hearts of the Egyptians to show sympathy and high regard for the Israelites.
The mighty powers which Moses had demonstrated before Pharaoh had won for him a high reputation among the Egyptians. While Pharaoh angrily drove Moses away with a threat of death, Pharaoh’s servants had high regard for him.
This demonstrates the power of God, to bring His people into favor of the authorities, to accomplish His purpose, see Pr 21:1.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. And the Lord said unto Moses. (131) He now relates that it was not with self-conceived confidence that he was lately so elated, as we have seen him; (132) but because he had been forewarned by divine revelation that the end of the contests was now near, and that nothing now remained but. that Pharaoh should fall by his mortal wound. This verse, then, is connected with the preceding, and explains its cause; because Moses would not have been at liberty to interrupt the course of his vocation, unless he had now plainly known that he was arriving at its conclusion. Nor would it otherwise agree with what follows, via, that Moses spoke to Pharaoh after he had declared that he would not appear any more in his sight, unless the subject were continued without interruption. But this sentence is introduced parenthetically, (meaning) that however obstinate Pharaoh might be, the hour was now come in which he must succumb to God. But God not only declares that the heart of Pharaoh should be changed, so that he would not hinder the people’s departure, but that he would be himself anxious for that, which he had so pertinaciously refused; for this is the meaning of the words, he will not only send you away, but altogether thrust you out. For in his alarm at their presence, he eagerly drove them from his kingdom.
(131) See Lat. , Dixerat autem.
(132) “Tellement que sa confiance le fait parler haut;” as to be led by his confidence to use such high language. — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
ISRAELS BONDAGE. MOSES AND THE EXODUS
Exo 1:1 to Exo 15:21.
DR. J. M. Grays five rules for Bible reading: Read the Book, Read the Book Continuously, Read the Book Repeatedly, Read the Book Independently, Read the Book Prayerfully, are all excellent; but the one upon which I would lay emphasis in this study of Exodus is the second of those rules, or, Read the Book Continuously. It is doubtful if there is any Book in the Bible which comes so nearly containing an outline, at least, of all revelation, as does the Book of Exodus. There is scarcely a doctrine in the New Testament, or a truth in the Old, which may not be traced in fair delineation in these forty chapters.
God speaks in this Book out of the burning bush. Sin, with its baneful effects, has a prominent place in its pages; and Salvation, for all them that trust in Him, with judgment for their opposers, is a conspicuous doctrine in this Old Testament document. God, Sin, Salvation, and Judgmentthese are great words! The Book that reveals each of them in fair outline is a great Book indeed, and its study will well repay the man of serious mind.
Exodus is a Book of bold outlines also! Its author, like a certain school of modern painters, draws his picture quickly and with but few strokes, and yet the product of his work approaches perfection. How much of time and history is put into these three verses:
And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the Children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them (Exo 1:5-7).
These three verses contain 215 years of time, and all the events that crowded into that period would, if they were recorded, fill volumes without end. And, while there are instances of delineation in detail in the Book of Exodus, the greater part of the volume is given to the bolder outlines which sweep much history into single sentences.
In looking into these fifteen chapters, I have been engaged with the question of such arrangement as would best meet the demands of memory, and thereby make the lesson of this hour a permanent article in our mental furniture. Possibly, to do that, we must seize upon a few of the greater subjects that characterize these chapters, and so phrase them as to provide mental promontories from which to survey the field of our present study. Surely, The Bondage of Israel, The Rise of Moses, and the Exodus from Egypt, are such fundamentals.
THE BONDAGE OF ISRAEL.
The bondage of Israel, like her growth, requires but a few sentences for its expression.
Now, there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the Children of Israel are more and mightier than we; Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pit horn and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the Children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the Children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour (Exo 1:8-22).
There are several features in Egypts conduct in effecting the bondage of Israel which characterize the conduct of all imperial nations.
The bondage began with injustice. Israel was in Egypt by invitation. When they came, Pharaoh welcomed them, and set apart for their use the fat of the land. The record is,
Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Raamses, as Pharaoh had commanded (Gen 47:11).
There they flourished until a king arose which knew not Joseph. Then a tax was laid upon them; eventually taskmasters were set over them, and those who came in response to Pharaohs invitation, Come unto me and I will give you the good of the, land of Egypt, and ye shall eat of the fat of the land, were compelled by his successors to take the place of slaves. It seems as difficult for a nation as it is for an individual to refrain from the abuse of power. A writer says, Revolution is caused by seeking to substitute expediency for justice, and that is exactly what the King of Egypt and his confederates attempted in the instance of these Israelites. It would seem that the result of that endeavor ought to be a lesson to the times in which we live, and to the nations entrusted with power. Injustice toward a supposedly weaker people is one of those offences against God which do not go unpunished, and its very practice always provokes a rebellion which converts a profitable people into powerful enemies.
It ought never to be forgotten either that injustice easily leads to oppression. We may suppose the tax at first imposed upon this people was comparatively slight, and honorable Egyptians found for it a satisfactory excuse, hardly expecting that the time would ever come when the Israelites should be regarded chattel-slaves. But he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. It is doubtful if there is any wrong in mans moral relations which blinds him so quickly and so effectually as the exercise of power against weakness.
Joseph Parker, in speaking of the combat between Moses and the Egyptian, says, Every honorable-minded man is a trustee of social justice and common fair play. We have nothing to do with the petty quarrels that fret society, but we certainly have to do with every controversysocial, imperial, or internationalwhich violates human right and impairs the claims of Divine honor. We must all fight for the right. We feel safer by so much if we know there are amongst us men who will not be silent in the presence of wrong, and will lift up a testimony in the name of righteousness, though there be none to cheer them with one word of encouragement.
It is only a step from enslaving to slaughter. That step was speedily taken, for Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river (Exo 1:22). Unquestionably there is a two-fold thought in this fact. Primarily this, whom the tyrant cannot control to his profit, he will slay to his pleasure; and then, in its deeper and more spiritual significance, it is Satans effort to bring an end to the people of God. The same serpent that effected the downfall of Adam and Eve whispered into Cains ear, Murder Abel; and into the ears of the Patriarchs, Put Joseph out of the way; and to Herod, Throttle all the male children of the land; and to the Pharisee and Roman soldier, Crucify Jesus of Nazareth. It remains for us of more modern times to learn that the slaughter of the weak may be accomplished in other ways than by the knife, the Nile, or the Cross. It was no worse to send a sword against a feeble people, than, for the sake of filthy lucre, to plant among them the accursed saloon. Benjamin Harrison, in a notable address before the Ecumenical Missionary Conference held in the City of New York years ago, said, The men who, like Paul, have gone to heathen lands with the message, We seek not yours but you, have been hindered by those who, coming after, have reversed the message. Rum and other corrupting agencies come in with our boasted civilization, and the feeble races wither before the breath of the white mans vices.
Egypt sought to take away from Israel the physical life which Egypt feared; but God has forewarned us against a greater enemy when He said, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. * * Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him. If in this hour of almost universal disturbance the sword cannot be sheathed, let us praise God that our Congress and Senate have removed the saloona slaughter-house from the midst of our soldiers, and our amended Constitution has swept it from the land.
THE RISE OF MOSES.
I do not know whether you have ever been impressed in studying this Book of Exodus with what is so evidently a Divine ordering of events. It is when the slaughter is on that we expect the Saviour to come. And that God who sits beside the dying sparrow never overlooks the affliction of His people. When an edict goes forth against them, then it is that He brings their deliverer to the birth; hence we read, And there went a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter of the house of Levi, and the woman conceived and bare a son (Exo 2:1-2),
That is Moses; that is Gods man! It is no chance element that brings him to the kingdom at such a time as this. It is no mere happening that he is bred in Pharaohs house, and instructed by Jochebed. It is no accident that he is taught in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. It is all in perfect consequence of the fact that God is looking upon the Children of Israel, and is having respect unto them.
Against Pharaohs injustice He sets Moses keen sense of right. When Moses sees an Egyptian slay an oppressed Israelite, he cannot withhold his hand. And, when after forty years in the wilderness he comes back to behold afresh the affliction of his people, he chooses to suffer with them rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. God never does a better thing for a nation than when He raises up in it such a man. We have heard a great deal of Socrates wisdom, but it is not in the science of philosophy alone that that ancient shines; for when Athens was governed by thirty tyrants, who one day summoned him to the Senate House, and ordered him to go with others named to seize Leon, a man of rank and fortune, whose life was to be sacrificed that these rulers might enjoy his estate, the great philosopher flatly refused, saying, I will not willingly assist in an unjust act. Thereupon Chericles sharply asked, Dost thou think, Socrates, to talk in this high tone and not to suffer? Far from it, replied the philosopher, I expect to suffer a thousand ills, but none so great as to do unjustly. That day Socrates was a statesman of the very sort that would have saved Athens had his ideas of righteousness obtained.
Against Pharaohs oppression He sets Moses Divine appointment. There were many times when Moses was tempted to falter, but Gods commission constrained his service. When Moses said, Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh? God answered, Surely I will be with thee. When Moses feared his own people who would not believe in his commission, God answered, Thus shalt thou say unto the Children of Israel, I AM hath sent you. When Moses feared that the Israelites would doubt his Divine appointment, God turned the rod in his hand into a worker of wonders. And, when Moses excused himself on the ground of no eloquence, God replied, Go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt say. With any man, a conviction of Divine appointment is a power, but for him who would be a saviour of his fellows, it is an absolute essential.
Pastor Stalker, speaking to the subject of a Divine call to the service of soul-winning, said, Enthusiasm for humanity is a noble passion and sheds a beautiful glow over the first efforts of an unselfish life, but it is hardly stern enough for the uses of the world. There come hours of despair when men seem hardly worth our devotion. * * Worse still is the sickening consciousness that we have but little to give; perhaps we have mistaken our vocation; it is a world out of joint, but were we born to put it right? This is where a sterner motive is needed than love for men. Our retreating zeal requires to be rallied by the command of God. It is His work; these souls are His; He has committed them to our care, and at the judgment-seat He will demand an account of them. All Prophets and Apostles who have dealt with men for God have been driven on by this impulse which has recovered them in hours of weakness and enabled them to face the opposition of the world. * * This command came to Moses in the wilderness and drove him into public life in spite of strong resistance; and it bore him through the unparalleled trials of his subsequent career. How many times he would have surrendered the battle and left his fellows to suffer under Pharaohs heels, but for the sound of that voice which Joan of Arc heard, saying to him as it said to her, Go on! Go on!
Against Pharaohs slaughter God set up Moses as a Saviour. History has recorded the salvation of his people to many a man, who, either by his counsels in the time of peace or his valor in the time of war, has brought abiding victory. But where in annals, secular or sacred, can you find a philosopher who had such grave difficulties to deal with as Moses met in lifting his people from chattel slaves to a ruling nation? And where so many enemies to be fought as Moses faced in his journey from the place of the Pyramids to Pisgahs Heights?
Titus Flaminius freed the Grecians from the bondage with which they had long been oppressed. When the herald proclaimed the Articles of Peace, and the Greeks understood perfectly what Flaminius had accomplished for them, they cried out for joy, A Saviour! a Saviour! till the Heavens rang with their acclamations.
But Moses was worthy of greater honor because his was a more difficult deed. I dont know, but I suppose one reason why Moses name is coupled with that of the Lamb in the Oratorio of the Heavens, is because he saved Israel out of a bondage which was a mighty symbol of Satans power, and led them by a journey, which is the best type of the pilgrims wanderings in this world, and brought them at last to the borders of Canaan, which has always been regarded as representative of the rest that remaineth for the people of God.
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT
involves some items of the deepest interest.
The ten plagues prepare for it. The river is turned into blood; frogs literally cover the land; the dust is changed to lice; flies swarm until all the houses are filled; the beasts are smitten with murrain; boils and blains, hail, locusts and darkness do their worst, and the death of the first-born furnishes the climax of Egyptian affliction, and compels the haughty Pharaoh to bow in humility and grief before the will of the Most High God (chaps. 7-12).
There is one feature of these plagues that ought never to be forgotten. Without exception, they spake in thunder tones against Egyptian idolatry. The Nile River had long been an object of their adoration. In a long poem dedicated to the Nile, these lines are found:
Oh, Nile, hymns are sung to thee on the harp,
Offerings are made to thee: oxen are slain to thee;
Great festivals are kept for thee;
Fowls are sacrificed to thee.
But when the waters of that river were turned to blood, the Egyptians supposed Typhon, the God of Evil, with whom blood had always been associated, had conquered over their bountiful and beautiful Osiristhe name under which the Nile was worshiped.
The second plague was no less a stroke at their hope of a resurrection, for a frog had long symbolized to them the subject of life coming out of death. The soil also they had worshiped, and now to see the dust of it turned suddenly into living pests, was to suffer under the very power from which they had hoped to receive greatest success. The flies that came in clouds were not all of one kind, but their countless myriads, according to the Hebrew word used, included winged pests of every sort, even the scarabaeus, or sacred beetle. Heretofore, it had been to them the emblem of the creative principle; but now God makes it the instrument of destruction instead. When the murrain came upon the beasts, the sacred cow and the sacred ox-Apis were humbled. And ~when the ashes from the furnace smote the skin of the Egyptians, they could not forget that they had often sprinkled ashes toward Heaven, believing that thus to throw the ashes of their sacrifices into the wind would be to avert evil from every part of the land whither they were blown. Geikie says that the seventh plague brought these devout worshipers of false gods to see that the waters, the earth and the air, the growth of the fields, the cattle, and even their own persons, all under the care of a host of divinities, were yet in succession smitten by a power against which these protectors were impotent. When the clouds of locusts had devoured the land, there remained another stroke to their idolatry more severe still, and that was to see the Sun, the supreme god of Egypt, veil his face and leave his worshipers in total darkness. It is no wonder that Pharaoh then called to Moses and said, Go ye, serve the Lord; but it is an amazing thing that even yet his greed of gain goads him on to claim their flocks and their herds as an indemnity against the exodus of the people. There remained nothing, therefore, for God to do but lift His hand again, and lo, death succeeded darkness, and Pharaoh himself became the subject of suffering, and the greatest idol of the nation was humbled to the dust, for the king was the supreme object of worship.
He is a foolish man who sets himself up to oppose the Almighty God. And that is a foolish people who think to afflict Gods faithful ones without feeling the mighty hand of that Father who never forgets His own.
One day I was talking with a woman whose husband formerly followed the habit of gambling. By this means he had amassed considerable wealth, and when she was converted and desired to unite with the church, he employed every power to prevent it, and even denied her the privilege of church attendance. One morning he awoke to find that he was a defeated man; his money had fled in the night, and in the humiliation of his losses, he begged his wifes pardon for ever having opposed her spirit of devotion. Since that time, though living in comparative poverty, she has been privileged to serve God as she pleased; and, as she said to me, finds in that service a daily joy such as she at one time feared she would never feel again. Gods plagues are always preparing the way for an exodus on the part of Gods oppressed.
The Passover interpreted this exodus. That greatest of all Jewish feasts stands as a memorial of Israels flight from Egypt as a symbol of Gods salvation for His own, and as an illustration of the saving power of the Blood of the Lamb.
The opponents of the exodus perished. Our study concludes with Israels Song of Deliverance, beginning, The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation, and concluding in the words of Miriam, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea. See Exo 15:1-21. Such will ever be the end of those who oppress Gods people and oppose the Divine will.
When one studies the symbolism in all of this, and sees how Israel typifies Gods present-day people, and Moses, their deliverer, Jesus our Saviour, and defeated Pharaoh, the enemy of our souls, destined to be overthrown, he feels like joining in the same song of deliverance, changing the words only so far as to ascribe the greater praise to Him who gave His life a deliverance for all men; and with James Montgomery sing:
Hail to the Lords Anointed
Great Davids greater Son
Who, in the time appointed,
His reign on earth begun.
He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free,
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity.
He comes, with succor speedy,
To those who suffer wrong;
To help the poor and needy,
And bid the weak be strong;
To give them songs for sighing,
Their darkness turn to light,
Whose souls, condemned and dying.
Were precious in His sight.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.
Exo. 11:1. Said unto Moses.] Kalisch renders the verb here as a pluperfect, had said; and concludes that the object of these verses is to account for the utterance of the final threat before Moses leaves the presence of Pharaoh:as though God had previously said this to Moses; and now, the fit moment having come, Moses repeats it to Pharaoh. But it seems doubtful whether the Hebrew imperfect tense with waw consecutive can ever be understood as a pluperfect (see Driver, Hebrew Tenses, 76, Obs.); and the necessity so to understand it in this place is not very apparent. It should be observed that the narrative has not yet recorded the actual departure of Moses from Pharaohs presence,this it postpones to Exo. 11:8 of this chapter; nor does there seem to be any good reason why we should not accept the view declined as unnecessary by Kalisch, viz., that God spoke to Moses whilst he stood before Pharaoh; for the revelation came suddenly upon him. This is surely far more probable than that the writer should have put an unnatural strain on the idiom of his own language.
Exo. 11:2. Borrow.] Rather, ask. No one meeting with the Heb verb , by itself, would think of borrow as its primary or ordinary meaning. It is true that we may ask with intent to borrow, and the latter notion may accordingly be sometimes inferred from context and circumstance; but to put that notion into this place, just to calumniate the record, or those appearing therein, is more wanton than wise.
Exo. 11:5. The mill.] Literally, the two millstones, i.e., the upper and lower:the characteristic position of the drudge of the family in the East.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Exo. 11:1-3
THE EVE OF FINAL RETRIBUTION
The first three verses of this chapter are a parenthesis, either referring to something that had previously been said to Moses, or to some communication that was made to him while he was in the presence of Pharaoh; they are inserted in order to give a full explanation of the narrative. After Moses had said that he would see the face of the king no more, he continued the utterance of the fourth verse. This was the last interview between the two men, and as such, it was most solemn and affecting. It appears to have made but little impression on the haughty king; but truly this was not the fault of Moses. After the servants of God have rendered their best service for the moral good of men, they may fail of the result they desire; but the husbandman cannot give the desired harvest, he is only responsible for the sowing.
I. On the eve of final retribution God reveals to His servants the things that are shortly to come to pass. God had privately told Moses the judgment He would send upon Egypt and its king, if they did not yield to His command. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. Moses repeated the message to Pharaoh, that the proud monarch might be without excuse in the event of disobedience. Good men are sent by Heaven to announce to the world the retributions of the future. Thus they are saddened; thus they are honoured. God does not generally startle men by retribution; He predicts its advent by the ministry of the good.
II. On the eve of final retribution the servants of God must direct the activities of the Church. (Exo. 11:2.) Moses was told upon the eve of the threatened plague to direct the conduct of the children of Israel. To the Israelites the retribution was a crisis; it was the supreme moment of their national history, and upon the promptitude and wisdom of their conduct great issues were dependent. Hence they needed direction. And so all the retributions that come upon mankind have an important bearing toward the life and history of the Christian Church; they are related to its moral freedom, and hence it becomes the Church to act wisely in them, that it may receive the full advantage of the hour. The Church has lost the benediction of many a political revolution by sloth and lack of prompt action. All the struggles of nations are destined to work the freedom of the Church. Hence in times of national retribution the Church has need of strong-souled heroes, to awaken its intelligence, to inspire its activity, to guide its energies, and to make it victorious over all its foes, that it may go forth from bondage with the treasure it has earned through many years of unrequited service.
III. That on the eve of final retribution the servants of God become the great men of the times. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaohs servants, and in the sight of the people (Exo. 11:3). Pharaoh had not taken the advice of his servants (Exo. 10:7), and it is evident that he had lost the sympathy of his people to a large extent. The nation was weary of its suffering. Israel was growing in favour with Egypt. This the outcome of a gracious providence. Sometimes God gives the Church favour in the eyes of the world, for the accomplishment of His purpose. In times of national retribution, then warriors are forgotten, then artists are neglected, and the servants of God start into unexpected fame. Men who do their duty, even to a hostile multitude, are sure, in the long run, to be respected, even though at first they are regarded with scorn. Goodness and fidelity make men great. The world in its truer conscience knows in what real dignity consists. LESSONS:
1. That times of retribution are revealed to the good.
2. That the servants of God must gather strength to act in important times.
3. That all things tend to the freedom of the Church.
ONE MORE PLAGUE
I. It shows that Heaven will terribly plague the sinner. Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh. Many people cant about the mercy of God and the kindness of Heaven. This is their most prominent theology. They consider the Infinite Father as incapable of plaguing men. Did He not send terrible retributions on the land of Egypt, and were they not compatible with the Divine character and government? And the one plague more to come upon the impenitent sinner will be awful, it will be just; it will be the natural outcome of a wicked life, and will be inflicted by God.
II. It shows that Heaven has a great resource of plagues with which to torment the sinner. Heaven had already sent nine plagues on Pharaoh and his people; and yet its retributive resources were not exhausted. The material universe, in its every realm, is the resource of Heaven for the plaguing of men. Men ask how God can punish the sinner in the world to come. He will not be at a loss for one plague more whereby to torment the finally impenitent. How foolish of man to provoke the anger of God!
III. It shows that Heaven gives ample warning of the plagues it will inflict upon the sinner. The king of Egypt had ample warning of the death that was to overtake the first-born of the nation. God has revealed to the sinner the severity and certainty of the one plague more; and if it falls upon his guilty soul, it will be through wilful disobedience. Men do not walk ignorantly to hell.
IV. It shows that Heaven has a merciful intention even in the infliction of its plagues. It designed the moral submission of Pharaoh by the threatened plague, and also the freedom of Israel. And so God plagues men that He may save them, and those whom they hold in the dire bondage of moral evil.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Exo. 11:1. One plague may do more than nine that have preceded it.
Combined persecutors are joined in Gods plague.
In Gods own time He will get victory over His enemies.
At Gods word oppressors shall release his Church fully and readily.
Exo. 11:2-3. God may command His servants to ask and have of their very enemies.
It is no wrong to ask and take what God commands His people.
God can give the silver and gold of enemies to His Church.
When God moves the Church to ask He moves hearts to give.
The freedom of the Church:
1. After long struggle.
2. Welcome.
3. The commencement of development.
4. The earnest of victory.
The Church of God:
1. Favoured by enemies.
2. Enriched by tyrants.
3. Freed by Heaven.
God can make men favourable to others:
1. By inspiring beauty of character.
2. By awaking guilty despisers.
3. By bestowing deep sympathy.
4. By enabling them to render efficient help.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Persistent Effort! Exo. 11:1. In Howes Cave, in the New World, is a vast stalagmite, thirty feet high and broad. Listening intently, you can hear a drop of water falling from the high limestone roof at intervals of about one minute. Drop by drop, steadily, slowly, surely, the work is done. Each drop contained an almost infinitesimal particle of limestone, so that thousands of years must have been spent in the formation of this giant stalactite. The relation between the Gulliver result and the Liliput cause is in such contrast, that any one must feel the lesson of persistent effort, patient doing, as well as the confident expectation of large results, and the certainty of duty ending in reward. So with Moses; patiently and persistently had he, step by step, struggled for his nations freedom, and now he is to receive his reward. Pharaoh is to let Israel go, not under conditions, limitations, and restrictions, but free and unfettered altogether. Jehovah thus assures Moses that even now
The waves of the ocean are ceasing to swell,
And the tempest has whispered its last farewell.
Divine Favour! Exo. 11:3. When Luther first began to demand the freedom of the Church, their oppressor, and his cardinals and tributary princes, despised and scorned the humble monk; but as, step by step, he persistently demanded their liberation from moral tyranny, and gained triumph after triumph in the intellectual and theological struggle, his enemies began to look upon the Reformer with different eyes. The Roman Pharaoh and his courtiers feared and hated him, while God gave him favour in the sight of the people; and now at Augsburg, then at Worms
Unquailed by frowns, unchecked by human fear,
Before the monarch stands the holy seer.
Mark.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
THE TEXT OF EXODUS
TRANSLATION
11 And Je-ho-vah said unto Mo-ses, Yet one plague more will I bring upon Pha-raoh, and upon E-gypt; afterwards he will let you go hence; when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether. (2) Speak now in the ears of the people, and let them ask every man of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold. (3) And Je-ho-vah gave the peole favor in the sight of the E-gyp-tians. Moreover the man Mo-ses was very great in the land of E-gypt, in the sight of Pha-raohs servants, and in the sight of the people.
(4) And Mo-ses said, Thus saith Je-ho-vah, About midnight will I go out into the midst of E-gypt: (5) and all the first-born in the land of E-gypt shall die, from the first-born of Pha-raoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of cattle. (6) And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of E-gypt, such as there hath not been, nor shall be any more. (7) But against any of the children of Is-ra-el shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast: that ye may know how that Je-ho-vah doth make a distinction between the E-gyp-tians and Is-ra-el. (8) And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee: and after that I will go out And he went out from Pha-raoh in hot anger.
(9) And Je-ho-vah said unto Mo-ses, Pha-raoh will not hearken unto you; that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of E-gypt. (10) And Mo-ses and Aar-on did all these wonders before Pha-raoh: and Je-hovah hardened Pha-raohs heart, and he did not let the children of Is-ra-el go out of his land.
EXPLORING EXODUS: CHAPTER ELEVEN
QUESTIONS ANSWERABLE FROM THE BIBLE
1.
Propose a theme or topic for chapter eleven.
2.
When did the LORD say the things in Exo. 11:1-3 to Moses? How do they fit into the narrative of chapters 1011?
3.
What was to be the result of the last plague? (Exo. 11:1)
4.
What was Moses to tell the Israelites to say to the Egyptians? (Exo. 11:2)
5.
How did the Egyptians regard the Israelites? What brought this about? (Exo. 11:3)
6.
What was the estimation of Moses by the Egyptians? (Exo. 11:3)
7.
At what time of day would the LORD pass over? (Exo. 11:4)
8.
To whom Isa. 11:4 ff addressed?
9.
What was to be the extent of the death of the firstborn? (Exo. 11:5)
10.
Who were the highest and lowest people in Egyptian society? (Exo. 11:5)
11.
What would be the immediate effect of the death of the firstborn? (Exo. 11:6)
12.
What would the silence of the dogs reveal about the status of the Israelites? (Exo. 11:7)
13.
What was Pharaoh to know (to learn) from the fact that the Israelites were spared the death of their firstborn? (Exo. 11:7)
14.
Who would urge the Israelites to depart? (Exo. 11:8)
15.
What was Moses feeling as he departed from Pharaoh? (Exo. 11:8)
16.
Why would not Pharaoh hearken? (Exo. 11:9)
EXODUS ELEVEN: THE LAST WARNING!
1.
Revealed by God to Moses; Exo. 11:1-3.
2.
Related by Moses to Pharaoh; Exo. 11:4-8.
3.
Rejected by Pharaoh; Exo. 11:9-10.
EXODUS ELEVEN: ONE MORE BLOW (OR PLAGUE)!
1.
The day for judgment is set; Exo. 11:1-3.
2.
The day of judgment will be final; Exo. 11:4-8.
GODS SAINTS FAVORED (Exo. 11:2-3)
1.
Jewelry given; Exo. 11:2; Exo. 3:22; Exo. 12:35-36.
2.
Honor given; Exo. 11:3.
RESULTS OF THE LAST PLAGUE
1.
Death of the firstborn; Exo. 11:5.
2.
Great cry; Exo. 11:6.
3.
Distinction demonstrated; Exo. 11:7.
4.
Supplication of Egyptians; Exo. 11:8.
5.
Departure of Israel; Exo. 11:8.
THE LORD MAKES A DISTINCTION!
1.
Between Israelites and Egyptians.
2.
Between Moses and Pharaoh.
3.
Between Himself and Egypts gods.
THE SAD SUMMARY (Exo. 11:9-10; Joh. 12:37)
1.
Pharaoh would not hearken.
2.
Moses and Aaron worked wonders.
3.
Jehovah hardened Pharaohs heart.
EXPLORING EXODUS: NOTES ON CHAPTER ELEVEN
1.
What does Exodus eleven tell about?
It gives Gods last warning to Pharaoh through Moses. It tells us that God revealed to Moses that only one more plague the death of Egypts firstborn remained before Pharaoh would thrust out the Israelites. It tells of Pharaohs rejection of Moses and Gods message.
2.
When did God inform Moses about the last plague? (Exo. 11:1)
God either revealed this information to Moses mind during his hot conversation with Pharaoh (Cassutos view); or God had already told it to Moses before his arrival at Pharaohs house (Exo. 10:24) (view of Keil and Delitzsch, Hertz, and others.) If that is the true interpretation of Exo. 11:1, then the verse should be translated, Jehovah had said unto Moses,. . . . . . We lean to this latter view, but either view is possible. Perhaps God revealed to Moses the facts about the last plague and about the Passover during the three days of darkness.
The word for plague in Exo. 11:1 is not used elsewhere in Exodus. Its most numerous occurrence is in Leviticus 13-14, where it refers to the plague of leprosy. It means a blow, or striking. It was to be the final decisive blow.
We must reject the unproven views of critics[192] who argue that Exo. 11:1-3 was written by one author (called E), and Exo. 11:4-8 was by another author (called J). This interruption of the record of the conversation between Moses and Pharaoh is necessary for our understanding of how Moses knew about the last plague (as related in Exo. 11:4-8).
[192] S. R. Driver, Intro. to the Literature of the O.T. (New York: World, 1965), p. 27.
3.
What were the Israelites to ask the Egyptians for? (Exo. 11:2)
For jewels of gold and silver. The word jewels actually just means vessels, but the fact that they were of gold and silver justifies the translation of it as jewels.
In Exo. 3:22 only women were mentioned as those who were to request jewels. Here men are mentioned also. This is not a contradiction, just an enlargement of the command.
The word borrow in KJV is misleading. Neither the Hebrews nor the Egyptians interpreted their asking as borrowing. No one hinted that the items would be returned. See notes on Exo. 3:22.
4.
How did the Egyptians feel toward Moses and the Israelites? (Exo. 11:3)
They looked upon the people with favor, and upon Moses as very great. This had been predicted to Moses back at the burning bush (Exo. 3:20-22). In Exo. 12:33; Exo. 12:35-36 we read about how Jehovah gave the Israelites favor with the Egyptians.
The people of Exo. 11:3 seem to be the Israelite people. Just at this moment Moses was very high in the esteem of the Israelites. Not long before, they had scorned him (Exo. 5:20-21); and very soon after this they were blaming Moses for every trouble they had (Exo. 15:23; Exo. 16:21).
The honor Moses achieved must be held up in contrast with the excuses he once gave about being such an inferior person (Exo. 3:11; Exo. 4:10). This is a warning to us not to low-rate ourselves too much.
Would Moses as the author of Exodus write words like Exo. 11:3 about himself? Certainly! Why not? It was the truth. Compare the way Paul wrote of himself (2Co. 10:8-14), and the way Nehemiah wrote of himself (Neh. 5:18-19).
5.
When would the last plague strike? (Exo. 11:4)
About midnight! The hour of this plague would make its coming even dreadful.
God did not specify which midnight. We know from Exo. 12:1 that a new month (called Abib) had then started. Exo. 12:3 tells us that on the tenth day of that month each family was to select a lamb. Then on the fourteenth day of the month the lamb would be slain (Exo. 12:6). Thus the midnight was at least four days distant, and maybe as many as nine. But Pharaoh did not know this. Possibly the approach of each midnight gave him premonitions of terror as he recalled Moses words.
In Egyptian mythology the sun god Re was supposed to fight each night with Apepi, the monster-serpent, and his army of fiends, who tried to overthrow Re.[193] Re always conquered, and thus the sun arose day after day in the sky. The occurrence of the death of the firstborn at night may have therefore made some Egyptians sense that Jehovah could enter the nighttime arena of combat with Egypts gods, and so utterly overwhelm them that it was evident that they never had existed at all.
[193] E. A. Wallis Budge, The Mummy (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1972), pp. 270271.
The conversation between Moses and Pharaoh that was interrupted at Exo. 10:29 is picked up again in the narrative at Exo. 11:4.
6.
What would happen in the last plague? (Exo. 11:4-6)
God would go out into the midst of Egypt. (The I in Exo. 11:4 is emphatic.) All the firstborn of Egypt would die, those high-born and those low-born, and the firstborn of all beasts. There would be a great cry of anguish throughout all the land of Egypt.
The lowly maidservant (slave woman) working at the two grindstones (a lower one and an upper stone that rotated upon the lower) would see her firstborn die. Pharaoh on his throne would suffer the same.
Pharaohs forefather had once tried to slay the babes of Israel (Exo. 1:22). Now all Egypt is sentenced to have its firstborn die.
The death of firstborn beasts would be impressive in Egypt, where many beasts were worshipped as manifestations of various gods.
Ramm comments[194] that the universality of the plague of death of the firstborn is a type of universality of Gods last judgment, when the small and great alike shall stand before the judge (Rev. 20:12). God is no respecter of persons (Act. 10:34). There will be weeping and wailing, like the cry that came up from Egypt (Mat. 25:30).
[194] Bernard Ramm, His Way Out (Giendale, Calif.: Regal, 1974), p. 68.
The cry that was to arise throughout Egypt on that dreadful night recalls the cries of the Israelites (Exo. 2:23). Now it is the Egyptians who will cry out in anguish at Gods judgment.
We surely cannot accept the hypothesis set forth[195] that the story of the death of the firstborn is an exaggerated account of a fatal pestilence which struck the Egyptian children and brought about the release of the Hebrews. Proponents of this theory think that through years of transmission within Israel the memory of the event was so shaped that the end product, the present Exodus narrative, suggests that only the firstborn were involved, and that both the firstborn of man and beast were involved. Bernard Ramm replies well to this notion with the point that Pharaoh would not have released Israel because of an ordinary epidemic among children.[196]
[195] The Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. 1 (Nashville: Broadman, 1969), pp. 363364.
[196] Ramm, op. cit., p. 66.
7.
How would God show that He made a distinction between Egyptians and Israel? (Exo. 11:7)
He would protect the Israelites from the death of their firstborn. His protection would be so total that not even a dog would bark at the hordes of departing Israelites and their cattle. (Literally the text says that a dog will not sharpen [or point] his tongue. This same idiom is used also in Jos. 10:21.)
What a contrast! The wicked crying, the good quiet; the wicked dead, the good living; the wicked frightened, the good peaceful; the wicked helpless, the good protected. (Preachers Homiletic Commentary)
8.
What would Pharaohs servants do when their firstborn died? (Exo. 11:8)
They would come to Moses, bow down, and beg him and his people to leave. After that, Moses said, I will go out! These were Moses last words to Pharaoh before the Passover.
What a reversal! Egyptians begging Moses to leave? Yes, and even Pharaoh joined in the begging (Exo. 12:30-33).
9.
With what feeling did Moses leave Pharaoh? (Exo. 11:8)
With hot anger! First Pharaoh became angered (Exo. 10:28); then Moses wrath arose. But it was a righteous anger, the kind all noble Godly souls should feel sometimes when dealing with people like Pharaoh lying, double-dealing, promise-breaking, stubborn, cruel, persecuting, hard, resistant to the truth.
10.
Did Pharaoh change his mind after Moses left him? (Exo. 11:9-10)
In no wise! God cautioned Moses not to expect Pharaoh to come to his senses. All along God had foretold that Pharaoh would not listen, and that He would work his signs (miracles and plagues) in Egypt; and then after all that, I will bring forth my hosts, my people, the children of Israel (Exo. 7:4; Exo. 4:21).
There is a marvelous review and summary of the first nine plagues in the two verses Exo. 11:9-10.
The Lord hardened Pharaohs heart after plagues number six (boils), eight (locusts), nine (darkness), and after Israel departed (Exo. 14:4; Exo. 14:8). See notes on Exo. 4:21 concerning this hardening.
Exo. 11:9-10 are truly transitional verses. From now on Moses will be dealing with Israel and not with Pharaoh.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XI.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE TENTH PLAGUE.
(1) And the Lord said.Rather, Now the Lord had said. The passage (Exo. 11:1-3) is parenthetic, and refers to a revelation made to Moses before his present interview with Pharaoh began. The insertion is needed in order to explain the confidence of Moses in regard to the last plague (Exo. 11:5), and the effect it would have on the Egyptians (Exo. 11:8).
When he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.The word rendered altogether belongs to the first clause. Translate, when he shall let you go altogether, he shall assuredly thrust you out hence.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
TENTH PLAGUE PREDICTED, Exo 11:1-10.
1. And the Lord (had) said unto Moses This passage (Exo 11:1-3) relates what God had previously said, and describes the influences under which the Egyptian people would be led to comply so readily with the request of the Israelites . It shows how ripe were events for the final scene, and is naturally inserted parenthetically here as showing why Moses had just said so decisively, “I will see thy face no more . ” The author also wished to show the fulfilment of the prophecy of Exo 3:21-22, concerning the spoiling of the Egyptians; and probably, also, to make it clear that he had not on his own authority, but by Jehovah’s express direction, closed his interviews with Pharaoh, since he had already revealed that the tenth judgment stroke should be the last.
He shall surely thrust you out Literally, When he shall let you go altogether, he will actually thrust you out hence. He will no more attempt to retain the women and children, or the flocks and herds, as before, nor will he stipulate for your return at all, but will be anxious to be wholly rid of you.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
THE TEN PLAGUES, Exo 7:8 to Exo 12:30.
Moses and Aaron now stand before Pharaoh as ministers of judgment, and the conflict opens between Jehovah and the gods of Egypt. The first contest between the messengers of Jehovah and the magicians, or enchanters, who are regarded as the servants of the false gods, given in Exo 7:8-13, is properly the opening scene of the struggle, and is therefore here included in the section with it. Several general observations on the whole subject are most conveniently introduced here for future reference.
(1.) The great and worthy object of these “signs and wonders” is throughout to be carefully held before the mind. There were several secondary purposes met, but the chief aim was, not to inflict retribution upon Egypt, although they did this as judgments, nor to give Israel independence, though they effected this by crushing the oppressor, but to teach the world the nature of God. It was a series of most solemn lessons in the fundamental truths of religion in God’s attributes and government. With perfect distinctness and reiterated emphasis is this declared from the very beginning: “ I am JEHOVAH Ye shall know the Egyptians shall know that I am JEHOVAH.” Events were to burn into the national consciousness of Israel, and into the memory of the world, the great truths revealed in the Memorial Name; and the faith of Israel, the sin of Pharaoh, and the might and splendour of Egyptian heathenism, were the divinely chosen instruments to accomplish this work. The rich Nile-land teemed with gods, and was the mother country of the idolatries that, centuries afterward, covered the Mediterranean islands and peninsulas, and filled the classic literature with such manifold forms of beauty. The gods of Greece were born in Egypt, and the Sibyls of Delphos and Cumaea descended from the sorcerers who contended with Moses. In no other land has idolatry ever reared such grand and massive structures as in Egypt. The immense ram-headed Ammun and hawk-headed Ra, the placid monumental Osiris, the colossal Rameses, sitting in granite “with his vast hands resting upon his elephantine knees,” these, and their brother gods of the age of the Pharaohs, have looked down upon the rising and falling Nile through all the centuries of European civilization. In no other land were the manifold forms and productions of nature so deified. In their pantheistic idolatry they offered worship not only to the sun, and moon, and earth, but to bulls, crocodiles, cats, hawks, asps, scorpions, and beetles. They seem to have made to themselves likenesses of almost every thing in “heaven above, in earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth.” The Apis and Mnevis bulls were stalled in magnificent palaces at Memphis and Heliopolis, and were embalmed in massive marble and granite sarcophagi, grander than enclosed the Theban kings. The sepulchres of Egyptian bulls have outlasted the sepulchres of Roman emperors. Nowhere else were kings so deified as here. Pharaoh incarnated in himself the national idolatry, and to crush the king was to crush the gods. The king made his palace a temple, and enthroned himself among the Egyptian deities. He sculptured himself colossal so vast that the Arabs to-day quarry millstones from his cheeks sitting hand in hand and arm in arm with his gods. To-day Rameses sits in the temple of Ipsambul between Ra and Ammun, his tall crown rising between the hawk head of the one and the tiara of the other, looking out from his rock-hewn shrine upon the desert, as he has sat since the Pharaohs. From Cambyses to Napoleon invasion after invasion has swept the Nile valley wave on wave yet here have sat these massive forms, the Nile coming to bathe their feet year by year, as if brothers to the mountains. They mark the graves of Egypt’s vanished gods, while the name of Him who smote these gods to death with Moses’s rod liveth forever.
(2.) But Egypt was the mother-land of philosophies as well as idolatries. Long ages after Moses, Herodotus, Pythagoras, and Plato followed the Hebrew lawgiver to the oldest university in the world. The Egyptian philosophy was inextricably entangled with its religion, and deciphered papyri show that magic and sorcery were esteemed as highly at the court of Pharaoh, as, long after, in the time of Daniel, at the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The dreamy mysticism of Plato and of Philo reveals how hopelessly most precious truths were entangled in priestly juggleries, and how deeply this black art, or illusion, or demonism, left its mark on the ancient world. The heathen idolatry had no more potent allies in the old civilizations than the soothsayers, sorcerers, and magicians, and it was needful that they too should be signally vanquished by the prophet of the true God. Hence Moses in Egypt as, a thousand years later, Daniel in Babylon, and a half thousand years later still, Paul at Salamis and Philippi discomfited the false prophets who aped God’s mighty works with their lying wonders. The sooth-saying and necromancy found in Christian lands to-day belong to the same kingdom of darkness, and can be exorcised only in that “Name which is above every name.” Moses, then, smites for mankind; Israel brings the Sacred Name through the wilderness for the world.
(3.) The weapons and tactics of this warfare were not such as to inflame the pride of the people of Israel, or to awaken in after generations a thirst for military glory, but such as to turn the tides of their faith and hope wholly away from themselves to their God. Hence the Hebrew national anthems glory in Jehovah rather than in Israel. Not the baptism of a war of national independence, but that of the Red Sea redemption, was their great national remembrance. Enthusiasm for Jehovah thus became the national passion. How appropriate was this in the training of a nation which was to teach the world true religion!
The real character of these plagues, or judgment strokes, will, as a general thing, appear from an attentive study of the Egyptian geography and natural history. They arise, as can usually be seen on the face of the narrative, from natural causes supernaturally intensified and directed. In the first and ninth plagues the natural causation is less distinct. They cannot, however, be explained away as natural events; for, if the record is to be believed at all, they were supernatural (1) in their definiteness, the time of their occurrence and discontinuance being distinctly predicted; (2) in their succession; and (3) in their intensity. They were, in their power and direction, threefold: (1) against the Egyptian faith in the diviners, enchanters, and sorcerers, the prophets of a false religion. (2) Against their faith in their deities, their gods of earth, and water, and air powers of nature; and beasts, and birds, and creeping things. Thus Jehovah’s supremacy over idolatry appeared. But (3) they were also punishments for disobedience to God. There is from the beginning a gradually increasing intensity in these supernatural manifestations till the magicians are utterly discomfited, all the gods of Egypt put to shame, and Pharaoh compelled to yield reluctant obedience. At first the magicians seem to display the same power as Moses, (Exo 7:11; Exo 7:22,) then come signs beyond their power . (Exo 8:18😉 soon the prophet of Jehovah so smites them that they cannot appear at all, (Exo 9:11😉 and then they vanish altogether . So the weight of the judgments increases as with increasing light the crime of disobedience rises in magnitude beginning with simple though sore annoyances, as blood, frogs, and flies; then advancing to the destruction of food and cattle smiting first their dwelling-place and surroundings, and then themselves; till the locusts swept the earth and the darkness filled the heaven, and only the death stroke was left to fall . Thus we are taught how the consequence of sin is sin, and judgments unheeded inevitably lead on to sorer judgments, till destruction comes .
(4.) Some commentators have found a special application in each plague to some particular idolatry or idolatrous rite, but this we do not find warranted by facts. Some, following Philo, the learned and devout but fanciful Alexandrian Jew, separate the plagues into two groups of nine and one, and then the nine into three groups of three, between which groups they trace what they deem instructive contrasts and correspondences. Origen, Augustine, and others, have traced parallels between these ten judgments and the ten commandments, the succession of the judgments and of the creative days, etc. Most of these interpretations not to dwell on the extravagant conceits of the Rabbies are amusing rather than instructive, and would be appropriate rather to a sacred romance or drama than to a sober history like this. The wild fables of the Talmud, the monstrosities of the Koran, and the often romantically embellished history of Josephus, present here an instructive contrast to the sacred narrative.
(5.) Thus far the Egyptian monuments give us no distinct mention of the plagues and of the exodus. We have, however, Egyptian records of the sojourn and exodus of Israel, although confused and fragmentary, and written more than a thousand years after the events. Chief and most valuable among these is the narrative of the priest Manetho, who wrote his Egyptian history during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 283-247, of which a few fragments remain. Josephus has preserved all that we have of this narrative in his work against Apion. It is, as might be expected, a very different history, being the relation of an Egyptian priest many centuries after the events; yet the points of agreement are very striking.
The Israelites appear in Manetho’s story as a nation of lepers, headed by Osarsiph, a priest of Osiris, who had been educated at Heliopolis, but abandoned his order and the Egyptian religion to take the lead of this people. He taught them to abjure idolatry, gave them laws, a constitution and ceremonial, and when he united his fortunes with theirs he changed his name to Moses. The war is described as a religious war, in which, for the time, the Egyptians were discomfited, and obliged, in compliance with prophetic warnings, to abandon the country for thirteen years, and to flee, with their king Amenophis, into Ethiopia, taking with them the bull Apis and other sacred animals, while this leprous nation, reinforced by shepherds from Jerusalem, fortified themselves in Avaris, (Zoan,) a city of Goshen, robbed the temples, insulted the gods, roasted and ate the sacred animals, and cast contempt in every way upon the Egyptian worship. Amenophis afterwards returned with a great army and chased the shepherds and lepers out of his dominions through a dry desert to Palestine. (From Ewald’s trans., Hist. of Israel, 2: 79.) Here, as Ewald shows, the great outlines of the story of the exodus are to be clearly seen; the Mosaic leadership, the war of religions, the uprising of the hostile religion in Egypt itself, the leprous affliction of the revolting people, so pointedly mentioned in the Pentateuch, the secret superstitious dread inspired by Moses, which seems to have shaken the foundations of the Egyptian religion, the confession of defeat in the struggle, and the transformation of the exodus into an expulsion from Egypt these are unmistakable traces of the same history coming down through Egyptian channels. The later Egyptian writers, Chaeremon and Lysimachus, echo the story of Manetho, mingling with it Hebrew traditions. ( Josephus Against Apion, bks. i, 2.)
(6.) The exotic of Israel from Egypt is a fact now universally admitted, whatever differences may exist in its explanation. Bunsen says, in his Egypt, that “History herself was born on that night when Moses led forth his countrymen from the land of Goshen.” That this event resulted from some heavy calamities which at that time befel the Egyptians, or, in other words, that the narrative of the plagues has a solid historical foundation, is also now maintained with unbroken unanimity by Hebrew and Egyptian scholars, even by those who decline to see in these events anything supernatural. Thus Ewald says, that this history, “on the whole, exhibits the essence of the event as it actually happened.” And Knobel says, that “in the time of Moses circumstances had transpired which made it possible for the Hebrews to go forth of themselves, and impossible for the Egyptians to hinder their undertaking or to force them to return.” In other words, they who refuse to recognise here miraculous influence do recognise miraculous coincidence. Without any war, which, had it happened, must, as Knobel says, have left some trace in the history without any invasion from abroad or insurrection from within to weaken the Egyptian power a nation, unified and vitalized by faith in the one Jehovah, went forth unhindered from the bosom of a strong and prosperous empire. This is the event to be explained. The Mosaic record alone gives an adequate cause.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Tenth Plague – The Slaying of the Firstborn ( Exo 11:1 to Exo 12:36 ).
This whole section is constructed on an interesting chiastic pattern:
a Israel are to ask the Egyptians for gold and jewellery, etc (Exo 11:1-3).
b All the firstborn in Egypt are to die – there will be a great cry throughout the land – Israel will be told to go (Exo 11:4-10).
c The preparation of the lamb – the sacrifice – the blood on the doorpost it – will be a memorial for ever (Exo 12:1-14).
d For seven days they are to eat unleavened bread – their houses to be emptied of leaven – the observation of the feast (Exo 12:15-17).
d The observation of the feast of unleavened bread for seven days – their houses to be emptied of leaven (Exo 12:18-20).
c The preparation of the lamb – the sacrifice – the blood on the doorpost – to be observed as an ordinance for ever (Exo 12:21-28).
b The firstborn in Egypt die – there is a great cry in Egypt – the children of Israel are told to go (Exo 12:29-34).
a Israel ask the Egyptians for gold and jewellery etc. (Exo 12:35-36).
There can be no doubt that this skilful arrangement is deliberate.
Yahweh’s Deliverance About To Take Place. They Are to Ask the Egyptians for Gold and Jewellery ( Exo 10:29 to Exo 11:3 )
Exo 10:29
‘And Moses said, “You have spoken well. You will see my face no more.”
This verse belongs to the last passage but we introduce with it here again so as to maintain the continuity.
The words of Pharaoh would have struck fear into many a heart. But Moses was now too strong. He was no longer afraid of Pharaoh, for he knew that something was about to happen that would shake both Pharaoh (and the whole of Egypt) to the very core of his being, to his heart (Exo 9:14), and he was very angry. Furthermore he alone on earth knew what was about to happen. What God had promised from the very beginning was about to come about because Pharaoh had refused to release God’s firstborn son in order that they may worship Him (Exo 4:23). Now Pharaoh’s own firstborn would be smitten.
“You have spoken well.” Moses wanted Pharaoh to know that he had spoken better than he knew. This would indeed be their last meeting until a broken Pharaoh called for him to tell them to go. Little did Pharaoh know what the consequence of his rejection was going to be. It would hit at the very heart of Egyptian life, at the heart of every family, and equally at Pharaoh’s very heart as well.
But Moses did not as yet leave, for he had more to say. Exo 11:1-3 is simply an interlude explaining why Moses now had such confidence in the face of what must have seemed a great disappointment. It tells us that Yahweh had shown Moses that this was finally to be the last of the plagues, that soon all would be over, and what the consequences were going to be for the children of Israel as far as wealth was concerned. And it declared what the status was that Moses now had in Egypt, not just as a prince but as having divine powers. This being in Moses’ mind the conversation would continue. It was an assurance to him and to Israel at what must have seemed their darkest moment of the certain victory that was to be theirs. They were about to leave Egypt burdened with riches. We are justified in seeing it as expressing the thoughts which were buoying him up as he faced Pharaoh,
The Command To Spoil the Egyptians ( Exo 11:1-3 ).
Exo 11:1-3
‘And Yahweh had said to Moses, “I will bring yet one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt, afterwards he will let you go from here. When he lets you go he will surely thrust you out from here altogether. Speak in the ears of the people and let them ask every man of his neighbour and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels of gold. And Yahweh gave the people favour in the eyes of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the eyes of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people.’
We can analyse this as follows:
a One more plague is to be brought on Egypt and on Pharaoh, and afterwards he will let Moses and Israel go (Exo 11:1 a).
b Afterwards he will certainly let them go, indeed will thrust them out altogether (Exo 11:1 b).
c Thus they are to speak in the ears of the people and ask for jewels of silver and jewels of gold as offerings to Yahweh (Exo 11:2).
b And when they did so Yahweh gave them great favour in the eyes of the Egyptians (Exo 11:3 a).
a Moreover Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the eyes of the aristocratic leadership, and in the sight of the people (Exo 11:3 b).
Note the parallels which unite the text. In ‘a’ one more devastating plague will achieve Yahweh’s object through Moses, and in the parallel Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, admired by all but Pharaoh. Great in the eyes of all indeed to achieve this mighty object. In ‘b’ we have the promise that they will actually be thrust out by Pharaoh, and in the parallel that they had great favour in the eyes of the Egyptians. It is now great Pharaoh who stands alone. And central to all is that Yahweh’s people will not crawl out of Egypt with their tails between their legs, nor will they flee leaving everything behind, they will go out loaded with wealth and spoils.
To those who know the story, these verses break into the dramatic confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh. But they were necessary in order to demonstrate how Yahweh had prepared Moses for the final rejection by Pharaoh, how much alone Pharaoh now was in his opposition, and how Yahweh had fulfilled His own promises (Exo 3:19-22). To the writer far more important than the drama was the necessity to keep Yahweh and not Moses as pre-eminent.
It was important that Yahweh should be seen to be the victor. To us the receiving of wealth from the Egyptians may have seemed a secondary matter. To us what would have mattered was the freedom. But in those days the spoils went to the victor, and the writer was therefore careful to demonstrate that the children of Israel were to receive the spoils of victory. This had been emphasised in Exo 3:19-22 when God was outlining what lay ahead. Now it is described in order to show that things had now reached their climax. Here was an indication that the victory of Yahweh was now certain, and the ‘spoils of war’ are given prominence. They had been told from the beginning that they would not have to flee like dogs with their tails between their legs, that they would leave as triumphant victors. Now this was to come to fulfilment. Thus the plagues come to their climax with this promise of glorious victory.
But we must not forget that Israel had been steadily impoverished by the Egyptians. They had had to work on their building projects and on their canals and irrigation systems for nothing except possibly food. Some of them had suffered terribly. Their own interests had had to be neglected. And they would be leaving behind their houses and any possessions that they could not take with them. It was therefore just that they now be reimbursed. This was not robbery. It was seeking just treatment.
And thirdly, it is brought out that Moses himself was to be vindicated, and restored to more than his former greatness. He had set aside greatness, and now no one on earth was greater than he.
“And Yahweh had said to Moses.” Hebrew verbs do not necessarily apply chronologically. They simply say that something happened, not when it happened. They had no way of representing the pluperfect. It had to be gathered from the sense. Here then we are being taken back to something Moses had been told before this ‘final interview’.
“Yet one more plague.” From the beginning Yahweh had known what it would take to bring Pharaoh to his knees (Exo 4:23) and to such a state that he would finally seek to get rid of the children of Israel altogether once and for all. For this was always His plan (see Exo 3:19-22). Now Moses could know that the end had been reached. At last they would be sent away to freedom.
“Thrust you out from here.” The words are forceful. Pharaoh will be made to do what Yahweh wishes and he will do it forcefully. He will be glad to let them go.
“Speak now in the ears of the people –.” From the beginning Yahweh had promised that when the children of Israel received their freedom they would leave in triumph. They would receive the ‘spoils of war’. But it was stressed that these would not have to be forced from the Egyptians they would be given freely. Such is the wonder of God’s ways. They would ask for, and would receive, gold and silver jewels (compare Exo 3:22), and these would be bestowed on them generously and given to them gladly, in order to encourage them to go. It was little recompense for all that they had suffered, but it was better than nothing and would ease their way in the future, as well as enabling them to furnish Yahweh’s Dwellingplace.
The gifts came from both men and women. All would wear golden ornaments of one kind or another.
“And Yahweh gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians.” Just as He had said He would from the beginning (Exo 3:21), He ensured that they were treated with favour. These slaves would now be treated as those who deserved great honour. Pharaoh still looked on them with a jaundiced eye, but his people would see them otherwise. Whether the gifts were to appease this dreadful God Who did such things, or whether they were given in friendship, or whether they were given in gratitude because they had heard of what was happening elsewhere and recognised that they had been saved the worst because they lived among the Israelites in Goshen, or whether they hoped that by giving the gifts they would win favour with Yahweh, does not matter. The motives were probably varied. But the point is being made that they freely gave, and loaded God’s people with wealth.
“Moreover the man Moses was very great –”. Moses, who had once been a prince of Egypt and had then slipped to being a tribal princeling, had now become more than a prince, he had become like a divinity (Exo 7:1), both to the high officials of the land and to the Egyptians and to Pharaoh. He who had once said, “Who am I?” (Exo 3:11) was now in a position of the highest honour. So Yahweh’s triumph is complete. Note the contrast, ‘the man Moses’. (This in contrast to the god Pharaoh). We are being reminded that he is only a man. ‘Was very great –’. That was how the Egyptians saw him, as one of the great ones. This was not in order to boost Moses, it was in order to boost Yahweh who had made him seem so great in their eyes. And that is a further reason why the Egyptians gave so generously and abundantly.
This mixture of humility and yet recognition in wonder of what Yahweh had of made him smacks of Moses having written it in own words. Who else would have insisted that he was but the man Moses?
And at this point we now renew the meeting with Pharaoh following Moses’ words, ‘You will not see my face again’ (Exo 10:29)
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Exo 7:1 to Exo 12:30 The Ten Plagues Exo 7:1 to Exo 12:30 records the story of the ten plagues of Egypt. Here is a summary of the Ten Plagues:
Aaron turns rod to a serpent (Exo 7:10) Magicians copy (Exo 7:11) 1. Water turned to blood (throughout land) Magicians copy (Exo 7:22) 2. Frogs (covered land of Egypt) (Exo 7:6) Magicians copy (Exo 8:7) 3. Lice or flies (covered land) (Exo 8:17) Magicians could not (Exo 8:18) 4. Swarms (division of Goshen) (Exo 8:24; Exo 8:23) 5. Murrain (cattle disease) (Exo 9:3) 6. Boils (Exo 9:10) 7. Hail (division of Goshen) (Exo 9:23; Exo 9:26) 8. Locusts (Exo 10:13) 9. Darkness (division of Goshen) (Exo 10:22) 10.Death of first-born (Israel covered up blood) (Exo 12:29, Exo 11:7) The Ten Plagues upon Egypt were delivered by God in progressive intensity until it ended with the death of the firstborn. These plagues were a means of judgment upon the people of Egypt in order to bring them to repentance an to an acknowledgment of the God of Israel as the true and living God. This is why many of the plagues were orchestrated to demonstrate that the God of Israel was more powerful than particular gods of Egyptian mythology.
The wise men, sorcerers and magicians were able to copy the first three signs of the rod turning into a serpent (Exo 7:11), the water turning into blood (Exo 7:22), and the plague of frogs (Exo 8:7). After this, these enchanters began to see that God was working thru Moses and Aaron.
Exo 7:11, “Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.”
Exo 7:22, “And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the LORD had said.”
Exo 8:7, “And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Ten Plagues Exo 7:14 to Exo 11:10 records the story of the Ten Plagues that God brought upon the nation of Egypt. The swallowing of the serpents of Pharaoh’s magicians by the serpent of Moses (Exo 7:11-12) foreshadows the fact that the Ten Plagues were a power struggle between the gods of Egypt and the God of Israel. These enchantments by Pharaoh’s sorcerers symbolized the strength of their gods. Yet, the Ten Plagues demonstrated that God’s power extended beyond their gods of enchantment unto all of the gods that were worshipped in the land of Egypt, deities that were designated for every area of their lives. The Egyptians served deities of heaven and deities of the earth, deities of the weather, over their crops and those for diseases. Each deity was believed to have power over a limited aspect of one’s life. The Egyptians knew that their gods were limited in scope of influence and power. With the Ten Plagues, God proved that His power encompassed over all creation and every aspect of human life.
Throughout the Ten Plagues God demonstrated that He was God Almighty. This was God’s way of using judgment to bring men to repentance. In fact, the Scriptures indicate that a number of Egyptians were converted and followed the Israelites out in the Exodus to serve their God.
Exo 12:38, “And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.”
Num 11:4, “And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?”
These converts declared that they would go with the children of Israel because God is with them, as the prophet Zechariah says would happen again later in Israel’s history (Zec 8:3); or, as Ruth clung to Naomi in order to serve her God.
Zec 8:23, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you .”
Rth 1:16, “And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:”
When God judges a nation as He did Egypt during the time of Moses, He always begins by judging the object of a nation’s trust and confidence. For example, in 2001 to 2003, the Lord judged the United States in three areas. The destruction of the World Trade Center symbolized American’s trust in its wealth. The damage to the Pentagon on the same day represented American’s military might. The explosion of the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia represented American’s technology and ingenuity. None of these three are above God Almighty. In the same way, God judged the deities of Egypt so that these people would know the true and living God, the God of Israel.
The Significance of the Number “Ten” – The Hebrew phrase “ten times” ( ) is made up of two words, “ten” ( ) (H6235), and “times” ( ) (H6471). Although the literal translation is, “ten times,” John Gill understands the phrase “ten times” in Num 14:22 as an idiom to mean a rounded number, which is equivalent to “time after time,” thus “numerous times.” He says that although the Jews counted ten literal occasions when Israel tempted the Lord during the wilderness journeys, Aben Ezra gives this phrase a figurative meaning of “many times.” [34] T. E. Espin adds to the figurative meaning of Num 14:22 by saying that Israel had tempted the Lord to its fullness, so that the Lord would now pass judgment upon them, even denying them access into the Promised Land, which is clearly stated in the next verse. [35]
[34] Gill lists ten literal occasions, “twice at the sea, Exodus 14:11; twice concerning water, Exodus 15:23; twice about manna, Exodus 16:2; twice about quails, Exodus 16:12; once by the calf, Exodus 32:1; and once in the wilderness of Paran, Numbers 14:1, which last and tenth was the present temptation.” John Gill, Numbers, in John Gill’s Expositor, in e-Sword, v. 7.7.7 [CD-ROM] (Franklin, Tennessee: e-Sword, 2000-2005), comments on Numbers 14:22.
[35] E. T. Espin and J. F. Thrupp, Numbers, in The Holy Bible According to the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611), with an Explanation and Critical Commentary and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and Clergy of the Anglican Church, vol. 1, part 2, ed. F. C. Cook (London: John Murray, 1871), 702.
The phrase “ten times” is used as an idiom in several passages in the Scriptures to mean countless times (Gen 31:7, Num 14:22, Neh 4:12).
Gen 31:7, “And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me.”
Num 14:22, “Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice;”
Neh 4:12, “And it came to pass, that when the Jews which dwelt by them came, they said unto us ten times , From all places whence ye shall return unto us they will be upon you.”
The NAB translates this phrase in Gen 31:7 as “time after time.”
NAB, “yet your father cheated me and changed my wages time after time . God, however, did not let him do me any harm.”
The number ten represents a counting system that is based on ten units. Thus, the number ten can be interpreted literally to represent the numerical system, or it can be given a figurative meaning to reflect the concept of multiple occurrences.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Tenth Plague (Death of the Firstborn) – Exo 11:1 to Exo 12:30 tells us about the tenth and final plague in which an angel descended from Heaven and slew all of the firstborn in Egypt whose homes were not covered by the blood.
Exo 11:2-3 Scripture References – Note similar verses:
Exo 3:21-22, “And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty: But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.”
Exo 12:35-36, “And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.”
Exo 11:7 “shall not a dog move his tongue” Comments – No lamenting whatsoever shall occur.
Exo 11:8 Comments The Scriptures record several occasions when Moses displayed negative actions as a result of his anger. All of these actions resulted in consequences in the life of Moses. Moses’ anger at the abuse of his people moved him to murder:
Exo 2:11-12, “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand .”
Moses was angry with Pharaoh:
Exo 11:8, “And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee: and after that I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in a great anger .”
Moses was angry with the children of Israel:
Exo 16:20, “Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth with them .”
Moses broke the Ten Commandments in anger.
Exo 32:19, “And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot , and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.”
God commanded Moses to speak to the rock, but in his anger, he smote the rock twice. This cost Moses his trip into the Promised Land:
Num 20:11, “And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice : and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.”
Exo 12:1-28 The Institution of the Passover Exo 12:1-28 records the institution of the Passover, which was necessary in anticipation of the tenth plague? God had to get His people ready so that they did not have to partake of the final plague.
On the tenth day the lamb was chosen; it was inspected for three days; then it was sacrificed on the fourteenth day. Note that Jesus had a 3-year ministry in which He was inspected by many, especially the Pharisees. They could find no fault. Much of Gospel Passion narratives deal with last three days of Jesus ministry while He taught in temple and when He was taken and crucified.
The Scriptures teach us that there was healing in the Passover. Psa 105:37 tell us that there was not a single weak, or sick, person among those children of Israel who went out in the Exodus, “He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes.” During the Passover that Hezekiah instituted, God healed the people, “And the LORD hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.” (2Ch 30:20)
Exo 12:5 Comments Just as the Lord required every member of each household to have a sacrificial lamb in order cover them from the judgment of God, so does the Lord require everyone to come to the blood of Jesus to cover them from eternal judgment. No one can escape God’s wrath without going to Jesus Christ as their Saviour and being cleansed by His precious blood.
Exo 12:5 Comments The lamb was to be without blemish, which was a type and figure of Jesus, as our sacrificial lamb, who was without sin.
Exo 12:6 “ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month” – Comments – Why keep the lamb or goat for two weeks prior to sacrificing it on the day of Passover? One reason is that a goat has been out eating some trash. A goat will eat almost anything. This two-week period will give the owners time to feed it properly and to purge its system of impurities, so that the meat is fit to eat.
Exo 12:8 Comments – The unleavened bread and bitter herbs were part of the menu that the Israel’s dined on the night of their exodus from Egypt (Exo 12:8). Because the Israelites made haste in leaving Egypt they did not have time to leaven their bread. According to Jesus and Paul, leaven is figurative for sin (Mat 16:6; Mat 16:11-12, Mar 8:15, Luk 12:1 , 1Co 5:6-8, Gal 5:9). The Hebrew text reads, “with bitter,” with the word “herbs” implied. As a result, the YLT translates this phrase “bitter things.” Rawlinson tells us that Mishna suggests these bitter herbs may have been “endive, chicory, wild lettuce, and nettles.” [44] The LXX gives a literal translation, “ ” (of bitter [things]). The Clementine Vulgate renders this phrase as “wild lettuce” (cum lactucis agrestibus). [45] The ISBE says that lettuce and endive are used by modern Jews in their Passover meal. [46] As a result, Wycliffe reads, “letusis of the feeld,” the DRC reads, “wild lettuce,” and the NLT reads “bitter salad green.” Rawlinson expresses the popular view that these bitter herbs were in fact distasteful when eaten and represented the bitterness of their Egyptian bondage.
[44] G. Rawlinson, Exodus, in The Pulpit Commentary, ed. H. D. M. Spence and Joseph Exell (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1950), in Ages Digital Library, v. 1.0 [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: Ages Software, Inc., 2001), comments on Exodus 12:8.
[45] Biblia Sacra juxta Vulgatam Clementinam (Ed. electronica) in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2005), Exodus 12:8.
[46] E. W. G. Masterman, “Bitter herbs,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., c1915, 1939), in The Sword Project, v. 1.5.11 [CD-ROM] (Temple, AZ: CrossWire Bible Society, 1990-2008).
Exo 12:8, “And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.”
Mat 16:6, “Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.”
Mat 16:11-12, “How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.”
Mar 8:15, “And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.”
Luk 12:1, “In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”
1Co 5:6-8, “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Gal 5:9, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”
Exo 12:12 “against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD” Comments – Exo 12:12 says that the ten plagues were directed against specific Egyptian Gods. Because YHWH is the true and living God, He will judge those other gods. Some Bible commentators associate the ten plagues with specific Egyptian gods or beliefs. [47]
[47] See John J. Davis, Moses and the Gods of Egypt: Studies in Exodus , 2 nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1971); J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004).
1. Water turning to blood Because the Nile River was a vital source of life, the Egyptians had a number of gods associated with the Nile River. David Padfield says that “Khnum was the guardian of the Nile,” and “Hapi was the ‘spirit of the Nile;’” the Egyptians believed that the Nile River was the “bloodstream” of Osiris, the god of the underworld.” [48] Miriam Lichtheim suggests that the first plague of water turning to blood may have been directed against Hapi, the spirit of the Nile River. [49] J. Vernon McGee say that what was a source of life for the Egyptians became their death. [50]
[48] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet.
[49] Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: Vol. I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973-80), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), 204.
[50] J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Exodus 7:14-25.
2. The plague of frogs The second plague of frogs would have been directed against Heqt, often depicted as a frog, who was “the wife of the creator of the world and the goddess of birth.” (Padfield) [51] McGee notes that the Egyptians considered the frogs sacred, so they would have had difficulty in killing them. [52]
[51] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet.
[52] J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Exodus 8:1-5.
3. The plague of lice Padfield believes that the plague of lice was actually sandflies or fleas. McGee suggests that the Hebrew word could mean gnats or mosquitoes, but prefers the word lice, and tells the story of a visitor to Egypt who thought the sand was moving, but found it to be thousands of tiny ticks which began to crawl up his leg. They suggest that this plague would have been directed towards “Geb, the great god of the earth.” [53]
[53] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet; J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Exodus 8:16-19.
4. The plague of flies McGee and Padfield suggest the plague of flies was actually the sacred scarab beetle, which fed upon dung, and were believed to be sacred to the sun god named Ra. [54] Padfield says the Egyptians believed Ra pushed the sun across the sky much like the scarab beetle pushed a ball of dung along the ground.
[54] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet; J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Exodus 8:20-23.
5. The murrain upon cattle Apis was the sacred bull in Egyptian mythology. McGee notes that thousands of them have been mummified in Egyptian tombs. [55] Or, perhaps the fifth plague of murrain would have been directed against the Egyptian goddess of the sky named Hathor, who was sometimes portrayed as a cow, and later as a woman with the head of a cow. [56]
[55] J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Exodus 9:1-7.
[56] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet; Orval Wintermute, “Hathor,” in The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (Chicago: World Book, Inc, 1993), 86.
6. The plague of boils – The plague of boils affected man as well as beasts. Padfield suggests this plague may have been directed against “Imhotep, the god of medicine,” “Serapis, the deity in charge of healing,” and “Thoth, the ibis-headed god of intelligence and medical learning.” [57]
[57] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet;
7. The plague of hail – The seventh plague of rain, hail and thunder may have been directed against the Egyptian god Seth, the god of those types of storms and violent weather conditions.” [58] McGee suggests it addressed “Isis (sometimes represented as cow-headed), goddess of fertility and considered the goddess of the air.” [59] Padfield it was directed against “Nut, the sky goddess.” He also lists “Shu, the wind god,” “Horus, the hawk-headed sky god of Upper Egypt,” and “Isis and Seth,” who “protected the crops.” [60]
[58] Orval Wintermute, “Seth,” in The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 17 (Chicago: World Book, Inc, 1993), 323.
[59] J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Exodus 9:18-21.
[60] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet;
8. The plague of locust – McGee believes the plague of locusts were a sign of divine judgment directed against the people of Egypt. [61] They would have to acknowledge that judgment had come upon their land. Padfield lists other gods who were associated with the planting of crops: “Nepri, the god of grain,” “Ermutet, the goddess of childbirth and crops,” Isis, “Thermuthis, the goddess of fertility and the harvest,” and “Seth, a god of crops.” [62]
[61] J. Vernon McGee, Exodus, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Exodus 10:17-20.
[62] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet;
9. The plague of darkness – The ninth plague of darkness was directed towards the sun god Re, the chief god in Egyptian mythology. The sun was the most potent religious symbol of Egypt, with the worship of the sun-god Re, their chief deities. [63] Padfield lists Re the sun god, and Horus, who “was the god of light who personified the life-giving power of the Sun.” [64]
[63] John D. McEachran, “Re,” in The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 16 (Chicago: World Book, Inc, 1993), 153-4
[64] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet;
10. The death of the firstborn – The tenth plague was the death of the firstborn, which would have been directed against the Egyptian Pharaoh, who was considered to be the incarnation of the Horus, the son of Amon-Re, the sun god. [65] Padfield believes that this plague was directed against all of the Egyptian gods. He lists a number of them associated with procreation and life. [66]
[65] Leonard H. Lesko, “Pharaoh,” in The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 16 (Chicago: World Book, Inc, 1993), 15.
[66] David Padfield, Against All The Gods Of Egypt (#1) ( Zion, Illinois : Church of Christ, 2009) [on-line]; accessed 2 March 2009; available from http://www.biblelandhistory.com/egypt/plagues-egypt-3.html; Internet;
Exo 12:17 “for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt” – Comments – God is called the Lord of the Armies (Sabaoth) in the book of James.
Exo 7:4, “But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies , and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.”
Jas 5:4, “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth .”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Last Definite. Message of Deliverance.
v. 1. And the Lord said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more upon pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence. When he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether. v. 2. Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver and jewels of gold. v. 3. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. v. 4. And Moses said, v. 5. And all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, v. 6. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more. v. 7. But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast, v. 8. And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee, v. 9. And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, v. 10. And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
We have here a parenthetic statement of something that had previously happened. Before Moses was summoned to appear in the presence of Pharaoh as related in Exo 10:24, it had been expressly revealed to him by God,
1. That one more plague, and one only, was impending;
2. That this infliction would be effectual, and be followed by the departure of the Israelites; and,
3. That instead of reluctantly allowing them to withdraw from his kingdom, the monarch would be eager for their departure and would actually hasten it. He had also been told that the time was now come when the promise made to him in Mount Horeb, that his people should “spoil the Egyptians” (Exo 3:22), would receive its accomplishment. The Israelites, before departing, were to ask their Egyptian neighbours for any articles of gold and silver that they possessed, and would receive them (Exo 10:2). The reasons for this extraordinary generosity on the part of the Egyptians are then mentioned, in prolongation of the parenthesis.
1. God “gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians”; and
2. The circumstances of the time had exalted Moses, and made him be looked upon as “very great” (Exo 10:3), so that there was a general inclination to carry out his wishes.
Exo 11:1
And the Lord spake unto Moses. Rather, “Now the Lord had said unto Moses.” The Hebrew has no form for the pluperfect tease, and is consequently obliged to make up for the grammatical deficiency by using the simple preterite in a pluperfect sense. We cannot definitely fix the time when Moses had received this revelation; but the expression, one plague more, shows that it was after the commencement of the “plague of darkness.” When he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out altogether. The Hebrew win not bear this rendering. It runs distinctly thus”When he shall let you go altogether, he will assuredly thrust you out hence.” As Canon Cook notes, “the meaning iswhen at last he lets you depart, with children, flocks, herds, and all your possessions, he will compel you to depart in haste”. It has been well noticed by the same writer that both this announcement, and the previous relentings of Pharaoh, would have caused Moses to have preparations made, and to hold the Israelites in readiness for a start upon their journey almost at any moment. No doubt a most careful and elaborate organization of the people must have been necessary; but there had been abundant time for such arrangements during the twelvemonth that had elapsed since the return of Moses from Midian.
Exo 11:2
Every man every woman. In Exo 3:22 only women had been mentioned. Now the terms of the direction were enlarged. It is worthy of notice that gold and silver ornamentsear-rings, collars, armlets, bracelets, and anklets, were worn almost as much by the Egyptian men of the Rameside period as by the women. Borrow. On this faulty translation, see the comment on Exo 3:22. Jewels. Literally, “articles.” The word is one of a very wide meaning, and might include drinking-cups and other vessels; but from the statement in Exo 3:22, that they were to “put them on their sons and on their daughters” it is clear that personal ornaments are especially meant.
Exo 11:3
And the Lord gave the people favouri.e. When the time came. See below, Exo 12:36. Moreover the man Moses, etc. It has been supposed that this is an interpolation, and argued that Moses, being so “meek” as he was (Num 12:3), would not have spoken of himself in the terms here used. But very great here only means “very influential;” and the fact is stated, not to glorify Moses, but to account for the ornaments being so generally given. Moreover, it is highly improbable that any other writer than himself would have so baldly and bluntly designated Moses as the man Moses. (Compare Deu 33:1; Deu 34:5; Jos 1:1, Jos 1:13, Jos 1:15; Jos 14:6, Jos 14:7; Jos 22:2, Jos 22:4; etc.) The “greatness” which Moses had now attained was due to the powers which he had shown. First of all, he had confounded the magicians (Exo 8:18, Exo 8:19); then he had so far impressed the courtiers that a number of them took advantage of one of his warnings and thereby saved their cattle and slaves (Exo 9:20). Finally, he had forced the entire Court to acknowledge that it lay in his power to destroy or save Egypt (Exo 10:7). He had after that parleyed with the king very much as an equal (Exo 10:8-11; Exo 16:1-36 -18). It is no wonder that the Egyptians, who regarded their king as a “great god,” were deeply impressed.
HOMILETICS
Exo 11:1-3
Crises bring out men’s characters, and cause them to be properly appreciated.
It is evident that, as the crisis approached, Pharaoh sank in the estimation of his subjects, while Moses rose. Pharaoh showed himself changeable, faithless, careless of his subjects’ good, rude, violent. He was about to show himself ready to rush from one extreme into the other (Exo 11:1), and to “thrust out” the people whom he had so long detained. The conduct of Moses had been consistent, dignified, patriotic, bold, and courageous. He had come to be regarded by the Egyptians as “very great,” and the conduct of the Israelite people had also obtained approval. Their patience, fortitude, submission to their leaders, and quiet endurance of suffering, had won upon the Egyptians, and caused them to be regarded with favour. So it is generally in crises.
I. CRISES BRING OUT THE CHARACTERS OF THE BAD, INTENSIFYING THEIR DEFECTS, Under the pressure of circumstances obstinacy becomes infatuation, indifference to human suffering develops into active cruelty, self-conceit into overbearing presumption, ill-temper into violence. At the near approach of danger the rash grow reckless, the timid cowardly, the hesitating wholly unstable, the selfish utterly egoist. In quiet times defects escape notice, which become palpable when a man is in difficulties. Many a king has reigned with credit till a crisis came, and then lost all his reputation, because his character could not bear the strain put upon it. Such times are like bursts of hot weather, under which “ill weeds grow apace.”
II. THE CHARACTERS OF THE BETTER SORT OF MEN ARE ELEVATED AND IMPROVED UNDER CRISES. All the higher powers of the mind, all the nobler elements of the moral character, are brought into play by crises, and through their exercise strengthened and developed. Promptitude, resolution, boldness, trust in God, come with the call for them; and the discipline of a year under such circumstances does the work of twenty. The Moses of Exo 10:1-29; Exo 11:1-10. is a very different man from the Moses of Exo 3:1-22. He is firm, resolute, self-reliant, may we not add, eloquent? No wonder that he was “very great” in the eyes both of the great officers of Pharaoh’s court and of the people. He had withstood and baffled the magicians; he had withstood Pharaoh; he had never blenched nor wavered; he had never lost his temper. With a calm, equable, unfailing persistence, he had gone on preferring the same demand, threatening punishments if it were not granted, inflicting them, removing them on the slightest show of repentance and relenting. He had thus won the respect both of the Court and of the common people, as much as Pharaoh had lost it, and was now generally looked up to and regarded with feelings of admiration and approval. So the true character of the Christian minister is often brought out, tested, and recognised in times of severe trial and calamity, in a siege, a famine, a pestilence, a strike; and a respect is won, which twenty years of ordinary quiet work would not have elicited. Let ministers see to it, that they make the most of such occasions, not for their own honour, but for God’s.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
Exo 11:1-4
The beginning of the end.
I. THE STROKE STILL IN RESERVE (Exo 11:1). God would bring on Pharaoh “one plague more.” This would be effectual. It would lead him to let the people go from Egypt. So eager would he be for their departure, that he would even thrust them out in haste. The nature of this final stroke is described in Exo 11:4-7. It would be the death in one night of the first-born of man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt. This stroke might have been delivered earlier, but,
1. It might not at an earlier stage have had the same effect.
2. There was mercy to Pharaoh in giving him the opportunity of yielding under less severe inflictions before visiting him with this last and decisive one.
3. The previous plagues gave Pharaoh, moreover, an opportunity of doing freely what he now was driven to do under irresistible compulsion.
4. The final stroke was delayed that by the succession of plagues which were brought on Egypt, the deliverance might be rendered more imposing, and made more memorable. The object was not simply to get Israel out of Egypt in the easiest way possible, but to bring them forth in the way most glorifying to God’s justice, holiness, and power. This has been already shown (Exo 6:1-30.; Exo 7:3, Exo 7:5; Exo 9:15, Exo 9:16; Exo 10:1, Exo 10:2).
II. THE COMMAND TO ASK FROM THE EGYPTIANS (Exo 11:2, Exo 11:3).
1. The request. The Israelites were to borrow, or ask, from the Egyptians “jewels of silver, and jewels of gold;” “raiment” also, and whatever else they required (Exo 3:22; Exo 12:35, Exo 12:36).
(1) The people were entitled to these gifts in repayment for past unrequited services; as compensation for losses and sufferings during the century of slavery. The principle of “compensation” is a prominent one in modern legislation. Governments have been mindful, in decreeing slave-emancipation, of compensation to the owners; God bethought himself of compensation to the slaves. Which is the more reasonable?
(2) God authorised the people to demand these gifts. A demand, coming under the circumstances from Jehovah, was equivalent to a command. And after what had happened, it was impossible for any reasonable mind to doubt that the demand had come from God. This was sanction sufficient. The Lord gives, and the Lord is entitled to take away (Job 1:21). “The Lord hath need of it” is sufficient reason for giving up anything (Luk 19:34).
2. The response. The plague would be influential in leading the Egyptians to give of their wealth to the Israelites (cf. Exo 12:36). God would so incline their hearts. This willingness to part with their valuables arose not so much
(1) From gratitude for past benefits, as
(2) From a desire to stand well with a people who were so eminently favoured of God, and
(3) From fear of God, and a desire to get rid of this people, who had proved so terrible a snare to them, as quickly and as peaceably as possible.
Suggestions of the passage:
(1) The hearts of men are in God’s hands (Pro 21:1). He rules in hearts as well as in the midst of worlds. Without interfering with freedom, or employing other than natural motives, he can secretly incline the heart in the direction he desires.
(2) The time will come when the world will be glad to stand well with the Church.
(3) There is much in the world that the Church may legitimately covet to possess. The “world” is a much abused term. “As the Church in its collective capacity is the region of holiness, so the world is that of sin. But it must be carefully observed, that the view is taken of it in its totality, not of each of the parts. As a whole, moral corruption was (in New Testament times) so interwoven with its entire civilisation that it imparted to it the general aspect of evil. As the teaching of the New Testament by no means asserts that all the various elements which meet in the kingdom of God are good, so it is equally far from intending to affirm that every portion of human civilisation, as it then existed, was the contrary. Many things were only rendered evil by their connection with the prevailing moral corruption.” (Rev. C. A. Row.)
4. The Church will ultimately be enriched with the spoils of the world (Rev 21:24-26).
5. Whatever service God requires of his people, he will see that they are suitably equipped for it, and that their needs are, in his providence, abundantly supplied (Php 4:18).
6. The people of God will not ultimately suffer loss from adherence to him.
7. God can make even the enemy a means of benefit to his cause.
III. THE GREATNESS OF MOSES. “Moreover, the man Moses was very great,” etc. (Exo 11:3). The promise was thus fulfilled. “See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh ‘ (Exo 7:1). This greatness of Moses was,
1. Got without his seeking for it. Like Jesus, he came not doing his own will, but the will of him that sent him (Joh 5:38).
2. Got without his expecting it. Moses looked for anything but honour in the service to which he had been called. Remember his deep despondency at the entrance on his task, and for long after (Exo 3:11; Exo 4:10-13; Exo 5:22, Exo 5:23; Exo 6:12, Exo 6:30).
3. Got in doing God‘s work.
4. Got by God‘s power resting on him (cf. Deu 34:10-12). The service of God is the path of true greatness, and leads to undying honour (Rom 2:7, Rom 2:10).J.O.
HOMILIES BY J. URQUHART
How God justifies the trust of all who hope in his mercy.
I. THE CERTAINTY OF THE DELIVERANCE OF GOD‘S PEOPLE.
1. The preceding plagues had terrified for a moment; this will crush resistance. The stroke long delayed was now at length to fall. The last awful pause had come, during which Egypt waited in dread, and Israel in hope mingled with awe.
2. The like moment will come in God’s contest with sin. There will be a last awful pause, and then the trump of God shall sound.
3. The last hour of this earthly life of ours will also come, and the soul be freed from the grasp of sorrow, and pass up through the pearly gates into the father’s home.
II. ITS COMPLETENESS. “He shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.” Every bond will be broken.
1. The churches of God shall no more feel the world’s afflicting hand.
2. Sin shall have no more dominion over God’s redeemed. God’s deliverance comes slowly, but when it does come it is full and lasting.
III. IT WILL BE ATTENDED WITH GREAT ENRICHMENT. It will not be an escape with mere life. To their own shall be added the wealth of their foes.
1. The riches of the nations will yet be the possession of the people of God.
2. This will be only the type of the true riches with which the redeemed shall be endowed.
IV. AND WITH GREAT HONOUR. The despised bondsmen were girt with reverence and awe, such as had never encircled the throne of the Pharaohs. The true kings of the earth for whose manifestation the world waits are the sons of God. They will be, too, the princes of heaven, co-heirs with Christ, sharers of the throne of the Son of God.U.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Exo 11:1. And the Lord said unto Moses This would be rendered much more properly, now the Lord had said unto Moses: for it is evident, that the fourth verse is a continuation of Moses’s conference with Pharaoh, mentioned in the last chapter; where, having said, I will see thy face again no more, Exo 10:29 it is here added, Exo 11:8 and he went out from Pharaoh in a great anger. The first three verses, therefore, should be read as in a parenthesis, as well as in the past tense; as, what is mentioned in the second verse, had been revealed to Moses in the very first vision he had at Horeb. See ch. Exo 3:20; Exo 3:22 and Exo 4:23.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
THIRD SECTION
Announcement of the last or tenth plague, the immediate miraculous interposition of God. The commands respecting the indemnification of the Israelites, and the Passover, as the festival preliminary to their deliverance. The midnight of terror and of the festival of deliverance. The release and the exodus. The legal consequences of the liberation: the Passover, the consecration of the first-born, the feast of unleavened bread
Exo 11:1 to Exo 13:16
A.Announcement of the last plague
Exo 11:1-10
1And Jehovah said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more [One more plague will I bring] upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let you go, he shall [will] surely thrust you out hence altogether. 2Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow [ask] of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels [articles] of silver, and 3jewels [articles] of gold. And Jehovah gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaohs servants, and in the sight of the people. 4And Moses said, Thus saith Jehovah, About [At] midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt: 5And all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even [throne], unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts. 6And there shall be a great cry throughout [in] all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it [the like of which hath not been], nor shall be like it [nor shall be] any more. 7But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move [sharpen] his tongue, against man or beast; that ye may know how [know] that Jehovah doth put a difference [doth distinguish] between the Egyptians and Israel. 8And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves [bow down] unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee: and after that I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in a great [burning] anger. 9And Jehovah said unto Moses, Pharaoh shall [will] not hearken unto you; that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. 10And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and Jehovah hardened Pharaohs heart, so that he would not [and he did not] let the children of Israel go out of his land.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Exo 11:1. And Jehovah said.According to Keil, Jehovahs address to Moses here reported was made before the interview with Pharaoh recorded in Exo 10:24-29, but is given here by the narrator because it explains Moses confident answer in Exo 10:29. But we cannot suppose that Moses would have prennounced the tenth plague before Pharaohs obduracy in reference to the ninth had showed itself. Also, it is clear from Exo 11:8 that the announcement made in Exo 11:4-8 immediately follows Moses declaration in Exo 10:29. The difference between this announcement and the former ones consists in the fact that this last one is made immediately after Pharaohs obdurate answer. By a sort of attraction other particulars are added to this central part of the section: Exo 11:9-10 as a recollection which the theocratic spirit loves to repeat. Exo 11:1-3, however, are put before Exo 11:4-8, evidently from pragmatic considerations; in historical order they form the immediate consequence of what is there related. Only the matter of the silver and gold articles seems to have been often talked of: the idea is advanced as early as Exo 3:21.
Exo 11:8. That follow thee.Here for the first time the thought appears, that the people are to form a military host.In a burning anger.Patience is exhausted, and the prophets anger breaking forth is a foretoken of judgment.
Exo 11:9-10. What Jehovah has predicted (Exo 4:21; Exo 7:3) has thus far all been fulfilled. The pause before the last thunder-bolt has intervened, and occasions a review.
Exo 11:4-5. At midnight.The day is not fixed, only the dreadful hour of the night. Keil correctly observes, in opposition to Baumgarten, that the institution of the feast of the Passover does not come till after the announcement of the last plague, and in accordance with this direction at least nine1 days, according to Exo 12:3, must have preceded the Passover. Also the indefinitely protracted expectation of the stroke must have heightened the fear in Egypt, and made the stroke the more effectual. At midnight will I go out.The servant with his symbolic action retires; Jehovah will Himself step forth from His hidden throne, and march through the whole of hostile Egypt in judicial majesty. The judgment will be so severe that even Moses with his rod must reverently retire, all the more, as in this last scene there is to be made manifest on Israels part also a relative complicity in guilt, which can be expiated only by the blood of the paschal lamb. Moses must here retire on account also of the infliction of death on the first-born children of Egypt.The maid-servant that is behind the mill.From the kings son down to the lowest female slave. A still stronger expression is used for the latter extreme in Exo 12:29.2All the first-born.The firstborn are the natural heads, representatives, priests, and chief sufferers, of families; and to the first-born as priests correspond the first-born of beasts as offerings (vid. Exo 13:2). Here, it is true, the offering spoken of is the curse-offering, . According to Keil, the beasts also are mentioned because Pharaoh was going to keep back the men and the cattle of the Israelites. But this judgment goes so deep that the firstborn Israelitish children must likewise be atoned for; therefore also faultless lambs must be offered. The first-born among lambs cannot have been meant.
Exo 11:7. Not a dog sharpen his tongue.A proverbial expression, signifying that not the slightest trouble could be experienced. Hence, too, not even the cattle of the Jews were to suffer the least disturbance (vid. Jdt 11:19). The proverbial expression may seem strange in this connection; but the thought readily occurs, that the Egyptians, in this great calamity which they had to experience on account of the Israelites, might come against them with revengeful purpose. But even this will so little be the case that rather all of Pharaohs servants will fall at Moses feet and beg him to go out together with his people.
Footnotes:
[1][Probably a misprint for four, i.e., the four days intervening between the 10th and the 14th of the month. Murphy agrees with Baumgarten that the midnight here spoken of is the one following the announcement of the plague, which, therefore, according to Exo 12:6; Exo 12:29, must have taken place on the 14th. This of course requires us to assume that the injunction of Exo 12:1-3 preceded this announcement. In itself considered, however, there is certainly no more difficulty in this than in the view held by Keil respecting Exo 11:1-3, viz., that chronologically it belongs before Exo 10:24-29.Tr.].
[2][Where prisoners are substituted for grinders. But, as Keil remarks, according to Jdg 16:21; Isa 47:2, it was not uncommon to employ prisoners as grinders.Tr.].
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
Matters are now coming to a crisis, and a dreadful crisis it is in this eventful history and it will soon be seen to whom the sovereign power belongs. This chapter prepares the way for the account of the tenth and last plague of Egypt in the destruction of the first-born. Moses denounceth this punishment, and all the conference between him and Pharaoh is ended forever.
Exo 11:1
This verse spiritually considered is very awful. After all the plagues of Egypt, there yet remained one more, in the death of the first-born, to finish. Thus after all the sorrows of the ungodly and hardened in this world, there remaineth one more in their final destruction in the world to come. Psa 9:17-18 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Differences in Character
Exo 11:7
That there are diversities in human character and conduct, in human fortune and destiny, no one questions. The atheist sees in such diversities the result of circumstances and, since in his view there is no controlling mind in the universe, of inexplicable caprice. The Christian, on the contrary, believes that in these diversities there exists, though it is not alway discoverable, the operation of Divine wisdom, and even of Divine benevolence. The providence of God and the moral nature of man are sufficient, if both were fully understood, to account for all.
1. What is Implied in this Difference? 1. Divine wisdom. What is inexplicable is not arbitrary, but is the outworking of a wisdom beyond the human. Why the Almighty chose Israel to be the depository of a revealed truth, and left Egypt to work its own way unaided save by the light of nature, we cannot tell. But so it was; and Israel was informed by Jehovah that this election was owing to no native moral excellence in the object of Divine choice.
2. Difference in religious position. There was, however, in the case before us, a difference in the religious position of the two nations. The Egyptians were idolaters; the Hebrews, with all their ignorance, carnality, and obstinacy, were worshippers of Jehovah. Israel was thus called to a higher platform of probation. Apostasy in Israel was a fouler sin than polytheism in Egypt. Life is not always according to privilege, and higher privilege often, alas! becomes the occasion of sorer condemnation. Yet to be trained in a Christian land and in the knowledge of the Christian faith is in itself a ‘difference’ for which it behoves us to offer daily thanks.
3. Difference in the Purposes of God. There was a difference in the purpose which God had in view regarding the two peoples. It would be childish to suppose that the providence of God had no appointed place for Egypt in the world’s great plan, but it would be unreasonable as well as unbelieving to fail to recognize in Israel’s vocation the counsels of the Omniscient Ruler. Alike for individuals and for communities there is appointed by God’s wisdom a special work. One man, one nation, cannot step into another’s place.
II. What Results from this Difference? 1. A difference in Divine treatment. Jehovah treated the Egyptians in one way, the Israelites in another. The Scripture narrative points out the hand of God in this. It is well and wise when the ways of Providence perplex us to say, ‘It is the Lord.’
2. A difference in human responsibility. There are degrees in men’s knowledge of the Lord’s will, and there are corresponding degrees in the measure of accountability.
3. A difference in the ultimate issues of probation. There is no reason to believe in a dead level of uniformity among spiritual beings in the future any more than in the present.
References. XI. 7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi. No. 305.
Exo 11:10
schylus recognizes in certain forms of mental blindness a Divine influence. There is a malady of the mind, a heaven-sent hurt, which drives the sinner to destruction. This infatuation or Ate is a clouding both of heart and of intellect; it is also both the penalty and the parent of crime. But only when a man has wilfully set his face towards evil, when; like Xerxes in the Persae, or Ajax in the play of Sophocles, he has striven to rise above human limits, or like Creon in the Antigone has been guilty of obdurate impiety, is a moral darkening inflicted on him in anger. Here schylus and Sophocles agree. As we read in the Old Testament that ‘the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart,’ so in schylus, ‘when a man is hasting to his ruin, the god helps him on’. It is the dark converse of ‘God helps those who help themselves’.
Prof. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 115f.
References. XII. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No. 1092. C. Kingsley, Sermons on National Subjects, p. 337. XII. Rutherford Waddell, Behold the Lamb of God, p. 41. XII. 1, 2. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1637. XII. 1-14. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Exodus, p. 38. XII. 1-20. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No. 2727. XII. 1-27. Ibid. vol. lii. No. 3013. XII. 1-29. T. A. Gurney, The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, p. 57. XII. 3, 4. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No. 2937. XII. 3, 23. A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p. 77.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
“Handfuls of Purpose”
For All Gleaners
“One plague more.” Exo 11:1 .
God always teaches by repetition. One plague might have been forgotten, and another and another might have gone into oblivion. God must so assail our lives that we can never forget the tremendous onslaught. God has to work a memory of recompense and judgment in the life of men. Nothing so easy to forget as judgment when it is overpast. So God works with repetition and severity of scourge, so that often when the pain has departed the mark of the chastisement may remain. God can always send one plague more. The worst has never come. Jesus Christ said: Go thy way and sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee! God has never dealt this heaviest stroke; the most terrible of his scourges has yet to be inflicted. God is a consuming fire; not only a thread of fire, or a string of flame, or a spark of heat, but a fire that can destroy both body and soul. All these plagues show the greatness of the sinner as well as the resources of God. God does not deal thus with beasts. It is worth while saving man even by judgment. God will spare nothing that can be turned in the direction of reclaiming and restoring his lost image. We see as much what estimate God sets upon the value of human nature by the fear which he excites as by the hope which he inspires.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
The Plagues of Egypt
Exo 11:1
The river was turned into blood, frogs came up upon the land of Egypt abundantly, and lice and flies; beasts were destroyed, locusts covered the whole land; darkness that might be felt filled the earth, and in one awful night the firstborn died, “from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.” And in that night of agony there “was a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall be like any more.” Some things can only be done once; some things do not permit repetition. The magicians of Egypt could do, apparently at least, or in some measure, what Moses and Aaron did in the way of miracles: they were skilled men, abundantly clever in conjuring and all manner of dexterity. The Lord seemed to take delight in developing their power so far as it would go: but there came a time when it broke down. Do not suppose that the whole race can be run by any competitor of God. For a mile you might outrun the wind, but the wind will conquer you: for a mile you might run faster than the lightning locomotive, but only for a little time. There came a day, we read, when “the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians.” When the sting was in themselves they felt themselves to be but men.
Let us look at these plagues from Pharaoh’s side and from the Divine side, and learn the modern and immediate uses of these tremendous judgments.
There is a period in life when we can only see sin in the light of its punishments, that, indeed, is not to see sin at all, but that is the chronic sophism with which all high spiritual teaching has to contend, and to contend almost impotently, because of the deceitfulness of the heart. When we are in the right mind we shall not need to see hell in order to know what sin really is: we shall know it afar off, before it has shaped itself into overt evil behaviour. We should hate it as a spiritual possibility, if no stain had ever been made upon the snow of the universe. We should be so quick of spiritual imagination as to know what the sin would be not a measurable taint to be reckoned up and named in plain inches. We should feel so sympathetically with the spirit and holiness of God as to see how one, so-called, little lie would darken creation and put out the very lamps of heaven and make it impossible for God to live. How far from that state are we? We have become so familiar with sin as to have broken it up into the plural number, and now we speak of sin as sins, and, once having given way to the pluralising of the word, we have missed all its gravity and all its terribleness. To speak in the plural number is to bring sin within the region of statistics. We now classify sin, distributing it into schedules and publishing what is done in separate lines; and thus we come to construct a comparative morality. When we see the punishment of sin, we think we see what sin itself really is. We must rid the mind of that most mischievous misconception. We do not see sin from any penalty that has yet fallen upon it When Adam died, we did not see what Adam had really done. He had made the universe impossible; he had taken away for ever the happiness of God; he had made heaven an impossibility unless there could be found in the Divine nature itself some answer profound enough, beneficent enough, to undo in some mysterious and wordless way the tremendous and infinite catastrophe. No wonder we take light and frivolous views of human conduct, when we have turned sin into sins, because that is the first step of a process which means a comparison of one sin with another: the weighing of one sin against another, and the distribution of sins into venial and mortal. These are the clevernesses of men, the refinements of human deceit, not permissions which have been granted by any charter Divine, thus to trifle with law and consequence. Many would be struck by the plague who would not be impressed by the hardness of heart which it was intended to chasten, hence you will hear more criticism about the miracle of the plague, than about the infinitely greater miracle of human obduracy. We miss the point: we wonder about the river turned into blood, and wonder not about the heart turned into stone.
Immediately following this line of remark comes the solemn doctrine that suffering is often mistaken for penitence. The two things go inseparably together. When we think of punishment instead of thinking of sin, we are very likely to think that suffering is the equivalent of contrition. We say “the poor man seemed to be suffering intensely.” So he may have been; but there may have been no contrition in his heart. It was a physical or mechanical suffering, not a moral pain; a spiritual agony, a revulsion of the soul against the terribleness of sin. Such ideas, perhaps, never occurred to the offender, but when the darkness turns creation into night, when he goes out for water, and is forced to drink blood, when he cannot put down his foot because of the abundance of the insects which cover the ground, then he begins to whimper, and to cry, and to say that things are going hard with him; and when we see him with bent head and eyes all tears, we say pensively “the poor creature did seem to be suffering so much.” So he was; but the suffering was in the wrong place. He cried out because of fear; he cried because he was a coward, not because he was a sinner. A man has done something in society which he ought not to have done: he is brought before the judge and condemned to imprisonment and servitude. The circumstances being wholly unfamiliar, the man is cowed by them, the days are long, the nights are burdens, the whole time is charged with intensest suffering; so the man breaks down and is sorry for what he has done. That is a mistake. No man can be made sorry by punishment, except in the narrowest and most trifling degree. We do not begin to be sorry until we feel that one false word, one wrong deed, has spoiled the universe, and grieved the Spirit of the living God, no matter what the weight is upon our heads, or the laceration upon our backs no matter how we are overwhelmed by mere Buffering. We must distinguish between the coward and the sinner, the sinner that cries out and the soul that would repeat the offence if the punishment could be escaped. Until we get down to these vital lines we never can begin our first lesson in gospel theology. How easy it is to mistake mercy for weakness! This was Pharaoh’s mistake. The moment the Lord lifted his heavy hand from the Egyptian king, Pharaoh began to forget his oath, and vow, and promise, and to harden his heart, saying, in effect, “He can do no more; the God of the Israelites has exhausted himself; now that he has removed his hand he has confessed his weakness rather than demonstrated his pity.” We are committing the same mistake every day: whilst the plague is in the house we are ready to do anything to get rid of it! we will say prayers morning, noon and night, and send for the holy man who has been anointed as God’s minister, and will read nothing but solid and most impressive books, listen to no frivolous conversation, and touch nothing that could dissipate or enfeeble the mind. How long will the plague be removed before the elasticity will return to the man and the old self reassert its sovereignty? Not a day need pass. We begin to feel that the worst is past: we say it is darkest before it is dawn, “hope springs eternal in the human breast”; and so easily do we fall back into the old swing between self-indulgence and nominal homage to God. We think we have felt all the Lord can do, and we say, “His sword is no longer; it cannot reach us now that we have removed away this little distance from its range; now and here we may do what we please, and judgment cannot fall upon us.” Thus we play old Pharaoh’s part day by day. He is a mirror in which we may see ourselves. There is nothing mysterious in this part of the solemn reading. However we may endeavour to escape from the line when it becomes supernatural or romantic, we are brought swiftly and surely back to it when we see these repetitions of obduracy and these renewed challenges of Divine anger and judgment.
How wonderful, too, does self-interest extinguish the sense of justice! Pharaoh will not let Israel go. He is turning away so much property, he is giving up so many opportunities of enhancing his royal dignity, or his imperial wealth. He will let them go; then he will not; he will relax his grasp a little; then he will tighten it, and make it doubly sure. What is it that is in the man, thus making him halt, hesitate, and balance himself as between duty and not duty? It is the fiend that still reigns in human thought its name is Self-interest, or Self-consideration that will make any man, king or peasant, a thief; in fact, wherever it exists it is of necessity thievish. Self-interest never considers another man’s rights. It rises early in the morning to outwit that other man; when he turns round it will encroach upon his rights if it can. It will bend in the attitude of homage and prayer, and all the time be using that posture for the promotion of its own purposes. This illustration need not take us back to ancient Egypt. We know it, we represent it, we attest it by every oath possible to earnestness. We assure ourselves of the evil sovereignty of this principle of self-interest. It is in every one of us; it cannot be got out of us here and now. Whether it must be burned out of us by fire, drained out of us by blood, are questions we may ask: but it will never be argued away. Eloquence will spend its persuasion in vain upon it, and music will lull it to that kind of sleep which will but recruit its strength.
Looking at the Divine side of these plagues we notice the variety of the Divine resources. What we have here are mere examples of what might have been. God has but to look, and the miracle is done. His chariots are twenty thousand. He can touch us at countless points. The same variety is seen to-day. We are afflicted in innumerable ways. Every man has his own peculiar plague. There may be a common likeness amongst the plagues, but every man has his own accent of sorrow, his own particular point where things beat upon him as a blow might beat with cruel repercussion upon a wound. Why throw all these plagues away from us, as teachers and counsellors, because in their little narrowness they are said to have occurred thousands of years ago? They are occurring to-day; they are occurring in our houses, or in the secrecy of our hearts. Many a man is drinking blood when he seems to be drinking water. Many a man has countless plagues of frogs, or lice, or flies, within his soul, stinging him, annoying him, hampering him; keeping him back from the way which he would pursue. Horrible times his soul has by itself, nights of darkness that may be felt; losses compared with which the loss of the firstborn is but a gain. If we dwell upon the mere letter, we shall begin to ask questions of curiosity, and wonder how this could be, or that could be; but, looking at the broad solemnity of the case, human life is now attesting the variety of the Divine justice, the infinity of the penalties of God.
We here see how necessary it was for God to reveal the heart to itself. That is one of the mysteries of the Incarnation of the Son of God. Men would never have known that they could have murdered God, if Christ had not been born into the world. Prophets they killed by the score. Angelic men of radiant face and eloquent tongue they had banished without compunction; and last of all, God said “I will send my Son.” The treatment of the Son of God revealed the human heart to itself. We do not know what we are unless we look at what is done, not by ourselves only, but by the sum-total of humanity. But who can preach with discrimination severe and just enough on this appalling theme? No man can separate himself from the race and claim to be a little whiter in morality than some other man. That is self-interest again; that is the self-element asserting itself over the generic and total quantity called human nature. When a man committed murder, you committed it. There is a narrow sense in which that is not true, but if you could see yourself in all the possibilities of yourself, you would see that you committed the awful crime. It is necessary that we should shudder at it; it is even necessary that we should punish it; but in doing so we should not forget to ask ourselves the solemn question: were we in the same circumstances, what should we have done? We are not made of different clay, of different sorts of flesh and blood: “God hath made of one blood, all nations of men.” That being the case, there is but one heart, one human nature, and in the profoundest conception of this mystery we must look to what has been done by the whole race, if we would know what it is possible to the purest and whitest soul amongst us to do. Be afraid of any criticism that would withdraw you from these broader contemplations, and fix your attention strongly upon little moralities, and cherished virtues, which you set up in protest against being numbered with the totality of mankind.
Here we see the uselessness of punishment. If punishment could have saved the world, Christ need never have come. The world had been drowned, and yet it came up with a bolder hand to repeat its boldest iniquities. Cities had been burned, yet the sulphur had hardly emitted its last fume before the sinner returned to play the devil again. We speak of the reality of these plagues, the reality of the Divine judgments; we begin to wonder whether such and such things did really happen. What do you mean by really? What, is reality? It would be impossible for me to believe that the plagues ever took place in Egypt after this fashion and on this scale, if I had not a witness in my own heart and life that it was quite possible for them so to be manifested and realised. What a man sees in delirium tremens is real. It is the only reality. The sober, cool mind could never see these things; it is only the mind in a given condition of wreck and debasement that can grasp these awful realities. When the suffering man sees the curtain removed and grim death looking at him, it is real. Tell him that it is some phantom of the brain; reason with him about it, and he tells you he saw it, and your reasoning is like sprinkling water upon Etna or Vesuvius, when the mountain is ablaze. When the delirious brain sees the whole bed become a nest of intertangled serpents with gleaming eyes and darting fangs and approaching cruelty, it is real. Nothing ever can upon earth be so real. After that, facts become dramatic incidents, and things that can be touched, seen with the bodily eyes, are but theatrical commonplaces. We see with the inner eyes; we see with the soul’s vision. In some moments God connects us with the eternities, and if we shrink back from them, he is the false teacher who tells us that our experiences are not real. The man who speaks so is a narrow teacher; he is limited within arbitrary lines; he does not touch the agony and the Divinity of things.
So, allowing all that may be called romantic, supernatural, to fall off from this story of the plagues, there remains all that God wanted to remain three things: first, the assertion of the Divine right in life. God cannot be turned out of his own creation: he must assert his claim, and urge it, and redeem it. The second thing that remains is the incontestable fact of human opposition to Divine voices. Divine voices call to right, to purity, to nobleness, to love, to brotherhood; and every day we resist these voices, and assert rebellious claims. The third thing that remains is the inevitable issue. We cannot fight God and win. “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” Why smite with feeble fist the infinite granite of the infinite strength? who will lose? The certain result will be the overthrow of the sinner: the drowning of every Pharaoh who hardens himself against the Divine will and voice. Stripped, therefore, of everything of the nature of romance if you will import that word into criticism so solemn there remains the threefold fact that God has rights amongst us; that man resists those rights; that the battle comes, and the battle ends in but one way “The Lord reigneth.”
Now that I come to think of it, have not all these plagues followed my own obstinacy and hardness of heart in relation to things Divine? We speak of the plagues of Egypt as though they began and ended in that distant land, and we regard them now as part of an exciting historical romance. I will think otherwise of them. The local incident and the local colour may be dispensed with, but the supreme fact in my own consciousness is that God always follows my obstinacy with plagues. The plagues he can indeed vary, because his understanding is infinite and his resources are without bound. What is the meaning of the sleeplessness which has turned night into a longer day? What is the true interpretation of the diseases which have enfeebled my bodily strength? What is the meaning of the graves which I have dug one after another for the burial of wife, and child, and friend? What is the interpretation of every loss which has befallen my possessions? It is easy to call all these things by ordinary names and reckon them as part of the common lot of man, and so miss all their meaning and all their sacred pith. It is better for my soul’s health that I should regard all these circumstances as having a distinct religious application. I need not amaze my judgment or bewilder my conscience by inventing new romantic names or starting new casuistical difficulties. It will sober and elevate me to regard all the visitations which have caused my life its keenest pains as ministries originated and directed by Heaven’s beneficent wisdom. By consideration of the case in suitable temper I am able to drive away the plague which has been a burden to my life. Even now I may pray unto the Lord, and seek deliverance from the dangers which threaten my life on every hand. Dangers are rightly used when they move us to bolder prayer; losses are turned into gains when they lift our lives in an upward direction; disease is the beginning of health when it leads the sufferer to the Father’s house. Pharaoh had his plagues, many and awful; and every life has its penal or chastening visitations which for the present are full of agony and bitterness, but which may be so used as to become the beginning of new liberties and brighter joys.
Note
“We remained two months at Khartoum. During this time we were subjected to intense heat and constant dust-storms, attended with a general plague of boils. Verily, the plagues of Egypt remain to this day in the Soudan. On the 26th June (1865) we had the most extraordinary dust-storm that had ever been seen by the inhabitants. I was sitting in the courtyard of my agent’s house at about half-past four p.m.; there was no wind, and the sun was as bright as usual in this cloudless sky, when suddenly a gloom was cast over all, a dull yellow glare pervaded the atmosphere. Knowing that this effect portended a dust-storm, and that the present calm would be followed by a hurricane of wind, I rose to go home, intending to secure the shutters. Hardly had I risen when I saw approaching, from the south-west apparently, a solid range of immense brown mountains, high in air. So rapid was the passage of this extraordinary phenomenon, that in a few minutes we were in actual pitchy darkness. At first there was no wind, and the peculiar calm gave an oppressive character to the event. We were in a ‘darkness that might be felt. Suddenly the wind arrived, but not with the violence that I had expected There were two persons with me, Michael Latfalla, my agent, and Monsieur Lombrosio. So intense was the darkness, that we tried to distinguish our hands placed close before our eyes; not even an outline could be seen. This lasted for upwards of twenty minutes: it then rapidly passed away, and the sun shone as before; but we had fell the darkness that Moses had inflicted upon the Egyptians.” Sir S. Baker.
1. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,
2. This month (the Hebrews had formerly begun the year at or near the autumnal equinox. The Egyptians began the year in June; the Babylonians at the vernal equinox) shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.
3. Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month (thus allowing ample time for the examination of the animal) they shall take to them every man a lamb (all Israelites are supposed to possess a lamb, or to be able to purchase one), according to the house of their fathers (rather, for the house of their fathers), a lamb for an house;
4. And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb (ten was the least number regarded as sufficient; twenty not considered too many).
5. Your lamb shall be without blemish (the teaching of natural piety); a male of the first year (that is, not above a year old); ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:
6. And ye shall keep it up (separate it from the flock and have it in special custody for four days) until the fourteenth day of the same month (the day of the full moon); and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
7. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it (with a bunch of hyssop, a plant supposed to have purifying properties) on the two side posts and on the upper door post (the latticed window above the door) of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
8. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs (signifying the putting away of all defilement and corruption) they shall eat it.
9. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance (inside) thereof.
10. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning (thus avoiding both profanation and superstition); and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.
11. And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord’s passover (the word is here used for the first time).
12. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment: I am the Lord ( Jehovah ).
13. And the blood shall be to you for a token (a token to me on your behalf) upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
14. And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever (the Passover is continued in the Eucharist).
15. Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses (leaven was typical of corruption): for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
16. And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation (a general gathering of the people to the door of the sanctuary for sacrifice, worship, and perhaps instruction), and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you.
17. And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.
18. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even (the even on which the fourteenth day closed), ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even.
19. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger (a foreigner in blood), or born in the land (of Canaan).
20. Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
VI
THE TEN PLAGUES, OR THE GREAT DUEL
Exodus 5:18-13:36
The present chapter will be upon the great duel (as Dr. Sampey is pleased to call it) between Moses and Pharaoh, or in other words, the ten plagues. I have mapped out, as usual, some important questions.
What is the scope of the lesson? From Exo 5:15-12:37 . What is the theme of the lesson? The ten plagues, or God’s answer to Pharaoh’s question: “Who is the Lord?” What is the central text? Exo 12:12 : “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.” What was the purpose of these plagues? Generally, as expressed in Exo 9:16 : “That my name may be declared throughout all the earth,” i.e., to show that Jehovah was the one and only God. The second object was to show to Israel that Jehovah was a covenant keeping God. The first object touched outsiders. As it touched Moses it was to show that God would fully accredit him as the leader. How was Moses accredited? By the power to work miracles. Let the reader understand, if you never knew it before, that Moses is the first man mentioned in the Bible who worked a miracle, though God had worked some miracles directly before this. But Moses was God’s first agent to work miracles, duly commissioned to bear a message to other men.
On the general subject of miracles, I wish to offer the remark, that there are three great groups of miracles, viz.: The Plagues of Egypt, the miracles wrought by Elijah and Elisha, and the miracles wrought by Christ and the apostles. And from the time of Moses, every now and then to the time of Christ, some prophet was enabled to work a miracle. These are the groups. But what is a miracle? When we come to the New Testament we find four words employed, all expressed in Greek. One word expresses the effect of the miracle on the beholder, a “wonder.” Another expresses the purpose, a “sign.” Another expresses the energy, or “power,” while still another expresses the “work”‘, i.e., “wonders, signs, powers, works.”
As we have come to miracles for the first time, it would be a good thing for every reader to read the introductory part of Trench, or some other author Trench is the best. We come back to our question, What is a miracle? Take this for a definition: (1) “An extraordinary event.” That is the first idea. If it is an ordinary event you cannot call it wonderful. It is not a miracle that the sun should rise in the east. It would be a miracle for it to be seen rising in the west. (2) This extraordinary event is discernible to the senses. (3) It apparently violates natural laws and probabilities. I say, “apparently,” because we do not know that it actually does. (4) It is inexplicable by natural laws alone. (5) It is produced by the agency of God, and is sometimes produced immediately. (6) For religious purposes; usually to accredit a messenger or attest God’s revelation to him.
I am going to call your attention to some definitions that are either imperfect or altogether wrong. Thomas Aquinas, a learned doctor of the Middle Ages, says that miracles are events wrought by divine power apart from the order generally observed in nature. That is simply an imperfect definition; good as far as it goes. Hume and Spinoza, a Jew, say, “A miracle is a violation of a natural law; therefore,” says Spinoza, “impossible”; “therefore,” says Hume, “incredible.” It is not necessarily a violation of natural laws: for instance, if I turn a knife loose, the law of gravitation would make it fall, but if a wind should come in between, stronger than the law, of gravitation, and this natural law should hold the knife up, it would not be a violation of the natural law; simply one
natural law overcoming another. Therefore, it is wrong to say that a miracle is a violation of natural law. Jean Paul, a noted critical skeptic, says, “Miracles of earth are the laws of heaven.” Renan says: “Miracles are the inexplicable.” Schleiermacher says, “Miracles are relative, that is, the worker of them only anticipates later knowledge.” Dr. Paulus says, “The account of miracles is historical, but the history must signify simply the natural means.” Wolsey says, “The text that tells us about miracles is authentic, but the miracles are allegories, not facts.” Now, I have given you what I conceive to be a correct definition of a miracle and some definitions that are either imperfect or altogether faulty.
When may miracles be naturally expected? When God makes new revelations; as, in the three epochs of miracles.
To what classes of people are miracles incredible? Atheists, pantheists, and deists. Deists recognize a God of physical order. Pantheists make no distinction between spirit and matter. Atheists deny God altogether.
What are counterfeit miracles? We are going to strike some soon, and we have to put an explanation on them. In 2Th 2 they are said to be “lying wonders,” or deeds. They are called “lying” not because they are lies, but because their object is to teach a lie, or accredit a lie. Unquestionably, Satan has the power to do supernatural things, so far as we understand the laws of nature, and when the antichrist comes he is to be endowed with power to work miracles that will deceive everybody in the world but the elect. It is not worth while, therefore, to take the position that the devil and his agents cannot, by permission of God, work miracles. When may we naturally expect counterfeit miracles? When the real miracles are produced the counterfeit will appear as an offset. Whenever a religious imposture of any kind is attempted, or any false doctrine is preached, they will claim that they can attest it. For example, on the streets of our cities are those, whatever you call them, who claim that Mar 16 is fulfilled in our midst today. What then, does the counterfeit miracle prove? The reality and necessity of the true. Thieves do not counterfeit the money of a “busted” bank. How may you usually detect counterfeit miracles? This is important: (1) By the immoral character of the producer. That is not altogether satisfactory, but it is presumptive evidence. (2) If the doctrine it supports or teaches is contradictory to truth already revealed and established. (3) The evil motive or the end in view. God would not work a lot of miracles just for show. When Herod said to Christ, “Work me a miracle,” Christ refused. Miracles are not to gratify curiosity. (4) Its eternal characteristic of emptiness or extravagance. (5) Its lack of substantial evidence. In the spirit-rapping miracles they need too many conditions put out the light, join hands, etc. It is one of the rules of composition as old as the classics, never to introduce a god unless there be a necessity for a god; and when one is introduced, let what he says and does correspond to the dignity and nature of a god. If that is a rule of composition in dealing with miracles it shows that God, as being wise, would not intervene foolishly.
Now, is a miracle a greater manifestation of God’s power than is ordinarily displayed by the Lord? No. He shows just as much power in producing an almond tree from a germ, and that almond tree in the course of nature producing buds and blossoms, by regulating the order of things, as he does to turn rods to serpents. But while the power is no greater, the impression is more vivid, and that is the object of a miracle.
There are, certainly, distinctions in miracles, and you will need to know the distinction when you discuss the miracles wrought by Moses more than any other set of miracles in the Bible. There are two kinds of miracles, the absolute and the providential, or circumstantial, e.g., the conversion of water into blood is an absolute miracle; the bringing of frogs out of the water is a providential or circumstantial miracle. Keep that distinction in your mind. The plague of darkness and the death of the firstborn are also absolute miracles. The providential or circumstantial miracles get their miraculous nature from their intensity, their connection with the word of Moses, the trial of Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods, with the deliverance of Israel, and their being so timely as to strengthen the faith of God’s people, and to overcome the skepticism of God’s enemies.
I will give a further idea about a providential miracle. Suppose I were to say that on a certain day at one o’clock the sun would be veiled. If that is the time for an eclipse there is nothing miraculous in it. But suppose a dense cloud should shut off the light of the sun, there is a miraculous element because there is no way of calculating clouds as you would calculate eclipses. Now, the orderly workings of nature, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork,” reveal the glory of God to a mind in harmony with God, and they hide the glory from the eyes of an alienated man who will not see God in the sun, moon, and stars. They will turn away from the glory of God in these regular events and worship the creature more than the creator.
Does a miracle considered by itself prove the truth of the doctrine or the divine mission’ of him who produces it? Not absolutely. The Egyptians imitated the first two miracles. Other things must be considered. The doctrine must commend itself to the conscience as being good. All revelation presupposes in a man power to recognize the truth, arising from the fact that man is made in the image of God, and has a conscience, and that “Jesus Christ lighteth every man coming into the world.” The powers of darkness are permitted to perform wonders of a startling nature. The character of the performer, the end in view, the doctrine to be attested in itself, BS related to previously revealed truth, must all be considered. In Deu 13:1-5 , the people are expressly warned against the acceptance of any sign or wonder, wrought by any prophet or dreamer, used to attest a falsehood. In Mat 24:24 , the Saviour expressly forewarns that antichrists and false prophets shall come with lying signs and wonders, and Paul says so in several passages.
How are miracles helpful, since the simple, unlearned are exposed to the danger of accepting the false and rejecting the true? This difficulty is more apparent than real. The unlearned and poor are exposed to no more danger than the intellectual. Those who love previously revealed truth and have no pleasure in unrighteousness are able to discriminate, whether they are wise folks or simple folks. The trouble of investigation is no greater here than in any other moral problem. Therefore, the apostle John says, “Beloved, try every spirit.” A man comes to you and says he is baptized of the Holy Spirit. John says, “Try him, because there are many false prophets,” and “Every spirit that refuses to confess that God was manifested in the flesh,” turn him down at once. Once Waco was swept away by the Spiritualists. I preached a series of sermons on Spiritualism. Once in making calls I came upon some strangers, and happened to meet a Spiritualist lady who came up to me and said, “I am so glad to meet you. We belong to the same crowd. We are both a spiritual people. Let me see your hand.” I held it out and she commenced talking on it. She says, “I believe the Bible as much as you do.” I said, “No, you don’t. I can make you abuse the Bible in two minutes.” “Well, I would like to see you try.” I read that passage in Isaiah where a woe is pronounced upon those who are necromancers and magicians. “Yes, and I despise any such statements,” she said. “Of course,” I replied; “that is what I expected you to say.”
The conflict in Egypt was between Jehovah on the one hand and the gods of Egypt, representing the powers of darkness, on the other. Note these scriptures: Exo 12:12 ; Exo 15:11 ; Num 33:4 . The devil is the author of idolatry in all its forms The battle was between God and the devil, the latter
working through Pharaoh and his hosts, and God working through Moses.
Water turned into blood. I want to look at the first miracle A question that every reader should note is: State in order the ten miracles. First, the conversion of the waters of the Nile into blood. Egypt is the child of the Nile. If you were up in a balloon and looked down upon that land you would see a long green ribbon, the Nile Valley and its fertile banks. Therefore they worship the Nile. There has been a great deal written to show that at certain seasons of the year the waters of the Nile are filled with insect life of the animalcule order, so infinitesimal in form as to be invisible, even with a microscope, yet so multitudinous in number that they make the water look like blood. It would be perfectly natural if it only came that way. I will tell you why I do not think it came that way. This miracle applied to the water which had already been drawn up) and was in the water buckets in their homes. That makes it a genuine miracle.
The second miracle was the miracle of the frogs. I quote something about that miracle from the Epic of Moses , by Dr. W. G. Wilkinson:
Then Aaron, at his brother’s bidding, raised His rod and with it smote the river. Straight .Forth from the water at that pregnant stroke Innumerably teeming issued frogs, Prodigious progeny I in number such As if each vesicle of blood in all The volume of the flood that rolled between The banks of Nile and overfilled his bound And overflowed, had quickened to a frog, And the midsummer tide poured endless down, Not water and not blood, but now instead One mass of monstrous and colluctant life! The streams irriguous over all the realm, A vast reticulation of canals Drawn from the river like the river, these Also were smitten with that potent rod, And they were choked with tangled struggling frogs. Each several frog was full of lusty youth, And each, according to his nature, wished More room wherein to stretch himself, and leap, Amphibious, if he might not swim. So all Made for the shore and occupied the land. Rank following rank, in serried order, they Resistless by their multitude and urged, Each rank advancing, by each rank behind An insupportable invasion, fed With reinforcement inexhaustible From the great river rolling down in frogs I Spread everywhere and blotted out the earth. As when the shouldering billows of the sea, Drawn by the tide and by the tempest driven, Importunately press against the shore Intent to find each inlet to the land, So now this infestation foul explored The coasts of Egypt seeking place and space.
With impudent intrusion, leap by leap Advancing, those amphibious cohorts pushed Into the houses of the people, found Entrance into the chambers where they slept, And took possession of their very beds. The kneading-troughs wherein their bread was made, The subterranean ovens where were baked The loaves, the Egyptians with despair beheld Become the haunts of this loathed tenantry. The palace, nay, the person, of the king Was not exempt. His stately halls he saw Furnished to overflowing with strange guests Unbidden whose quaint manners lacked the grace Of well-instructed courtliness; who moved About the rooms with unconventional ease And freedom, in incalculable starts Of movement and direction that surprised. They leaped upon the couches and divans; They settled on the tops of statutes; pumped Their breathing organs on each jutting edge Of frieze or cornice round about the walls; In thronging councils on the tables sat; From unimaginable perches leered. The summit of procacity, they made The sacred person of the king himself, He sitting or reclining as might chance, The target of their saltatory aim, And place of poise and pause for purposed rest.
Nor yet has been set forth the worst; the plague Was also a dire plague of noise. The night Incessantly resounded with the croaks, In replication multitudinous, Of frogs on every side, whether in mass Crowded together in the open field, Or single and recluse within the house. The dismal ululation, every night And all night long, assaulted every ear; Nor did the blatant clamour so forsake The day, that from some unfrequented place Might not be heard a loud, lugubrious, Reiterant chorus from batrachian throats. Epic of Moses I think that is one of the finest descriptions I ever read. They worshiped frogs. Now they were surfeited with their gods. I have space only to refer to the next plague of lice. I give Dr. Wilkinson’s description of it: They were like immigrants and pioneers Looking for habitations in new lands; They camped and colonized upon a man And made him quarry for their meat and drink. They ranged about his person, still in search Of better, even better, settlement; Each man was to each insect parasite A new-found continent to be explored. Which was the closer torment, those small fangs Infixed, and steady suction from the blood, Or the continuous crawl of tiny feet Banging the conscious and resentful skin In choice of where to sink a shaft for food Which of these two distresses sorer was, Were question; save that evermore The one that moment pressing sorer seemed.
Epic of Moses
What was the power of that plague? The Egyptians more than any other people that ever lived upon the earth believed in ceremonial cleanliness, particularly for their priesthood. They were not only spotless white, but defilement by an unclean thing was to them like a dip into hell itself.
QUESTIONS
1. What the scope of the next great topic in Exodus?
2. The theme?
3. The central text?
4. Purpose of the plagues?
5. How was Moses accredited?
6. What three great groups of miracles in the Bible?
7. In the New Testament what four words describe miracles? Give both Greek and English words, showing signification of each.
8. What, then, is a miracle?
9. Cite some faulty definitions.
10 When may they be naturally expected?
11. What are counterfeit or lying miracles, and may they be real miracles in the sense of being wrought by superhuman power, and whose in such case is the power, and what the purpose of its exercise?
12. To what classes of people are miracles incredible, and why?
13. Cite Satan’s first miracle, its purpose and result. Answer: (1) Accrediting the serpent with the power of speech; (2) To get Eve to receive him as an angel of light; (3) That Eve did thus receive him, and was beguiled.
14. On this point what says the Mew Testament about the last manifestation of the antichrist?
15. When may counterfeit miracles be expected?
16. Admitting many impostures to be explained naturally, could such impostures as idolatries, Mohammedanism, Mormonism, Spiritualism, witchcraft, necromancy, etc., obtain permanent hold on the minds of many peoples without some superhuman power?
17. What do counterfeit miracles prove?
18. How may they be detected?
19. What says a great poet about the priority of introducing a god into a story, who was he and where may the classic be found? Answer: (1) See chapter; (2) Horace; (3) In Horace’s Ars Poetica .
20. Distinguish between the ordinary powers of God working in nature and a miracle, e.g., the budding of Aaron’s rod and the budding of an almond tree.
21. What two kinds of miracles? Cite one of each kind from the ten plagues.
22. Of which kind are most of the ten plagues?
23. Does a miracle in itself prove the truth of the doctrine it is wrought to attest? If not, what things are to be considered?
24. Cite both Old Testament and New Testament proof that some doctrines attested by miracles are to be rejected.
25. If Satan works some miracles, and if the doctrines attested by some miracles are to be rejected, how are miracles helpful, especially to the ignorant, without powers of discrimination?
26. Who were the real antagonists in this great Egyptian duel?
27. Give substance and result of the first interview between Pharaoh and Moses?
28. Name in their order of occurrence the ten plagues.
29. First Plague: State the significance of this plague.
30. How have some sought to account for it naturally, and your reasons for the inadequacy of this explanation?
31. Second Plague: Recite Dr. Wilkinson’s fine description of the plague in his Epic of Moses.
32. The significance of the plague?
33. Third Plague: His description of the third plague and its significance.
VII
THE TEN PLAGUES, OR THE GREAT DUEL (Continued)
Every plague was intended to strike in some way at some deity worship in Egypt. I begin this chapter by quoting from Dr. Wilkinson’s Epic of Moses language which he puts in the mouth of Pharaoh’s daughter, the reputed mother of Moses, who is trying to persuade the king to let the people go: We blindly worship as a god the Nile; The true God turns his water into blood. Therein the fishes and the crocodiles, Fondly held sacred, welter till they die. Then the god Heki is invoked in vain To save us from the frogs supposed his care. The fly-god is condemned to mockery, Unable to deliver us from flies. Epic of Moses
We have discussed three of the plagues, and in Exo 8:20-32 , we consider the plague of flies. Flies, or rather beetles, were also sacred. In multitudes of forms their images were worn as ornaments, amulets, and charms. But at a word from Moses these annoying pests swarmed by millions until every sacred image was made hateful by the living realities.
The plague of Murrain, Exo 9:1-7 . Cattle were sacred animals with the Egyptians. Cows were sacred to Isis. Their chief god, Apis, was a bull, stalled in a place, fed on perfumed oats, served on golden plates to the sound of music. But at a word from Moses the murrain seized the stock. Apis himself died. Think of a god dying with the murrain I
Boils, Exo 9:8-12 . Egyptian priests were physicians. Religious ceremonies were medicines. But when Moses sprinkled ashes toward heaven grievous and incurable boils broke out on
the bodies of the Egyptians. King, priests, and magicians were specially afflicted; could not even stand before Moses.
Hail, Exo 9:13-35 . The control of rain and hail was vested in feminine deities Isis, Sate, and Neith. But at Moses’ word rain and hail out of season and in horrible intensity swept over Egypt, beating down their barley and the miserable remnant of their stock, and beating down exposed men, women, and children. In vain they might cry, “O Isis, O Sate, O Neith, help us! We perish; call off this blinding, choking rain! Rebuke this hurtling, pitiless storm of hail I” But the Sphinx was not more deaf and silent than Egypt’s goddesses.
Locusts, Exo 10:1-20 . The Egyptians worshiped many deities whose charge was to mature and protect vegetables. But at Moses’ word locusts came in interminable clouds, with strident swishing wings and devouring teeth. Before them a garden, behind them a desert. See in prophetic imagery the description of their terrible power, Joe 2:2 ; Rev 9:2-11 .
Darkness, Exodus 10-11:3. Ra, the male correlative of Isis, was the Egyptian god of light. A triune god, Amun Ra, the father of divine life, Kheeper Ra, of animal life, Kneph Ra, of human life. But at Moses’ word came seventy-two consecutive hours of solid, palpable darkness. In that inky plutonian blackness where was Ra? He could not flush the horizon with dawn, nor silver the Sphinx with moonbeams, nor even twinkle as a little star. Even the pyramids were invisible. That ocean of supernatural darkness was peopled by but one inhabitant, one unspoken, one throbbing conviction: “Jehovah, he is God.”
Death of the First-born, Exo 11:4-8 ; Exo 12:29-35 . This crowning and convincing miracle struck down at one time every god in Egypt, as lightning gores a black cloud or rives an oak, or a cyclone prostrates a forest. See the effect of this last miracle. The victory was complete. Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise up, and get you forth, from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve Jehovah, as ye have said. Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men. And against the children of Israel not a dog moved his tongue against man or beast; so the Lord put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel” (Exo 11:7 ; Exo 12:31-35 ).
Give the names of the magicians who withstood Moses and Aaron and what New Testament lesson is derived from their resistance? Paul warns Timothy of perilous times in the last days, in which men having the form of godliness but denying the power thereof were ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, and thus concludes, “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth; men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further; for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.” That is the time which I have so frequently emphasized when Paul’s man of sin shall appear and be like Jannes and Jambres, who withstood Moses and Aaron.
Give in their order the methods of Pharaoh’s oppositions to God’s people: (1) Persecution; (2) Imitation of their miracles; (3) Propositions of compromise. State what miracles they imitated. They changed their rods to serpents and imitated to some extent the first two plagues. But the rod of Aaron swallowed up theirs and they could not remove any plague nor imitate the last eight. State the several propositions of compromise; show the danger of each, and give the reply of Moses. I am more anxious that you should remember these compromises than the plagues.
COMPROMISES PROPOSED “Sacrifice in the land of Egypt,” i.e., do not separate from us, Exo 8:25 . This stratagem was to place Jehovah on a mere level with the gods of Egypt, thus recognizing the equality of the two religions. Moses showed the impracticableness of this, since the Hebrews sacrificed to their God animals numbered among the Egyptian divinities, which would be to them an abomination.
“I will let you go only not very far away” (Exo 8:28 ), that is, if you will separate let it be only a little separation. If you will draw a line of demarcation, let it be a dim one. Or, if you will so put it that your religion is light and ours darkness, do not make the distinction so sharp and invidious; be content with twilight, neither night nor day. This compromise catches many simple ones today. Cf. 2Pe 2:18-22 .
“I will let you men go, but leave with us your wives and children” (Exo 10:11 ). This compromise when translated simply means, “You may separate from us, but leave your hearts behind.” It is an old dodge of the devil. Serve whom ye will, but let us educate your children. Before the flood the stratagem succeeded: “Be sons of God if you will, but let your wives be daughters of men.” The mothers will carry the children with them. In modern days it says, “Let grown people go to church if they must, but do not worry the children with Sunday schools.”
“Go ye, serve the Lord; let your little ones go with you; only let your flocks and herds be stayed”; i.e., acknowledge God’s authority over your persons; but not over your property. This compromise suits all the stingy, avaricious professors who try to serve both God and mammon; their proverb is: “Religion is religion, but business is business.” Which means that God shall not rule over the maxims and methods of trade, nor in their counting houses, nor over their purses, nor over the six workdays, but simply be their God on Sunday at church. Well did Moses reply, “Our cattle shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind.”
These compromises mean anything in the world rather than a man should put himself and his wife and his children and his property, his everything on earth, on the altar of God. Was it proper for the representatives of the Christian religion to unite in the Chicago World’s Fair Parliament of Religions, including this very Egyptian religion rebuked by the ten plagues? All these religions came together and published a book setting forth the world’s religions comparatively.
My answer is that it was a disgraceful and treasonable surrender of all the advantages gained by Moses, Elijah, Jesus Christ, and Paul. “If Baal be God, follow him; but if Jehovah be God, follow him.” If neither be God, follow neither. Jesus Christ refused a welcome among the gods of Greece and Rome. The Romans would have been very glad to make Jesus a deity. But he would have no niche in the Pantheon. That Chicago meeting was also a Pantheon. The doctrine of Christ expresses: “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2Co 6:14-18 ). “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I would not that ye should have communion with demons. We cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons; ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?” (1Co 10:20-22 ).
The supreme fight made in Egypt was to show that Jehovah alone is God. He was not fighting for a place among the deities of the world, but he was claiming absolute supremacy. When we come to the giving of the law we find: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” and “you shall make no graven image, even of me, to bow down to worship it.” It took from the days of Moses to the days of the Babylonian captivity to establish in the Jewish mind the unity of God. All the time they were lapsing into idolatry. The prophets fought over the same battles that Moses fought. But when God was through with those people they were forever settled in this conviction, viz.: There is no other God but Jehovah. From that day till this no man has been able to find a Jewish idolater. Now then it takes from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the millennium to establish in the Jewish mind that Jesus of Nazareth is that Jehovah. Some Jews accept it of course, but the majority of them do not. When the Jews are converted that introduces the millennium, as Peter said to those who had crucified the Lord of glory, “Repent ye: in order that he may send back Jesus whom the heavens must retain until the time of the restitution of all things.”
One matter has been deferred for separate discussion until this time. I will be sure to call for twenty passages on the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Paul has an explanation of them in Rom 9:17-23 , and our good Methodist commentator, Adam Clarke, devotes a great deal of space in his commentary to weakening what Paul said. There are two kinds of hardening: (1) According to a natural law when a good influence is not acted upon, it has less force next time, and ultimately no force. A certain lady wanted to get up each morning at exactly six o’clock, so she bought an alarm clock, and the first morning when the alarm turned loose it nearly made her jump out of bed. So she got up and dressed on time. But after awhile when she heard the alarm she would not go to sleep, but she just lay there a little while. (Sometimes you see a boy stop still in putting on his left sock and sit there before the fire). The next time this lady heard the alarm clock the result was that it did not sound so horrible, and she kept lingering until finally she went to sleep. Later the alarm would no longer awaken her. There is a very tender, susceptible hardening of a young person under religious impressions that brings a tear to the eye. How easy it is to follow that first impression, but you put it off and say no, and after awhile the sound of warning becomes to you like the beat of the little drummer’s drumstick when Napoleon was crossing the Alps. The little fellow slipped and fell into a crevasse filled with snow, but the brave boy kept beating his drum and they could hear it fainter and fainter, until it was an echo and then it died away.
(2) The other kind of hardening is what is called judicial hardening, where God deals with a man and he resists, adopting this or that substitute until God says, “Now you have shut your eyes to the truth; I will make you judicially blind and send you a delusion that you may believe a lie and be damned.” Paul says, “Blindness in part hath happened unto Israel because they turned away from Jesus; because they would not hear his voice, nor the voice of their own prophets; because they persecuted those who believed in Jesus. There is a veil over their eyes when they read the scripture which cannot be taken away until they turn to the Lord and say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
Now the last thought: When the first three plagues were sent they fell on all Egypt alike. After that, in order to intensify the miracle and make it more evidently a miracle, in the rest of the plagues God put a difference between Egypt and Goshen, where the Israelites lived. The line of demarcation was drawn in the fourth plague. In the fifth plague it fell on Egypt, not Goshen; the most stupendous distinction was when the darkness came, just as if an ocean of palpable blackness had in it an oasis of the most brilliant light, and that darkness stood up like a wall at the border line between Egypt and Goshen, bringing out that sharp difference that God put between Egypt and Israel.
I will close with the last reference to the difference in the night of that darkness, a difference of blood sprinkled upon the portals of every Jewish house. The houses might be just alike, but no Egyptian house had the blood upon its portals. Wherever the angel of death saw the blood he passed over the house and the mother held her babe safe in her arms. But in Egypt all the first-born died.
When I was a young preacher and a little fervid, I was preaching a sermon to sinners on the necessity of having the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel, and in my fancy I drew this picture: A father, gathering all his family around him, says: “The angel of death is going to pass over tonight. Wife and Children, death is coming tonight; death is coming tonight.” “Well, Husband,” says the wife, “is there no way of escaping death?” “There is this: if we take a lamb and sprinkle its blood on the portals, the angel will see that blood and we will escape.” Then the children said, “Oh, Father, go and get the lamb; and be sure to get the right kind. Don’t make a mistake. Carry out every detail; let it be without blemish; kill exactly at the time God said; catch the blood in a basin, dip the bush in the blood and sprinkle the blood on the door that the angel of death may not enter our house.” Then I applied that to the unconverted, showing the necessity of getting under the shadow of the blood of the Lamb. I was a young preacher then, but I do not know that, being old, I have improved on the thought.
QUESTIONS
1. Name the ten plagues in the order of their occurrence.
2. Show in each case the blow against some one or more gods of Egypt.
3. What is the most plausible explanation of the first six in their relation to each other?
4. How explain the hail and locusts?
5. What modern poet in matchless English and in true interpretation gives an account of these plagues?
6. How does he state the natural explanation?
7. How does he express the several strokes at Egypt’s gods?
8. What of the differentiating circumstances of these plagues?
9. State the progress of the case as it affected the magicians.
10. State the progress of the case as it affected the people.
11. State the progress of the case as it affected Pharaoh himself.
12. Give in order Pharaoh’s methods of opposition.
13. State in order Pharaoh’s proposed compromises and the replies of Moses.
14. State some of the evils of religious compromise.
15. What about the World’s Fair Parliament of Religions?
l6. What about the Inter-Denominational Laymen’s Movement? And the money of the rich for colleges?
17. Show how each miracle after the third was intensified by putting a difference between Egypt and Israel, as in the case of the last plague, and illustrate.
18. Explain the two kinds of hardening, and cite the twenty uses of the word in Pharaoh’s case.
19. How does Paul use Exo 9:16 , in Rom 9 and how do you reply to Adam Clarke’s explanation of it?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Exo 11:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague [more] upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let [you] go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.
Ver. 1. One plague more upon Pharaoh. ] Who, after the hardness of his impenitent heart, treasured up to himself wrath. Rom 2:5 God strikes still “upon the thick bosses of his buckler.” Job 15:26 When men are no whit better by afflictions, and worse with admonitions, God finds it time to strike home.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Exodus
A LAST MERCIFUL WARNING
Exo 11:1 – – Exo 11:10
The first point to be noted in this passage is that it interposes a solemn pause between the preceding ineffectual plagues and the last effectual one. There is an awful lull in the storm before the last crashing hurricane which lays every obstacle flat. ‘There is silence in heaven’ before the final peal of thunder. Exo 11:1 – – Exo 11:3 seem, at first sight, out of place, as interrupting the narrative, since Moses’ denunciation and prophecy in Exo 11:4 – – Exo 11:8 must have been spoken at the interview with Pharaoh which we find going on at the end of the preceding chapter. But it is legitimate to suppose that, at the very moment when Pharaoh was blustering and threatening, and Moses was bearding him, giving back scorn for scorn, the latter heard with the inward ear the voice which made Pharaoh’s words empty wind, and gave him the assurances and commands contained in Exo 11:1 – – Exo 11:3 , and that thus it was given him in that hour what he should speak; namely, the prediction that follows in Exo 11:4 – – Exo 11:8 . Such a view of the sequence of the passage makes it much more vivid, dramatic, and natural, than to suppose that the first verses are either interpolation or an awkward break referring to a revelation at some indefinite previous moment. When a Pharaoh or a Herod or an Agrippa threatens, God speaks to the heart of a Moses or a Paul, and makes His servant’s face ‘strong against their faces.’
The same purpose of parting off the preceding plagues from the past ones explains the introduction of Exo 11:9 – – Exo 11:10 , which stand as a summary of the whole account of these, and, as it were, draw a line across the page, before beginning the story of that eventful day and night of Israel’s deliverance.
Moses’ conviction, which he knew to be not his own thought but God’s revelation of His purpose, pointed first to the final blow which was to finish Pharaoh’s resistance. He had been vacillating between compliance and refusal, like an elastic ball which yields to compression and starts back to its swelling rotundity as soon as the pressure is taken off. But at last he will collapse altogether, like the same ball when a slit is cut in it, and it shrivels into a shapeless lump. Weak people’s obstinate fits end like that. He will be as extreme in his eagerness to get rid of the Israelites as he had been in his determination to keep them. The sail that is filled one moment tumbles in a heap the next, when the halyards are cut. It is a poor affair when a man’s actions are shaped mainly by fear of consequences. Fright always drives to extremes. ‘When he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out hence altogether.’ Many a stout, God-opposing will collapses altogether when God’s finger touches it. ‘Can thy heart endure in the days that I shall deal with thee?’
Exo 11:2 – – Exo 11:3 appear irrelevant here, but the command to collect from the Egyptians jewels, which might be bartered for necessaries, may well have been given to Moses simultaneously with the assurance that he would lead forth the people after the next plague, and the particulars of the people’s favour and of Moses’ influence in the eyes of the native inhabitants, come in anticipatively to explain why the request for such contributions was granted when made.
With the new divine command swelling in his heart, Moses speaks his last word to Pharaoh, towering above him in righteous wrath, and dwindling his empty threats into nothingness. What a contrast between the impotent rage of the despot, with his vain threat, ‘Thou shalt die,’ and the unblenching boldness of the man with God at his back! One cannot but note in Moses’ prediction of the last plague the solemn enlargement on the details of the widespread calamity, which is not unfeeling gloating over an oppressor’s misery, but a yearning to save from hideous misery by timely and plain depicting of it. There is a flash of national triumph in the further contrast between the universal wailing in Egypt and the untouched security of the children of Israel, but that feeling merges at once into the higher one of ‘the Lord’ s’ gracious action in establishing the ‘difference’ between them and their oppressors. It is not safe to dwell on superiority over others, either as to condition or character, unless we print in very large letters that it is ‘the Lord’ who has made it. There is a flash, too, of natural triumph in the picture of the proud courtiers brought down to prostrate themselves before the shepherd from Horeb, and to pray him to do what their master and they had so long fought against his doing. And there is a most natural assertion of non-dependence on their leave in that emphatic ‘After that I will go out.’ He is not asserting himself against God, but against the cowering courtiers. ‘Hot anger’ was excusable, but it was not the best mood in which to leave Pharaoh. Better if he had gone out unmoved, or moved only to ‘great heaviness and sorrow of heart’ at the sight of men setting themselves against God, and rushing on the ‘thick bosses of the Almighty’s buckler’ to their own ruin. Moses’ anger we naturally sympathise with, Christ’s meekness we should try to copy.
The closing verses, as we have already noticed, are a kind of summing-up of the whole narrative of the plagues and their effects on Pharaoh. They open two difficult questions, as to how and why it was that the effect of the successive strokes was so slight and transient. They give the ‘how’ very emphatically as being that ‘Jehovah hardened Pharaoh’s heart.’ Does that not free Pharaoh from guilt? And does it not suggest an unworthy conception of God? It must be remembered that the preceding narrative employs not only the phrase that ‘Jehovah hardened Pharaoh’s heart,’ but also the expression that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And it is further to be noted that the latter expression is employed in the accounts of the earlier plagues, and that the former one appears only towards the close of the series. So then, even if we are to suppose that it means that there was a direct hardening action by God on the man’s heart, such action was not first, but subsequent to obstinate hardening by himself. God hardens no man’s heart who has not first hardened it himself. But we do not need to conclude that any inward action on the will is meant. Was not the accumulation of plagues, intended, as they were, to soften, a cause of hardening? Does not the Gospel, if rejected, harden, making consciences and wills less susceptible? Is it not a ‘savour of death unto death,’ as our fathers recognised in speaking of ‘gospel-hardened sinners’? The same fire softens wax and hardens clay. Whosoever is not brought near is driven farther off, by the influences which God brings to bear on us.
The ‘why’ is stated in terms which may suggest difficulties,-’that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.’ But we have to remember that the Old Testament writers are not wont to distinguish so sharply as more logical Westerns do between the actual result of an event and its purpose. With their deep faith in the all-ruling power of God, whatever had come to pass was what He had meant to come to pass. In fact, Pharaoh’s obstinacy had not thwarted the divine purpose, but had been the dark background against which the blaze of God’s irresistible might had shone the brighter. He makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and turns opposition into the occasion of more conspicuously putting forth His omnipotence.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
the LORD (Hebrew. Jehovah) said. See note on Exo 3:7, and compare note on Exo 6:10.
afterwards. Some codices, with Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate, read “and after”.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Shall we turn now in our Bibles now to Exodus, chapter eleven? Up to this point Moses’ life seems to be going from one bad experience to worse; sometimes we have that experience too. It looks like just, man, everything we do is wrong, nothing seems to be coming up right. Moses has been before the Pharaoh; he has made his demands. The Pharaoh’s heart has been hardened. Egypt has been smitten by God with many plagues. Now the Pharaoh orders him out, orders him, “never to see my face again. The next time you see me, you’re a dead man.” So Moses leaves and says, “That’s all right with me if I never see your face again.”
So in chapter eleven,
The Lord said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; and afterwards he will let you go from here: when he shall let you go, he shall surely thrust you out from here altogether ( Exo 11:1 ).
In other words, “He’s not gonna just let you go, he’s gonna kick you out of here” after this final plague. God’s gonna smite Egypt once more. When He smites Egypt this time, the Pharaoh’s not just gonna let them go, he’s gonna throw them out of the land.
So speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow ( Exo 11:2 ),
Now the word “borrow” here is an unfortunate kind of a translation because it looks like they sort of dishonestly ripped off the Egyptians. In other words, “Go in and borrow all of their silver plates and all of their jewels and earrings and bracelets, and so forth. Then when you leave tonight rip them off, you take it with you.” That Moses is advocating actually this kind of a rip off of the Egyptians.
But not so. The word would better be translated “let them ask”. And at this point, let me tell you something, the Egyptians were glad to give them anything. In a sense this is back wages. They had been serving the Egyptians as slaves now for many years, without pay. So this really is just sort of a compensation to them for all of the labor, the years of labor that they had given to the Egyptians.
But it wasn’t really just saying, “Oh, can I borrow that beautiful necklace tonight?” and then not showing up, but taking off and running with it. It was asking for the necklace, “I would like to have that earring. I would like to have that bracelet, I’d like to have that necklace.”
So, “Let them ask the Egyptians”,
all of them their neighbours, and every woman of her neighbour, for the jewels of silver, and the jewels of gold. And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, and in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people ( Exo 11:2-3 ).
At this point they really had begun-that is the Egyptians had really begun to look up to Moses. They had been through enough. The servants of Pharaoh were pleading with Pharaoh, “Hey, let this guy go before we’re all dead. We’re gonna be wiped out. We’re not gonna have anything. Let them go.” It was only the Pharaoh whose heart was hardened in resisting the letting of the people go. The people themselves were really at this point glad to see them go.
Moses said, Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt ( Exo 11:4 ):
So we talked about God passing through Egypt and the firstborn being slain. Moses tells us here that it was about midnight. I suppose that’s why midnight is sort of looked upon as a scary hour.
And all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservants that is behind the mill; and all of the firstborn of the beasts. [In other words, the eradication of the firstborn was to be complete from the least to the greatest in the land, and even to include their own animals.] And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall it be like it any more. But against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against the man or beast: that ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel ( Exo 11:5-7 ).
Now it is true that God always puts a difference between those who are His people and those who are not His people. And God says, “I want you to know how that I put a difference between the Egyptians, and the Israelis.” God makes a definite distinction always concerning His people.
And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow thee: and after that I will go out. And he went out from Pharaoh in a great anger. [So Moses was angry, the Pharaoh was angry. Moses left the presence of the Pharaoh.] And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you; that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh: and the Lord hardened [or made stiff] Pharaoh’s heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land ( Exo 11:9-10 ).
So chapter eleven is just sort of a brief summary of what has happened up until this point, and now we are going to continue on and carry on with the story, chapter twelve.
“
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
In this brief chapter we have the most solemn account of communion between Jehovah and His servant Moses. Pharaoh had rejected God finally, and God had now finally rejected Pharaoh. Jehovah now announced that He Himself would come with the actual stroke of final punishment. He had sent His messengers, Moses and Aaron, and His ministers, blood, and frogs, and lice; flies, and murrain, and boils; hail, and locusts, and darkness. He had waited patiently for the effect of the plagues, allowing time for Pharaoh to relent and repent, all without producing any effect other than determined and willful and insolent opposition. The time for remedy had passed and now, as an avenging angel, He would Himself pass through the land. In this hour of communion Jehovah’s final determination was indicated to Moses, and by him to the Hebrew people, in order to prepare for their departure according to the will and claim of God.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
the Death of the First-born Threatened
Exo 11:1-10
One plague more. These are ominous words! This final act of judgment would smite the fetters from Israels neck forever. It is vain for man to enter into conflict with God. God does not crush him at once, because He is long-suffering and forgiving. See 2Pe 3:9. But if man persists, the inevitable blow falls. See Psa 7:12. The word borrow is better rendered ask, Exo 11:2, r.v. The Hebrew phrase has no suggestion of a return being expected. This was befitting payment for their long and unrewarded labor.
The great cry, Exo 11:6, recalls the piercing wail that rings through an eastern home when death takes place. The world shall hear one other such cry, as we learn from Rev 1:7. There is no difference between Gods people and others when sin is concerned. All have come short of Gods glory. Nor is there difference in His redeeming grace. But there is all the difference between those who shelter under the blood of the Lamb and those who refuse.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Exo 11:10
(1) If I observe my own mind, one of the first powers of which I become conscious is the power to choose. This power is universally assumed as the ground of men’s dealings with each other.
If we open the Inspired Book, we find the same fundamental assumption, that all men have a will and are responsible for their acts. “To him that knoweth to do good,” says St. James, “and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (2) On the other hand, it is a fact as well attested, although by a different kind of evidence, that God is the King of all the earth. The world is governed, the laws of matter, of life, of individual and social action are so arranged, as to produce order and harmony.
I. The reality of the human will, and consequently of responsibility is attacked on different sides; here on physiological and there on historical grounds. We are told that facts connected with the human will admit of exact calculation and prediction, according to what is termed the law of averages, and that consequently the doctrine of free will, which was never capable of proof, must be displaced by a doctrine recognising the certainty of human action. To this we answer-(1) the belief that man has the power to choose is so far from wanting proof that it has all the force which universal consent can give it. (2) This average, which is supposed to rule the will like a rod of iron, is itself the most variable. It yields under the hand like tempered clay. That which our will is now acting upon, which varies in different countries because the will of man has made different laws there, cannot be conclusive against the doctrine of free will.
II. The words of the text are not without their warning. They mean that God, who punishes sin with death, sometimes punishes sin with sin. At a certain stage in the sinner’s dreary downward course, the Lord hardens his heart. God is not responsible for his sin, but when he has repelled the voice of conscience, and the warning of his Bible, and the entreaties of friends, then grace is withdrawn from him, and sin puts on a judicial character, and is at once sin and punishment.
Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln’s Inn Sermons, p. 325.
References: Exo 12:1, Exo 12:2.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1637. Exo 12:1-14.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 124. Exo 12:1-29.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 160. Exo 12:1-39.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 122. Exo 12:1-42.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vi., p. 211. Exo 12:1-51.-W. M. Taylor, Moses the Lawgiver, p. 95.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 11 The Tenth Plague Announced
1. Gods Word to Moses and to the people (Exo 11:1-3)
2. The tenth plague announced to Pharaoh (Exo 11:4-8)
3. Pharaohs unbelief and his heart hardened (Exo 11:9-10)
In Exo 10:29 we hear Moses say to Pharaoh, I will see thy face again no more. In this chapter, however, we hear him address Pharaoh once more concerning the tenth plague judgment. The announcement made to Moses and recorded in the first verse of this chapter occurred before the inter-view of the previous chapter and Exo 11:4-8 in chapter 11 is the continuation of Moses address to Pharaoh after he had spoken the words in chapter 10:29. The eleventh chapter is therefore a supplement to the tenth. The command to ask (this is the correct word; borrow is incorrect) of the neighbors jewels of silver and gold had already been given in chapter 3:22. The death of all the firstborn in Egypt is announced to Pharaoh. A great cry shall be throughout all Egypt , but Israel should also be exempt of this last plague as the previous plagues were not shared by them. Not a dog shall point his tongue (literal translation) against Israel , promising perfect rest and peace in the coming night of death and sorrow.
Verses 9 and 10 mark the close of Moses interviews and negotiations with Pharaoh, which began in Exo 7:8. The right rendering of Exo 11:9 is And the Lord had said unto Moses. Moses left Pharaoh in a great anger. Judgment was now ready to fall.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Yet will: Exo 9:14, Lev 26:21, Deu 4:34, 1Sa 6:4, Job 10:17, Rev 16:9
afterwards: Exo 3:20, Gen 15:14
thrust you: Exo 12:31-39
Reciprocal: Exo 6:1 – drive them Exo 9:28 – ye shall Exo 12:33 – urgent Exo 12:39 – thrust
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE PASSOVER
At the close of the tenth chapter Moses declares Pharaoh shall see his face no more, while in the eleventh he is present with him again. Therefore with the exception of the first three verses of chapter 11 the remainder must be a continuation of chapter 10.
Let us consider it thus, taking up the questions in Exo 11:1-3 in connection with chapter 12.
THE LAST PLAGUE ANNOUNCED (Exo 11:4-10)
Hitherto God plagued Egypt mediately, but how was this plague to be distinguished (Exo 11:4)? Why was this plague harder to be borne than if the whole nation had been consumed? By what proverbial expression is the security of the Hebrews assured (Exo 11:7)?
How does Exo 11:8 indicate that Moses has ceased to speak in Gods name and is now speaking in his own name? Is he not, nevertheless, speaking representatively? How do the last two verses show that Pharaohs disobedience is not a divine defeat?
THE PASSOVER INSTITUTED (Exo 12:1-13)
What new appointment of time distinguishes this event (Exo 12:2)? The year formerly began in the month of Tisri, corresponding to our September 15 to October 15, but what had formerly been the seventh month now becomes the first. This month was known as Nisan. The original order of the months continued so far as ordinary affairs were concerned, but the solemnities observed in honor of God began henceforth with Nisan.
What were the Hebrews to do (Exo 12:3)? When? According to what measurement or proportion? Israel was divided into twelve tribes, these again into families and the families into houses, the last named being composed of particular individuals. According to Josephus, the Jewish historian, a paschal company consisted of not less than ten members, although sometimes there were as many as twenty. In this company they were flee to include everyone capable of eating as much as the size of an olive.
In what two ways was the lamb to be distinguished (Exo 12:5)? What liberty was there in its selection? A male was accounted more excellent than a female (Mal 1:14), and during its first year not only would its flesh be more tender and grateful but in that period it would best represent the idea of harmlessness and simplicity (1Pe 1:19).
How long should the lamb be kept before slaying (Exo 12:6)? At what time should all the lambs be killed simultaneously? The evening here means sometime between the time of the suns beginning to decline and that of its setting, say about 3:00 P.M. For the typical application to Christ, compare Joh 19:19 and Mat 26:46.
What should be done with the blood (Exo 12:7)? How was the flesh to be cooked and eaten (v. 8)? As the sacrificing of the lamb is a symbol of the redemption by which the death penalty due by one is paid by another, so the eating of it is a figure of the participation in pardon, acceptance and full blessedness consequent on the atonement being made and the law being satisfied.
Both the roasting and eating of it with unleavened bread was for greater expedition in leaving the land that night. They would have time neither to boil the one nor wait for the yeast to rise in the other. And yet doubtless there is a moral or typical side to this matter as well, for since the paschal lamb and all pertaining to it foreshadow the person and work of our Redeemer, the roasting of the flesh may suggest the extremity of His sufferings under the fire of Gods wrath, while the absence of leaven from the bread finds a spiritual application in such a passage as 1Co 5:7-8. Leaven is a mass of sour dough in which decomposition has set in, and so is a symbol of corruption. Hence, unleavened bread is the emblem of purity and life becoming those who have exercised faith in God, the blessed fruit of a new nature.
What other regulations accompanied this institution (Exo 12:9-10)? It would appear from this that the lamb was to be roasted whole and entire, excepting doubtless the intestinal canal. There was to be no breaking of its bones (Joh 19:33). This was strikingly expressive of the unity of the sacrifice, of the salvation it prefigured, and the people who partook of it (Psa 34:20; 1Co 10:17). Nothing should remain of the lamb lest it should be put to a superstitious use, and also to prevent putrefaction, for it was not meet that anything offered to God should see corruption (Psa 16:10).
In what attitude were the people to be (Exo 12:11)? And why?
What did God say He would do (Exo 12:12)? Note the reference to the gods of Egypt in this verse. There is a Jewish tradition that the idols were actually demolished on that night, but from a figurative point of view, what could be a more signal infliction upon these gods than the complete exposure of their importance to aid their worshippers in a time of need?
By what means should the Hebrews experience immunity from this destruction (Exo 12:13)? Note the words When I see the blood I will pass over you. It was not their character that saved them, neither the mercy of God in the abstract, nor their faith and obedience considered as a meritorious act, but the actual sprinkling of the blood upon the door posts. Without this they would not have been in the will of God, and His mercy could not have been operative towards them. No matter the degree or intelligence of their faith which led to the sprinkling of the blood, it was the latter divinely-ordained token which was the means of their deliverance.
The bearing of this on our redemption through the atonement of Christ should be prayerfully considered. The Hebrews were sinners in the general sense as well as the Egyptians, and God might justly have punished them by taking away the life of the firstborn, but He was pleased to show them mercy and to accept the life of a lamb as a substitute for their life. This blood was a signal of this, and all who acted on the command of God and relied on His protection were secure from the stroke of the avenger.
Nothing could more strikingly set before us the truth about the application of Christs blood to our guilty conscience as a means of deliverance from the wrath to come (Rom 3:24-25; Eph 1:7). It is not our character, neither the mercy of God towards us in the abstract nor the strength or intelligence of our faith, but the application of the blood to our souls that saves. Do not pass this lesson without satisfying yourself that this has become true of you, and that you have by faith displayed the token (Act 4:27).
As the paschal lamb is the type of our Redeemer, so the Passover itself is a type of our redemption through Him; for an outline of which see the authors Synthetic Bible Studies.
THE PASSOVER COMMEMORATED (Exo 12:14-20)
The feast of unleavened bread (Exo 12:15) was a distinct ordinance from the Passover, commencing on the day after the killing and eating of the lamb, the 15th of Nisan. Of course in the first instance it could not have been observed until they left Egypt.
The cutting off from Israel meant not necessarily physical death but excommunication from the society and privileges of the chosen people.
Note the holy convocation for the public worship of God in connection with this feast (Exo 12:16). Doubtless the people of a neighborhood thus came together for praise and prayer, and some think that even from an early
period portions of the written Word may have been read and expounded. This convocation, it is thought, was the origin of the synagogue, a term which originally denoted the assembly, and was doubtless at first held in the open air.
The word stranger here doubtless means the Gentile proselyte in contrast with a native Israelite.
THE STROKE FALLS (Exo 12:29-36)
We need not dwell on the awful horror of this night, but should not fail to recognize Gods righteous retribution in it. The Egyptians who had slain the Hebrew children now see their own die. Four score years had passed since the persecution began, but God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.
A further word on verses 35 and 36. When the Orientals attend their sacred festivals they put on their best jewels, thinking it a disgrace to appear otherwise before their gods. It is said nothing is more common than to see poor people adorned on such occasions with borrowed ornaments.
It is notable that the Egyptians lent their jewels to the Hebrews because the Lord gave them favor in their sight. The rank and file of the Egyptians may in the end have sympathized with the afflicted Hebrews, or else for their own safety they were so anxious to have them go as to offer them an inducement. In this connection read again Exo 11:3, and see the reverence and awe inspired among the Egyptians by Moses miracles.
Nor should we conclude this lesson without consulting Eze 39:10, where we see that the Jews will spoil the Gentiles a second time, in that day when God with a high hand shall restore them to their own land at the end of the present age.
QUESTIONS
1.Name the first month of the Jewish religious year.
2.State what the slaying and eating of the paschal lamb prefigure.
3.What does leaven symbolize?
4.Show the parallel between the cause of the Hebrews deliverance and that of our eternal redemption.
5.What reasons may have influenced the Egyptians to give their jewels to the Hebrews?
Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary
Exo 11:1. The Lord said Or rather, had said, for this and the next verse are only a recapitulation of what had been revealed to Moses in mount Horeb, (Exo 3:20-22, and Exo 4:23,) and, together with the third verse, ought to be read as a parenthesis. Accordingly, it is evident that the 4th verse is a continuation of Mosess conference with Pharaoh, mentioned in the preceding chapter. He shall thrust you out hence altogether Men, and women, and children, and cattle, and all that you have, which he would never do before.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exo 11:1. The Lord said to Moses. The 29th verse of the last chapter and this verse ought to be thrown into a parenthesis, then the scope of the history assumes a regular form.
Exo 11:2. Borrow or ask of his neighbour jewels of silver. It was a law of the gentiles, as well as of the Jews, that a servant must not go out empty. The vulgate reads here, vessels of silver and gold; and the LXX add, raiment, which seems to be founded on the law of custom to give a good servant suitable clothing. See note, Exo 3:22.
Exo 11:5. All the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. Here was a blow at the heart; and their crying under the stroke of God, and the echo of conscience would remind them of the cries of the Hebrew mothers, bereft of their tender offspring. In the ten plagues of Egyptthe bloody waters, the frogs, the lice, the flies, the murrain on their cattle, the boils and blains, the hail, the locusts, the darkness, and now the death of the most hopeful branches of their houseswe see that God touched them nearer and nearer at every stroke. He did not cut them off in total ignorance. The conscience of the king spake for the nation; I and my people are wicked.Can we not see that the same God is now doing the same thing with many hardened infidels and haughty families. Oh what strokes he sometimes inflicts on their persons, on their reputation, on their fortunes, on their children! It is that they may hear the voice of the rod, and prepare to meet their God.Behind the mill. Female servants had to grind at the hand-mill all the corn for the family. Our Saviour alludes to this economical custom when he says, two women shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the other left.
REFLECTIONS.
God having long threatened and long afflicted Pharaoh and his guilty people, comes now to a full issue with his enemies. If good men, as we have hitherto seen in the chain of sacred history, may rely on the promises of God, bad men may assure themselves that one day, all he has threatened will come upon them.
We mark in this last communication to Pharaoh the characters of divine justice. The Egyptians had destroyed many of the male infants of the Israelites: now the Lord, though forty years had elapsed, requires blood for blood, and life for life. Who would not fear the power of a righteous God? Who would not stand in awe of his justice, and abstain from sin; for every evil work shall be brought into judgment.
The Lord having given them long warning, and warning of an extraordinary kind, determines to strike at midnight, when they were in profound repose. Let us learn hence to lie down in our beds as in our graves, in peace with God, and in charity with all mankind, that being holy and happy, we may be ready whensoever the Lord shall come.
But seeing all truth and miracles rejected by a hardened and impenitent court, Moses departed in great anger, having first delivered his own soul. And so it becomes the ministers of the gospel to do with men who despise mercy, and all the riches of grace. They should address characters so audacious and hardened with a zeal becoming the majesty of their mission: they should, on these occasions, make the temple of God resound with the thunder and terror of his word. Who can tell but the Lord may yet save a remnant, even in the last stages of corruption; let us never appear weak and confounded before the enemies of God.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exodus 7 – 11
These five chapters form one distinct section, the contents of which may be distributed into the three following divisions, namely, the ten judgements from the hand of Jehovah; the resistance of “Jannes and Jambres;” and the four objections of Pharaoh.
The whole land of Egypt was made to tremble beneath the successive strokes of the rod of God. All from the monarch on his throne to the menial at the mill, were made to feel the terrible weight of that rod. “He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron whom he had chosen. They showed his signs among them, and wonders in the land of Ham. He sent darkness and made it dark; and they rebelled not against his word. He turned their waters into blood, and slew their fish. !heir land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of their kings. He spake, and there came divers sorts of flies and lice in all their coasts. He gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land. He smote their vines: also, and their fig-trees; and brake the trees of their coasts. He spake, and their locusts came, and the caterpillars, and that without number, and did eat up all the herbs in their land, and devoured the fruit of their ground. He smote also all the firstborn in their land, the chief of all their strength. (Ps. 105: 26-36)
Here the inspired Psalmist has given a condensed view of those appalling afflictions which the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart brought upon his land and upon his people. This haughty monarch had set himself to resist the sovereign will and course of the Most High God; and, as a just consequence, he was given over to judicial blindness and hardness of heart. “And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had spoken unto Moses. And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh: and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me. For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For now I will stretch out my hand that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth. And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to show in thee my power; and that my name. may be declared throughout all the earth.” (Ex. 9: 12-16)
In contemplating Pharaoh and his actings, the mind is carried forward to the stirring scenes of the Book of Revelation, in which we find the last proud oppressor of the people of God bringing down upon his kingdom and upon himself the seven vials of the wrath of the Almighty. It is God’s purpose that Israel shall be pre-eminent in the earth; and, therefore, every one who presumes to stand in the way of that pre-eminence must be set aside. Divine grace must find its object; and every one who would act as a barrier in the way of that grace must be taken out of the way. Whether it be Egypt, Babylon, or “the beast that was, is not, and shall be present,” it matters not. Divine power will clear the channel for divine grace to flow, and eternal woe be to all who stand in the way. They shall taste, throughout the everlasting course of ages, the bitter fruit of having exalted themselves against “the Lord God of the Hebrews.” He has said to His people, “no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper,” and His infallible faithfulness will assuredly make good what His infinite grace hath promised.
Thus, in Pharaoh’s case, when he persisted in holding, with an iron grasp, the Israel of God, the vials of divine wrath were poured forth upon him; and the land of Egypt was covered, throughout its entire length and breadth, with darkness, disease, and desolation. So will it be, by and by, when the last great oppressor shall emerge from the bottomless pit, armed with Satanic power, to crush beneath his “foot of pride” the favoured objects of Jehovah’s choice. His throne shall be overturned, his kingdom devastated by the seven last plagues, and, finally, he himself plunged, not in the Red Sea, but “in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.” (Comp. Rev. 17: 8; Rev. 20: 10)
Not one jot or one tittle of what God has promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, shall fail. He will accomplish all. Notwithstanding all that has been said and done to the contrary, God remembers His promises, and He will fulfil them. They are all “yea and amen in Christ Jesus.” Dynasties have risen and acted on the stage of this world; thrones have been erected on the apparent ruins of Jerusalem’s ancient glory; empires have flourished for a time, and then fallen to decay; ambitious potentates have contended for the possession of “the land of promise” – all these things have taken place; but Jehovah has said concerning Palestine,” the land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine.” (Lev. 25: 23) No one, therefore, shall ever finally possess that land but Jehovah Himself, and He will inherit it through the seed of Abraham. One plain passage of scripture is quite sufficient to establish the mind in reference to this or any other subject. The land of Canaan is for the seed of Abraham, and the seed of Abraham for the land of Canaan; nor can any power of earth or hell ever reverse this divine order. The eternal God has pledged His word, and the blood of the everlasting covenant has flowed to ratify that word. Who, then, shall make it void? “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but that word shall never pass away.” Truly, “there is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms, and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew. Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.” (Deut. 33: 46-29)
We shall now consider, in the second place, the opposition of “Jannes and Jambres,” the magicians of Egypt. We should not have known the names of these ancient opposers of the truth of God, had they not been recorded by the Holy Ghost, in connection with “the perilous times” of which the Apostle Paul warns his son Timothy. It is important that the Christian reader should clearly understand the real nature of the opposition given to Moses by those magicians, and in order that he may have the subject fully before him, I shall quote the entire passage from St. Paul’s Epistle to Timothy. It is one of deep and awful solemnity.
“This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all, as theirs also was.” (2 Tim. 3: 1-9)
Now, it is peculiarly solemn to mark the nature of this resistance to the truth. The mode in which “Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses” was simply by imitating, so far as they were able, whatever he did. We do not find that they attributed his actings to a false or evil energy, but rather that they sought to neutralise their power upon the conscience, by doing the same things. What Moses did they could do, so that, after all there was no great difference. One was as good as the other. A miracle is a miracle. If Moses wrought miracles to get the people out of Egypt, they could work miracles to keep them in; so where was the difference?
From all this we learn the solemn truth that the most Satanic resistance to God’s testimony, in the world, is offered by those who, though they imitate the effects of the truth, have but “the form of godliness,” and “deny the power thereof.” Persons of this class can do the same things, adopt the same habits and forms, use the same phraseology, profess the same opinions as others. If the true Christian, constrained by the love of Christ, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits the sick, circulates the scriptures, distributes tracts, supports the gospel, engages in prayer, sings praise, preaches the gospel, the formalist can do every one of these things; and this, be it observed, is the special character of the resistance offered to the truth ” in the last days” – this is the spirit of ” Jannes and Jambres.” How needful to understand this! How important to remember that, “as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do” those self-loving, world-seeking, pleasure-hunting professors, “resist the truth!” They would not be without “a form of godliness;” but, while adopting “the form,” because it is customary, they hate “the power,” because it involves self-denial. “The power” of godliness involves the recognition of God’s claims, the implanting of His kingdom in the heart, and the consequent exhibition thereof in the whole life and character; but the formalist knows nothing of this. “The power” of godliness could never comport with any one of those hideous features set forth in the foregoing quotation; but” the form,” while it covers them over, leaves them wholly unsubdued; and this the formalist likes. He does not want his lusts subdued, his pleasures interfered with, his passions curbed, his affections governed, his heart purified. He wants just as much religion as will enable him “to make the best of both worlds.” He knows nothing of giving up the world that is, because of having; found “the world to come.”
In marking the forms of Satan’s opposition to the truth of God, we find that his method has ever been, first, to oppose it by open violence; and then, if that did not succeed, to corrupt it by producing a counterfeit. Hence, he first sought to slay Moses, (Ex. 2: 15), and having failed to accomplish his purpose, he sought to imitate his works.
Thus, too, has it been in reference to the truth committed to the Church of God. Satan’s early efforts showed themselves in connection with the wrath of the chief priests and elders, the judgement-seat, the prison, and the sword. But, in the passage just quoted from 2 Timothy, we find no reference to any such agency. Often violence has made way for the far more wily and dangerous instrumentality of a powerless form, an empty profession, a human counterfeit. The enemy, instead of appearing with the sword of persecution in his hand, walks about with the cloak of profession on his shoulders. He professes and imitates that which he once opposed and persecuted; and, by so doing, gains most appalling advantages, for the time being. The fearful forms of moral evil which, from age to age, have stained the page of human history, instead of being found only where we might naturally look for them, amid the dens and caves of human darkness, are to be found carefully arranged beneath the drapery of a cold, powerless, uninfluential profession; and this is one of Satan’s grand masterpieces.
That man, as a fallen, corrupt creature, should love himself, be covetous, boastful, proud, and the like, is natural; but that he should be all these, beneath the fair covering of “a form of godliness,” marks the special energy of Satan in his resistance to the truth in “the last days.” That man should stand forth in the bold exhibition of those hideous vices, lusts, and passions, which are the necessary results of departure from the source of infinite holiness and purity, is only what might be expected, for man will be what he is to the end of the chapter. But on the other hand, when we find the holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ connected with man’s wickedness and deadly evil – when we find holy principles connected with unholy practices – when we find all the characteristics of Gentile corruption, referred to in the first chapter of Romans, associated with “a form of godliness,” then, truly, we may say, these are the terrible features of “the last days” – this is the resistance of “Jannes and Jambres.”
However, there were only three things in which the magicians of Egypt were able to imitate the servants of the true and living God, namely, in turning their rods into serpents, (Ex. 7: 12) turning the water into blood, (Ex. 7: 29) and bringing up the frogs; (Ex. 8: 7) but, in the fourth, which involved the exhibition of life, in connection with the display of nature’s humiliation, they were totally confounded, and obliged to own, ” this is the finger of God.” (Ex. 8: 16-19) Thus it is also with the latter-day resisters of the truth. All that they do is by the direct energy of Satan, and lies within the range of his power. Moreover, its specific object is to “resist the truth.”
The three things which “Jannes and Jambres” were able to accomplish were characterised by Satanic energy, death, and uncleanness; that is to say, the serpents, the blood, and the frogs. Thus it was they “withstood Moses;” and “so do these also resist the truth,” and hinder its moral weight and action upon the conscience. There is nothing which so tends to deaden the power of truth us the fact that persons who are not under its influence at all, do the self-same things as those who are. This is Satan’s agency just now. He seeks to have all regarded as Christians. He would fain make us believe ourselves surrounded by “a Christian world;” but it is counterfeit Christianity, which, so far from being a testimony to the truth, is designed by the enemy of the truth, to withstand its purifying and elevating influence.
In short, the servant of Christ and the witness for the truth is surrounded, on all sides, by the spirit of “Jannes and Jambres;” and it is well for him to remember this – to know thoroughly the evil with which he has to grapple – to bear in mind that it is Satan’s imitation of God’s reality, produced, not by the wand of an openly-wicked magician, but by the actings of false professors, who have “a form of godliness, hut deny the power thereof,” who do things apparently right and good, but who have neither the life of Christ in their souls, the love of God in their hearts, nor the power of the word in their consciences.
“But,” adds the inspired apostle, “they shall proceed no further, for their folly shall be manifested unto all, as theirs also was.” Truly the “folly” of “Jannes and Jambres” was manifest unto all, when they not only failed to imitate the further actings of Moses and Aaron, but actually became involved in the judgements of God. This is a solemn point. The folly of all who are merely possessed of the form will, in like manner, be made manifest. They will not only be quite unable to imitate the full and proper effects of divine life and power, but they will themselves become the subjects of those judgements which will result from the rejection of that truth which they have resisted.
Will any one say that all this has no voice for a day of powerless profession? Assuredly, it has. It should speak to each conscience in living power; it should tell on each heart, in accents of impressive solemnity. It should lead each one to enquire seriously whether he is testifying for the truth, by walking in the power of godliness, or hindering it, and neutralising its action, by having only the form. The effect of the power of godliness will be seen by our” continuing in the things which we have learned.” None will continue, save those who are taught of God; those, by the power of the Spirit of God, have drunk in divine principle, at the pure fountain of inspiration.
Blessed be God, there are many such throughout the various sections of the professing Church. There are many, here and there, whose consciences have been bathed in the atoning blood of “the Lamb of God,” whose hearts beat high with genuine attachment to His Person, and whose spirits are cheered by “that blessed hope” of seeing Him as He is, and of being eternally conformed to His image. It is encouraging to think of such. It is an unspeakable mercy to have fellowship with those who can give a reason of the hope that is in them, and for the position which they occupy. May the Lord add to their number daily. May the power of godliness spread far and wide in these last days, so that a bright and well-sustained testimony may be raised to the name of Him who is worthy.
The third point in our section yet remains to be considered, namely, Pharaoh’s four subtle objections to the full deliverance and complete separation of God’s people from the land of Egypt. The first of these we have in Ex. 8: 25. “And Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.” It is needless to remark here, that whether the magicians withstood, or Pharaoh objected, it was in reality, Satan that stood behind the scenes; and his manifest object, in this proposal of Pharaoh, was to hinder the testimony to the Lord’s name – a testimony connected with the thorough separation of His people from Egypt. There could, evidently, be no such testimony had they remained in Egypt, even though they were to sacrifice to Him. They would have taken common ground with the uncircumcised Egyptians, and put Jehovah on a level with the gods of Egypt. In this case an Egyptian could have said to an Israelite, “I see no difference between us; you have your worship and we have ours; it is all alike.”
As a matter of course, men think it quite right for every one to have a religion, let it be what it may. Provided we are sincere, and do not interfere with our neighbour’s creed, it does not matter what shape our religion may happen to wear. Such are the thoughts of men in reference to what they call religion; but it is very obvious that the glory of the name of Jesus finds no place in all this. The demand for separation is that which the enemy will ever oppose, and which the heart of man cannot understand. The heart may crave religiousness because conscience testifies that all is not right; but it craves the world as well. It would like to “sacrifice to God in the land;” and Satan’s object is gained when people accept of a worldly religion, and refuse to “come out and be separate.” (2 Cor. 6) His unvarying purpose, from the beginning, has been to hinder the testimony to God’s name on the earth. Such was the dark tendency of the proposal, “Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.” What a complete damper to the testimony, had this proposal been acceded to! God’s people in Egypt and God Himself linked with the idols of Egypt! Terrible blasphemy!
Reader, we should deeply ponder this. The effort to induce Israel to worship God in Egypt reveals a far deeper principle than we might, at first sight, imagine. The enemy would rejoice, at any time, by any means, or under any circumstances, to get even the semblance of divine sanction for the world’s religion. He has no objection to such religion. He gains his end as effectually by what is termed “the religious world” as by any other agency; and, hence, when he can succeed in getting a true Christian to accredit the religion of the day, he gains a grand point. As a matter of actual fact, one knows that nothing elicits such intense indignation as the divine principle of separation from this present evil world. You may hold the same opinions, preach the same doctrines, do the same work; but if you only attempt, in ever so feeble a manner, to act upon the divine commands, ” from such turn away,” (2 Tim. 3: 5) and “come out from among them,” (2 Cor. 6: 17) you may reckon assuredly upon the most vigorous opposition. Now how is this to be accounted for? Mainly by the fact that Christians, in separation from this world’s hollow religiousness, bear a testimony for Christ which they never can bear while connected with it.
There is a very wide difference between human religion and Christ. A poor, benighted Hindu might talk to you of his religion, but he knows nothing of Christ. The apostle does not say, “if there be any consolation in religion;” though, doubtless, the votaries of each kind of religion find what they deem consolation therein. Paul, on the other hand, found his consolation in Christ, having fully proved the worthlessness of religion, and that too, in its fairest and most imposing form. (Comp. Gal. 1: 13, 14; Phil. 3: 4-11)
True, the Spirit of God speaks to us of “pure religion and undefiled;” but the unregenerate man cannot, by any means, participate therein; for how could he possibly take part in ought that is “pure and undefiled?” This religion is from heaven, the source of all that is pure and lovely; it is exclusively before the eye of “God and the Father:” it is for the exercise of the functions of that new name, with which all are endowed who believe on the name of the Son of God. (John 1: 12, 13; James 1: 18; 1 Peter 1: 23; 1 John 5: 1) Finally, it ranges itself under the two comprehensive heads of active benevolence and personal holiness; “To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1: 27)
Now if you go through the entire catalogue of the genuine fruits of Christianity, you will find them all classed under these two heads; and it is deeply interesting to observe that, whether we turn to the eighth of Exodus or to the first of James, we find separation from the world put forward as an indispensable quality in the true service of God, Nothing could be acceptable before God – nothing could receive from His hand the stamp of “pure and undefiled,” which was polluted by contact with an “evil world.” “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2 Cor. 6: 17, 18)
There was no meeting-place for Jehovah and His redeemed in Egypt; yes, with them, redemption and separation from Egypt were one and the same thing. God had said, “I am come down to deliver them,” and nothing short of this could either satisfy or glorify Him. A salvation which would have left them still in Egypt, could not possibly be God’s salvation. Moreover, we must bear in mind that Jehovah’s purpose, in the salvation of Israel, as well as in the destruction of Pharaoh, was, that “His name might be declared throughout all the earth;” and what declaration could there be of that name or character, were His people to attempt to worship Him in Egypt? Either none whatever or an utterly false one. Wherefore, it was essentially necessary, in order to the full and faithful declaration of God’s character, that His people should be wholly delivered and completely separated from Egypt, and it is as essentially necessary now, in order to a clear and unequivocal testimony for the Son of God, that all who are really His should be separated from this present world. Such is the will of God; and for this end Christ gave Himself. “Grace unto you, and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”(Gal. 1: 3-5)
The Galatians were beginning to accredit a carnal and worldly religion – a religion of ordinances – a religion of “days, and months, and times, and years;” and the apostle commences his epistle by telling them that the Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself for the purpose of delivering His people from that very thing. God’s people must be separate, not, by any means, on the ground of their superior personal sanctity, but because they are His people, and in order that they may rightly and intelligently answer His gracious end in taking them into connection with Himself, and attaching His name to them. A people, still amid the defilements and abominations of Egypt, could not have been a witness for the Holy One; nor can any one, now, while mixed up with the defilements of a corrupt worldly religion, possibly be a bright and steady witness for a crucified and risen Christ.
The answer given by Moses to Pharaoh’s first objection was a truly memorable one. “And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God; lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us? We mill go three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the Lord our God, as he shall command us.” (Ex. 8: 26, 27) Here is true separation from Egypt – “three days journey.” Nothing less than this could satisfy faith. The Israel of God must be separated from the land of death and darkness, in the power of resurrection. The waters of the Red Sea must roll between God’s redeemed and Egypt, ere they can properly sacrifice to Jehovah. Had they remained in Egypt, they would have to sacrifice to the Lord the very objects of Egypt’s abominable worship.* This would never do. There could be no tabernacle, no temple, no altar, in Egypt. It had no site, throughout its entire limits, for ought of that kind. In point of fact, as we shall see further on, Israel never presented so much as a single note of praise, until the whole congregation stood, in the full power of an accomplished redemption, on Canaan’s side of the Red Sea. Exactly so is it now. The believer must know where the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ have, for ever, set him, ere he can be an intelligent worshipper, an acceptable servant, or an effectual witness.
{*The word “abominations” has reference to that which the Egyptians worshipped.}
It is not a question of being a child of God, and, as such, a saved person. Many of the children of God are very far from knowing the full results, as regards themselves, of the death and resurrection of Christ. They do not apprehend the precious truth, that the death of Christ has made an end of their sins for ever, and that they are the happy partakers of His resurrection life, with which sin can have nothing whatever to do. Christ became a curse for us, not, as some would teach us, by being born under the curse of a broken law, but by hanging on a tree. (Compare attentively Deut. 21: 23; Gal. 3: 13) We were under the curse, because we had not kept the law; but Christ, the perfect Man, having magnified the law and made it honourable, by the very fact of His obeying it perfectly, became a curse for us, by hanging on the tree. Thus, in His life He magnified God’s law; and in His death He bore our curse. There is, therefore, now, no guilt, no curse, no wrath, no condemnation for the believer; and, albeit, he must be manifested before the judgement-seat of Christ, he will find that judgement-seat every hit as friendly by and by, as the mercy-seat is now. It will make manifest the truth of his condition, namely, that there is nothing against him; what he is, it is God “that hath wrought him.” He is God’s workmanship. He was taken up in a state of death and condemnation, and made just what God would have him to be. The Judge Himself has put away all his sins, and is his righteousness, so that the judgement-seat cannot but be friendly to him; yea, it will be the full, public, authoritative declaration to heaven, earth, and hell, that the one who is washed from his sins in the blood of the Lamb, is as clean as God can make him. (See John 5: 24; Rom. 8: 1; 2 Cor. 5: 5, 10, 11; Eph. 2: 10.) All that had to be done, God Himself has done it. He surely will not condemn His own work. The righteousness that was required, God Himself has provided it. He, surely, will not find any flaw therein. The light of the judgement seat will be bright enough to disperse every mist and cloud which might tend to obscure the matchless glories and eternal virtues which belong to the cross, and to show that the believer is “clean every whit.” (John 13: 10; John 15: 3; Eph. 5: 27)
It is because these foundation-truths are not laid hold of in the simplicity of faith that many of the children of God complain of their lack of settled peace – the constant variation in their spiritual condition – the continual ups and downs in their experience. Every doubt in the heart of a Christian is a dishonour done to the word of God and the sacrifice of Christ. It is because he does not, even now, bask in the light which shall shine from the judgement-seat, that he is ever afflicted with a doubt or a fear. And yet those things which so many have to deplore – those fluctuation’s and waverings are but trifling consequences, comparatively, inasmuch as they merely affect their experience. The effect produced upon their worship, their service, and their testimony, is far more serious, inasmuch as the Lord’s honour is concerned. But, alas ! this latter is but little thought of, generally speaking, simply because personal salvation is the grand object – the aim and end, with the majority of professing Christians. We are prone to look upon everything that affects ourselves as essential; whereas, all that merely affects the glory of Christ in and by us is counted non-essential.
However, it is well to see with distinctness, that the same truth which gives the soul settled peace, puts it also into the position of intelligent worship, acceptable service, and effectual testimony. In the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, the apostle sets forth the death and resurrection of Christ as the grand foundation of everything. “Moreover brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” (Ver. 1-4) Here is the gospel, in one brief and comprehensive statement. A dead and risen Christ is the ground-work of salvation. “He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.” (Rom. 4: 25) To see Jesus, by the eye of faith, nailed to the cross, and seated on the throne, must give solid peace to the conscience and perfect liberty to the heart. We can look into the tomb and see it empty; we can look up to the throne, and see it occupied, and go on our way rejoicing. The Lord Jesus settled everything on the cross on behalf of His people; and the proof of this settlement is that He is now at the right hand of God. A risen Christ is the eternal proof of an accomplished redemption; and if redemption is an accomplished fact, the believer’s peace is a settled reality. We did not make peace and never could make it; indeed, any effort on our part to make peace could only tend more fully to manifest us as peace breakers. But Christ, having made peace by the blood of His cross, has taken His scat on high, triumphant over every enemy. By Him God preaches peace. The Lord of the gospel conveys this peace; and the soul that believes the gospel has peace – settled peace before God, for Christ is his peace. (See Acts 10: 36; Rom. 5: 1; Eph. 2: 14; Col. 1: 20.) In this way, God has not only satisfied His own claims, but, in so doing, He has found out a divinely-righteous vent through which His boundless affections may flow down to the guiltiest of Adam’s guilty progeny.
Then, as to the practical result of all this. The cross of Christ has not only put away the believer’s sins, but also dissolved for ever His connection with the world; and, on the ground of this, he is privileged to regard the world as a crucified thing, and to be regarded by it as a crucified one. Thus it stands with the believer and the world. It is crucified to him and he to it. This is the real, dignified position of every true Christian. The world’s judgement about Christ was expressed in the position in which it deliberately placed Him. It got its choice as to whether it would have a murderer or Christ. It allowed the murderer to go free, but nailed Christ to the cross, between two thieves. Now, if the believer walks in the footprints of Christ – if he drinks into, and manifests, His spirit, he will occupy the very same place in the world’s estimation; and, in this way, he will not merely know that, as to standing before God, he is crucified with Christ, but be led to realise it in his walk and experience every day.
But while the cross has thus effectually cut the connection between the believer and the world, the resurrection has brought him into the power of new ties and associations. If, in the cross, we see the world’s judgement about Christ, in resurrection we see God’s judgement. The world crucified Him; but “God hath highly exalted him.” Man gave Him the very lowest, God the very highest, place; and, inasmuch as the believer is called into full fellowship with God, in his thoughts about Christ, he is enabled to turn the tables upon the world, and look upon it as a crucified thing. If, therefore, the believer is on one cross and the world on another, the moral distance between the two is vast indeed. And if it is vast in principle, so should it be in practice. The world and the Christian should have absolutely nothing in common; nor will they, except so far as he denies his Lord and Master. The believer proves himself false to Christ, to the very same degree that he has fellowship with the world.
All this is plain enough; but, my beloved Christian reader, where does it put us as regards this world? Truly, it puts us outside and that completely. We are dead to the world and alive with Christ. We are at once partakers of His rejection by earth and His acceptance in heaven; and the joy of the latter makes us count as nothing the trial connected with the former. To be cast out of earth, without knowing that I have a place and a portion on high, would be intolerable; but when the glories of heaven fill the soul’s vision, a little of earth goes a great way.
But some may feel led to ask, “What is the world?” It would be difficult to find a term more inaccurately defined than “world,” or “worldliness;” for we are generally disposed to make worldliness begin a point or two above where we are ourselves. The Word of God, however, has, with perfect precision, defined what” the world” is, when it marks it as that which is “not of the Father.” Hence, the deeper my fellowship with the Father, the keener will be my sense of what is worldly. This is the divine way of teaching. The more you delight in the Father’s love, the more you reject the world. But who reveals the Father The Son. How? By the power of the Holy Ghost. Wherefore, the more I am enabled, in the power of an ungrieved Spirit, to drink in the Son’s revelation of the Father, the more accurate does my judgement become as to what is of the world. It is as the limits of God’s kingdom expand in the heart, that the judgement as to worldliness becomes refined. You can hardly attempt to define worldliness. It is, as some one has said, “shaded off gradually from white to jet black.” This is most true. You cannot place a bound and say, “here is where worldliness begins;” but the keen and exquisite sensibilities of the divine nature recoil from it; and all we need is, to walk in the power of that nature, in order to keep aloof from every form of worldliness. “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.” Walk with God, and ye shall not walk with the world. Cold distinctions and rigid rules will avail nothing. The power of the divine life is what we want. We want to understand the meaning and spiritual application of the “three days’ journey into the wilderness” whereby we are separated for ever, not only from Egypt’s brick-kilns and taskmasters, but also from its temples and altars.
Pharaoh’s second objection partook very much of the character and tendency of the first. “And Pharaoh said, I will let you go, that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness; only ye shall not go very far away.” (Ex. 8: 28) If he could not keep them in Egypt, he would at least seek to keep them near it, so that he might act upon them by its varied influences. In this way, they might be brought back again. and the testimony more effectually quashed than if they had never left Egypt at all. There is always much more serious damage done to the cause of Christ by persons seeming to give up the world and returning to it again, than if they had remained entirely of it; for they virtually confess that, having tried heavenly things, they have discovered that earthly things are better and more satisfying.
Nor is this all. The moral effect of truth upon the conscience of unconverted people is sadly interfered with, by the example of professors going back again into those things which they seemed to have left. Not that such cases afford the slightest warrant to any one for the rejection of God’s truth, inasmuch as each one is personally responsible and will have to give account of himself to God. Still, however, the effect in this, as well as in everything else, is bad. ” For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to hare known the way of righteousness than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.(2 Peter 2: 20, 21.)
Wherefore, if people do not “go very far away,” they had better not go at all. The enemy knew this well; and hence his second objection. The maintenance of a border position suits his purpose amazingly. Those who occupy this ground are neither one thing nor the other; and, in point of fact, whatever influence they possess, tells entirely in the wrong direction.
It is deeply important to see that Satan’s design, in all these objections, was to hinder that testimony to the name of the God of Israel, which could only be rendered by a “three days’ journey into the wilderness.” This was, in good truth, going “very far away.” It was much farther than Pharaoh could form any idea of, or than he could follow them. And oh! how happy it would be if all who profess to set out from Egypt would really, in the spirit of their minds and in the tone of their character, go thus far away from it I if they would intelligently recognise the cross and grave of Christ as forming the boundary between them and the world! No man, in the mere energy of nature, can take this ground. The Psalmist could say,” Enter not into judgement with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.” (Ps. 143: 2) So also is it with regard to true and effectual separation from the world. “No man living” can enter into it. It is only as “dead with Christ,” and “risen again with him, through faith of the operation of God,” that any one can either be “justified” before God, or separated from the world This is what we may all going ” very far away. May all who profess and call themselves Christians go thus far! Then will their lamp yield a steady light. Then would their trumpet give a certain sound. Their path would be elevated; their experience deep and rich. Their peace would flow as a river; their affections would be heavenly and their garments unspotted. And, far above all, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ would be magnified in them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, according to the will of God their Father.
The third objection demands our most special attention. “And Moses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh: and he said unto them, go, serve the Lord your God; but who are they that shall go? And Moses said, We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds, will we go: for we must hold a feast unto the Lord. And he said unto them, Let the Lord be so with you, as I will let you go and your little ones: look to it; for evil is before you. Not so; go now ye that are men, and serve the Lord; for that ye did desire. And they were driven out from Pharaoh’s presence.” (Ex. 10: 8-11) Here again we have the enemy aiming a deadly blow at the testimony to the name of the God of Israel. Parents in the wilderness and their children in Egypt! Terrible anomaly! This would only have been a half deliverance, at once useless to Israel and dishonouring to Israel’s God. This could not be. If the children remained in Egypt, the parents could not possibly be said to have left it, inasmuch as their children were part of themselves. The most that could be said in such a case was, that in part they were serving Jehovah, and in part Pharaoh. But Jehovah could have no part with Pharaoh. He should either have all or nothing. This is a weighty principle for Christian parents. May we lay it deeply to heart! It is our happy privilege to count on God for our children, and to “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Eph. 6) We should not be satisfied with any other portion for” Our little ones” than that which we ourselves enjoy.
Pharaoh’s fourth and last objection had reference to the flocks and herds. “And Pharaoh called unto Moses, and said, Go ye, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and herds be stayed: let your little ones also go with you.” (Ex. 10: 24.) With what perseverance did Satan dispute every inch of Israel’s way out of the land of Egypt! He first sought to keep them in the land, then to keep them near the land, next to keep part of themselves in the land, and, finally, when he could not succeed in any of these three, he sought to send them forth without any ability to serve the Lord. If he could not keep the servants, he would seek to keep their ability to serve, which would answer much the same end. If he could not induce them to sacrifice in the land, he would send them out of the land without sacrifices.
In Moses’ reply to this last objection, we are furnished with a fine statement of the Lord’s paramount claim upon His people and all pertaining to them. “And Moses said, Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the Lord our God. Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind: for thereof must we take to serve the Lord our God; and we know not with what we must serve the Lord until we come. thither.” (Ver. 25, 26) It is only when the people of God take their stand, in simple Childlike faith, upon that elevated ground, on which death and resurrection set them, that they can have anything like an adequate sense of His claims upon them. “We know not with what we must serve the Lord until we come thither.” That is, they had no knowledge of the divine claim or their responsibility, until they had gone “three days’ journey.” These things could not be known amid the dense and polluted atmosphere of Egypt. Redemption must be known as an accomplished fact, ere: there can be any just or full perception of responsibility. All this is perfect and beautiful. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” I must be up out of Egypt, in the power of death and resurrection, and then, but not until then, shall I know what the Lord’s service really is. It is when we take our stand, by faith, in that “large room,” that wealthy place into which the precious blood of Christ introduces us; when we look around us and survey the rich, rare, and manifold results of redeeming love; when we gaze upon the Person of Him who has brought us into this place, and endowed us with these riches, then we are constrained to say, in the language of one of our own poets,
“Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my heart, my life, my all.”
“There shall not an hoof be left behind.” Noble words! Egypt is not the place for ought that pertains to God’s redeemed. He is worthy of all, “body, soul, and spirit;” all we are and all we have belongs to Him. “We are not our own, we are bought with a price;” and it is our happy privilege to consecrate ourselves and all that we possess to Him whose we are, and whom we are called to serve. There is nought of a legal spirit in this. The words, “until we come thither,” furnish a divine guard against this horrible evil. We have travelled the “three days’ journey,” ere a word concerning sacrifice can be heard or understood. We are put in full and undisputed possession of resurrection life and eternal righteousness. We have left that land of death and darkness; we have been brought to God Himself, so that we may enjoy Him, in the energy of that life with which we are endowed, and in the sphere of righteousness in which we are placed: thus it is our joy to serve. There is not an affection in the heart of which He is not worthy; there is not a sacrifice in all the flock too costly for His altar. The more closely we walk with Him, the more we shall esteem it to be our meat and drink to do His blessed will. The believer counts it his highest privilege to serve the Lord. He delights in every exercise and every manifestation of the divine nature. He does not move up and down with a grievous yoke upon his neck, or an intolerable weight upon his shoulder. The yoke is broken “because of the anointing,” the burden has been for ever removed, by the blood of the cross, while he himself walks abroad, “redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled,” in pursuance of those soul-stirring words, “LET MY PEOPLE GO.”
NOTE. – We shall consider the contents of Ex. 11 in connection with the security of Israel, under the shelter of the blood of the paschal lamb.
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Exo 7:14 to Exo 12:36. The Ten Plagues.How deeply this series of events imprinted itself on the mind and heart of the nation is shown by the fulness with which the three sources report them.
J124578910
E178910
P123610
1, river turned to blood; 2, frogs; 3, fice (gnats); 4, flies; 5, murrain; 6, boils; 7, hail; 8, locusts; 9, darkness; 10, death of firstborn.
A sound historical judgment will conclude, both from this fact and from the nature of the occurrences mentioned, as well as from the need for some such group of causes to account for the escape of the tribes, that the traditions have a firm foothold in real events. But since not less than four centuries intervened between the events and the earliest of our sources, it is not to be expected that the details of the narratives can all be equally correct. And there are not only literary distinctions between the sources, but differing, and in some points contradictory, representations of matters of fact. The Great European War illustrates the difficulty of weighing even contemporary testimony. But it is important to observe that even such a legend as that a force of Russians was brought through England, though it stated what was incorrect, yet would have conveyed to posterity a true reflection of two fundamental features in the European situation of 1914, viz. that Russia was allied with England, and that powerful reinforcements were needed to meet an enemy across the English Channel. So the general situation in Egypt in 1220 B.C., and the contrasted characters of Pharaoh and Moses, may reasonably be taken as rightly given, while the order, details, and precise nature of the events in which they were concerned may have been more or less distorted by tradition. One of the marks of the shaping power of the reporting process is that each source can still be seen to have had its own uniform skeleton of narration in this section. This phenomenon may be concisely exhibited. It should be contrasted with the form of narratives (such as those in 2 S.) which are more nearly contemporary with the events they relate.
a. JEP: and Yahweh said unto Moses,
b. J: Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, Let my people go that they may serve me. And if thou refuse to let them go, behold I will . . .
E: Stretch forth thy (i.e. Mosess) hand (with thy rod toward . . . that there may be . . .
P: Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and there shall be . . .
c. J: And Yahweh did so, and there came . . . (or and he sent)
E: And Moses stretched forth his hand (or his rod) toward . . . and there was . . .
P: And these did so: and Aaron stretched out his rod, and there was . . .
d. P: And the magicians did so (or, could not do so) with their secret arts . . .
e. J: And Pharaoh called for Moses, and said unto him, Entreat for me, that . . . And Yahweh did so, and removed . . .
f. J: But Pharaoh made his heart heavy.
E: But Yahweh made Pharaohs heart hard.
P: But Yahwehs heart was hardened.
g. J: And he did not let the people go.
E: And he did not let the children of Israel go.
P: and he hearkened not unto them as Yahweh had spoken.
The reader who will mark with letters in the margin of the text the parts assigned to J, E, and P will discern for himself, more fully by the help of the RV references, the points of contrast and resemblance, or he can consult the larger commentaries. In any case he should note that J is fullest and most graphic, and describes the plagues as natural events providentially ordered, Yahweh bringing them after the prophets mere announcement; that E is briefer, has not been so fully preserved by the editor, heightens the miraculous colouring, and makes Moses bring on the plagues with a motion of his wonder-working rod, or a gesture of his hand; and that P makes Aaron the spokesman and wielder of the rod, and introduces the magicians, the supernatural element transcending the historical throughout. Another feature is that in J the Israelites are apart in Goshen, but in E are mixed up with the Egyptians in Egypt. Each source has its own word for plague (Exo 9:14 J, Exo 11:1 E, Exo 12:13 P); and three other words (signs and wonderstwo Heb. words) are also employed. It will appear that the plagues were miraculously intensified forms of the diseases or other natural occurrences to which Egypt is more or less liable (Driver).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
THE WARNING AS TO PLAGUE NO.10
(vs.1-8)
This was given before Pharaoh gave his final threat to Moses. Verses 1-3 form a parenthesis, and verse 1 should read, “And the Lord HAD said to Moses” (Numerical Bible). These three verses then deal with the Lord’s words to Moses before He assures Moses that He will bring only one more plague on Egypt, then Pharaoh would not only let them go, but would drive them out. In view of this Moses was told to advise the Israelites to ask (no borrow) from the neighboring Egyptians jewels of silver and of gold. There is no doubt that Israel had fully earned this by their long service of slavery; and the Lord disposed the hearts of the Egyptians to willingly respond to the Jews’ request. Added to this, the Lord had made Moses to be highly respected among Pharaoh’s servants and the people generally (v.3).
From verse 4 to 8 Moses gives Pharaoh his final warning, as directly from the Lord’s lips. God had spoken, saying that at about midnight He would intervene in the midst of Egypt’s family life, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt would die, the firstborn of Pharaoh included, together with the firstborn of the lowest of the people, and also the firstborn of beasts. Why the firstborn? Because they are those who ought to be devoted to the Lord, since He is the Creator and the best is rightly His (Exo 13:1-2). but Egypt had persistently rejected God’s claims as regards Israel, whom He called His “firstborn” (Exo 4:22-23). Now it was true that Pharaoh’s firstborn would be taken from him.
There would be a great cry of anguish throughout all the land of Egypt, such as had never before been heard there, nor would ever follow (v.6). As to Israel, however, they would be unaffected. Not even a dog would move its tongue. For it is well known that when even one death takes place, dogs will howl, so that Egypt would be full of howling Gods.
Moses further tells Pharaoh that when the plague of the death of the firstborn took place, all Pharaoh’s servants would come to Moses, humbling themselves to urge him and all Israel to leave the land (v.8). After the many plagues God had sent, showing clearly that His Word was always carried out, it would seem that so dreadful a warning would surely have made Pharaoh stop and seriously consider the danger to both Egypt and to himself. But it was evidently at this point that Pharaoh told Moses, in the words of Chapter 10:28, to get out of his presence and never to see Pharaoh’s face again, adding the threat of death to Moses if this did occur.
At this time Moses told Pharaoh he had spoken well: Moses would not see his face again (ch.10:20). Pharaoh was bitterly angry, but Moses “went out from Pharaoh in great anger” (v.8). This is the occasion of which Heb 11:27 speaks, “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king.” Moses had sought the willing cooperation of Egypt, which was now fully refused. He will no longer labor with them, but will give them up to their chosen destruction.
Again, in verse 9, the Lord gives to Moses the encouragement that, behind the defiant stubbornness of Pharaoh, God Himself was working in order that His wonders should be multiplied in Egypt. Then verse 10 summarizes the results of all the former plagues, in telling us that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart in determination not to let Israel go. But this is the last time this is said!
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
11:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Yet will I bring one plague [more] upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence: when he shall let [you] go, he shall {a} surely thrust you out hence altogether.
(a) Without any condition, but with haste and violence.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The Israelites asked the Egyptians to give them the articles mentioned, not to lend them with a view to getting them back (Exo 11:2). [Note: For a history of the interpretation of this controversial statement, see Yehuda T. Radday, "The Spoils of Egypt," Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute 12 (1983):127-47.] The Israelites received many such gifts from the Egyptians, enough to build the tabernacle, its furniture, furnishings, and utensils, as well as the priests’ garments. This reflects the respect and fear the Israelites enjoyed in Egypt following these plagues.
"The Egyptians thus are ’picked clean’ (Exo 3:22 and Exo 12:36) by Israel as a result of yet another action by Yahweh in behalf of his people, demonstrating the power of his Presence." [Note: Durham, p. 148.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST PLAGUE ANNOUNCED.
Exo 11:1-10.
The eleventh chapter is, strictly speaking, a supplement to the tenth: the first verses speak, as if in parenthesis, of a revelation made before the ninth plague, but held over to be mentioned in connection with the last, which it now announces; and the conversation with Pharaoh is a continuation of the same in which they mutually resolved to see each other’s face no more. To account for the confidence of Moses, we are now told that God had revealed to him the close approach of the final blow, so long foreseen. In spite of seeming delays, the hour of the promise had arrived; in spite of his long reluctance, the king should even thrust them out; and then the order and discipline of their retreat would exhibit the advantages gained by expectation, by promises ofttimes disappointed, but always, like a false alarm which tries the readiness of a garrison, exhibiting the weak points in their organisation, and carrying their preparations farther.
The command given already to the women (Exo 3:22) is now extended to them all–that they should ask of the terror-stricken people such portable things as, however precious, poorly requited their generations of unpaid and cruel toil. (It has been already shown that the word absurdly rendered “borrow” means to ask; and is the same as when Sisera asked water and Jael gave him milk, and when Solomon asked wisdom, and did not ask long life, neither asked riches, neither asked the life of his enemies.) They were now to claim such wages as they could carry off, and thus the pride of Egypt was presently dedicated to construct and beautify the tabernacle of Jehovah. We read that the people found favour with the Egyptians, who were doubtless overjoyed to come to any sort of terms with them; “moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people.” This is no unbecoming vaunt: it speaks only of the high place he held, as God’s deputy and herald; and this tone of keen appreciation of the rank conceded him, compared with the utter absence of any insistence upon any action of his own, is evidence much rather of the authenticity of the work than the reverse.
By these demands expectation and faith were intensified; while the tidings of such confidence on one side, and such tame submission on the other, goes far to explain the suspicions and the rage of Pharaoh.
With this the narrative is resumed. Moses had said, “Thou shalt see my face no more.” Now he adds, “Thus saith Jehovah, About midnight” (but not on that same night, since four days of preparation for the passover were yet to come) “I will go out into the midst of Egypt.” This, then, was the meaning of his ready consent to be seen no more: Jehovah Himself, Who had dealt so dreadfully with them through other hands, was now Himself to come. “And all the firstborn of Egypt shall die,” from the firstborn and viceroy of the king to the firstborn of the meanest of women, and even of the cattle in their stalls. (It is surely a remarkable coincidence that Menephtah’s heroic son did actually sit upon his throne, that inscriptions engraven during his life exhibit his name in the royal cartouche, but that he perished early, and long before his father.) And the wail of demonstrative Oriental agony should be such as never was heard before. But the children of Israel should be distinguished and protected by their God. And all these courtiers should come and bow down before Moses (who even then has the good feeling not to include the king himself in this abasement), and instead of Pharaoh’s insulting “Get thee from me–see my face no more,” they should pray him saying, “Go hence, thou and thy people that follow thee.” And remembering the abject entreaties, the infatuated treacheries, and now this crowning insult, he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. He was angry and sinned not.
The ninth and tenth verses are a kind of summary: the appeals to Pharaoh are all over, and henceforth we shall find Moses preparing his own followers for their exodus. “And the Lord (had) said unto Moses, Pharaoh will not hearken unto you, that My wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the Lord made strong Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go out of his land.”
In the Gospel of St. John there comes just such a period. The record of miracle and controversy is at an end, and Jesus withdraws into the bosom of His intimate circle. It is scarcely possible that the evangelist was unconscious of the influence of this passage when he wrote: “But though He had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on Him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled which he spoke, Lord, who hath believed our report?… For this cause they could not believe, because that Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and should turn, and I should heal them” (Joh 12:37-40).
This is the tragedy of Egypt repeated in Israel; and the fact that the chosen seed is now the reprobate suffices, if any doubt remain, to prove that reprobation itself was not caprice, but retribution.