Exodus
9
THE FIFTH PLAGUE –
MURRAIN OF BEASTS
vs. 1-7 – “Then the LORD said unto Moses, Go
in unto Pharaoh, and tell him,
Thus saith the
LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve
me. For
if thou refuse to let them go, and wilt hold them still, Behold, the hand of
the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field,
upon the horses, upon the asses,
upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the
sheep: there shall be a very
grievous murrain.
And the LORD shall sever between the cattle of
the cattle of
shall do this thing in the land. And the LORD did that thing on the morrow, and
all the cattle of
And Pharaoh sent” - This
time the king had the curiosity to send out and see whether
the Israelites had been spared - “and,
behold, there was not one of the cattle of the
Israelites dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened” - The
plague affected him
less than
others had done, rather than more. He was so rich that an affliction which
touched
nothing but property seemed a trivial matter What
cared he for the sufferings of the
poor beasts, or the ruin of those who depended
upon the breeding and feeding of cattle -
“and he did not
let the people go”. Hitherto
the plagues had been directed rather
against the persons of the Egyptians than against
their property. Property had perhaps
suffered somewhat in the preceding plague, if it
was really one of the Blatta
orientalis;
but
otherwise the various afflictions had caused nothing but pain and annoyance to
the
person. Now this was to be changed. Property was to be made to suffer. It
remained to
be seen whether the Pharaoh would be
impressed more deeply by calamities which
impoverished his subjects than by those which merely
caused them personal annoyance
and suffering. The hand of God was first laid
upon the cattle, or rather upon the
domesticated animals in general (v. 3). These were made to suffer from
a “murrain”
or epidemic pestilence, which carried off
vast numbers. Such visitations are not uncommon
in
the Hebrew people resided. The miraculous
character of the visitation at this time was
indicated:
ü By its
announcement, and appearance on the day appointed (vs. 3-6);
ü By its
severity (v. 6); and
ü By its attacking the Egyptian cattle only (v. 7). Pharaoh
seems, however,
to have been almost lees moved by this plague than by any
other.
WELL AS ON MAN, HIMSELF. (vs. 1-7) - “The whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together
until now”(Romans 8:22). Brutes are to a
large
extent co-partners with man in his sorrows and his wretchedness. But
brute
suffering is the product of man’s sin. Mostly it is directly caused by man.
Man not only kills animals for his food, but
he chases them for his diversion,
mutilates
them for his convenience, vivisects them for his supposed
benefit. In
chasing
them, he wounds more than he kills; in mutilating them, he often
removes
parts necessary for their comfort; in vivisecting them, he knowingly
makes them suffer
excruciating pain. His use of them as beasts of draught and
burden is a
lighter form of evil than any of these; but in the aggregate it causes,
perhaps, as
much suffering. Again, man makes the horse his companion in
war, and
exposes him to the most hideous wounds, the most horrid deaths.
Nor does the list
of his misdoings as respects the animal world end here.
To children the wanton torture of
insects seems to be a chief delight. For
the
production of certain delicacies of the table, turkeys and other animals
are made to
undergo untold agonies. Slow death is inflicted on calves, to
make the
veal white. Finally, animals are often involved in the Divine
judgments
by which nations are visited for their sins. “Much cattle” would
have
perished miserably, if
The beasts endure as much as the men
when cities are blockaded.
Occasionally, as in this plague, the
beasts themselves are the direct
sufferers,
and God punishes man through them. No doubt there is a
mystery in
this. The suffering of innocent dumb animals is hard to reconcile
with the
goodness of God. His causing pain to them for man’s fault is even
more
strange. How persons who have a fixed belief that the brute creation
enjoys no
future life, overcome the difficulty, we knew not. But the
solution of
it may, we think, be found in the Scripture which tells of “the
spirit of the beast which goeth
downward” (Ecclesiastes 3:21). If the
spirit of a
beast survives, it may find compensation in another life for what
it has
suffered here. Man’s coldness and deadness with respect to animal
suffering
is as marvelous as anything in his nature and history. “Pharaoh’s
heart” was utterly hard to it. He did not even ask that
the plague should be
removed.
The sufferings and miserable death of thousands of beasts made
not the
slightest impression upon him. Probably he did not give their
sufferings
a thought. And even among Christians, is it not much the same?
How few protest
against even such enormities as promiscuous vivisection!
How few, in grieving over the
horrors of war, think of the pain which is
borne by
the animals engaged in it! How few give so much as a sigh to the
labor, the
weariness, the suffering of millions of poor dumb brute beasts
engaged in
ministering to their pleasures, amusements, convenience! We
grieve
bitterly for our own troubles. We have a tear of sympathy, perhaps,
for the griefs of humanity generally. But for the rest of creation,
“groaning
and travailing in pain together until now,” we have
scarcely a thought.
How different from him who was led
to spare
because
therein were “more than six score
thousand persons that could
not discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much
cattle!”
THE
SIXTH PLAGUE – BOILS UPON MAN AND BEAST
vs. 8-12 – “And the LORD said unto Moses and
unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls
of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses
sprinkle it toward the heaven” – (The act
indicated that the plague would come from heaven — i.e.
from God) “in the sight of
Pharaoh. And
it shall become small dust in all the
boil breaking forth with blains” - The
attempts definitely to determine what exactly
the malady was, seem to be futile — more
especially as diseases are continually
changing their forms, and a malady which belongs to
the fourteenth or fifteenth
century before our era is almost certain to have
been different from any now
prevalent. The word “blains” — now obsolete as a separate word — appears in
“chilblains.” – “upon man,
and upon beast, throughout all the
And they took ashes of the furnace, and
stood before Pharaoh; and Moses
sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking
forth with blains
upon man, and upon beast. And the magicians could not stand before
Moses
because of the boils; for the boil was upon the
magicians, and upon all the
Egyptians”. It is
gathered from this that the magicians had, up to this time, been
always in attendance when the miracles were
wrought, though they had now for
some time failed to produce any counterfeits of
them. On this occasion their
persistency was punished by the sudden falling of the
pestilence upon themselves
with such severity that they were forced to
quit the royal presence and hasten to their
homes to be nursed. “And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh,
and he
hearkened not
unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses”.
Up to this time
the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart has been ascribed to himself,
or expressed indefinitely as
a process that was continually going on — now for the first
time it is positively
stated that God hardened his heart, as He had
threatened that He would (ch. 4:21)
The sixth
plague was sent, like the third, without notice given. It was also, like the
third,
a plague which inflicted
direct injury upon the person. There was a very solemn warning
in it; for the same power that could afflict the body with “boils and blains,” i.e., with a
severe cutaneous disease
accompanied by pustulous ulcers — could also (it must
have
been felt) smite it with death. It is uncertain what
exactly the malady was. Some have
supposed elephantiasis, some “black leprosy,” some
merely an eruptive disease such
as is even now common in
the malady was exceedingly severe — “the magicians could not stand before Moses”
because of it (v.11). If it was “the botch of
probable, since the name in the Hebrew is the same, it
was incurable. Pharaoh and his
people were warned by it that God’s power would be
shown on themselves, not in the
way of mere annoyance — as with the earlier plagues — but of
serious injury — and
if so, why not of death? Thus, the sixth plague
heralded the tenth, and, except the tenth,
was the most severe of all.
NOT ALWAYS A
PUNISHMENT FOR SIN. (vs. 8-12) God has
many
weapons in His quiver wherewith to chastise sin. One of them is
physical pain.
He can cause the
limbs to ache, the temples to throb, the blood to be inflamed,
the breathing to labor, the head to be racked, the nerves
to thrill and tingle —
the whole body, from the sole of the foot to the
crown of the head, to be nothing
but a mass of “wounds
and bruises, and putrifying sores.” (Isaiah 1:6)
- There
is no part of our frame, no process, no function, but can be made the seat of an
intolerable agony. God, for the most part, spares us, in the hope that His
goodness and long-suffering will lead us to repentance. (Romans 2:4) - He had
long spared Pharaoh and the Egyptians — had shown them His power in ways
that annoyed and harassed, but did not seriously hurt. Now He must
adopt
severer measures. So His
hand is laid upon their
bodies, which are smitten with
disease, disfigured, made loathsome to the eye, and racked with physical
suffering. Here we may note three things:
sins have
physical consequences attached to them by a natural law, which
are in the
highest degree painful, which injure the health, destroy the
tissues,
produce disease, madness, idiocy. (Take for instance AIDS and
HIV and some STD’s [sexually
transmitted diseases] – CY – 2010) Men
know these
consequences, but hope that they may individually escape them.
“For
this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their
women did change the natural use into that which is against
nature:
And
likewise also the men, leaving
the natural use of the woman,
burned in their lust one toward another; men with men
working that
which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that
RECOMPENCE
OF
ERROR WHICH WAS MEET” - (Romans
1:26-27) - As Moses and
Aaron warned in vain, so now vain
too often are the uplifted voices of God’s
ministers.
Nine-tenths, probably, of the physical suffering in
present day
is caused by those sins of intemperance and uncleanness which
are the
crying evils of our age and country, and which nothing seems able
to uproot
or even seriously to diminish. (WHAT ABOUT THE UNITED
STATES IN 2010?
– CY – 2010) Children
are born now for the most
part with
the seeds of disease in them, which are the consequence of their
parents’
vices. They
lack the physical stamina and the moral vigor which
they would have possessed, had
their parents led good, pious, consistent,
religious lives. They have
unhealthy appetites, desires, cravings, which they
would not
have had but for their parents’ sins. (Crack Babies??? – CY – 2010)
Too
often, to all this is added the force of bad example. Intemperance and
uncleanness
follow, and the inborn germs of disease are stimulated into
activity; pain follows pain, agony
follows agony. A wretched, life is terminated
by an early
death. If they leave children behind them, their case is
even more
hopeless.
The physical taint is deepened. The moral strength to resist is weaker.
Happy is it if God takes the little
ones away from the evil to come.
THE WEALTHY OR THE
HIGHLY EDUCATED. “The boil was on the
magicians.” The taint of uncleanness, the mental weakness
which results
from habits
of intemperance afflict the great, the rich, the “upper ten
thousand,”
as surely as their humbler fellow-subjects who herd in courts
and alleys.
There are great families in which it is a well-known fact that
intemperance
has become hereditary. There are others where the heir never
lives to
the age of thirty. No rank — not even royal rank — exempts from
subjection
to hygienic laws. Neither does intellect nor education. It may be
that the
intellectual and highly educated are less likely than others to
plunge into
dissipation and sensual vices. But if, in spite of their higher
nature,
they give the reins to their lower, the same results follow as in the
case of the
least gifted of their fellow-men. Retribution reaches them. They
“receive
within themselves the reward of their iniquity.” Their physical
nature, no
less than their moral, is tainted; and pain, suffering, often agony,
are their
portion.
THEMSELVES. The boil
was on the magicians; but we do not hear that
the
magicians submitted themselves, or owned the supremacy of Jehovah.
So now, those whose sin draws down
upon them suffering rarely repent,
rarely
forsake their sin, rarely humble themselves beneath the chastening
rod of the
Almighty. (Consider Revelation 16:8-9) - No doubt drunkards are
occasionally
reformed and profligates reclaimed. But for one lost sheep thus
recovered,
how many scores perish in their evil courses, and descend the
rapid incline which conducts
to the gulf of destruction? We are amazed at
the obstinacy of Pharaoh; but we are most of us just as
obstinate. Nothing
will induce
us to give up our pet vices. We cling to them, even when the boil is
upon us. If
we give them up for a time, we recur to them. If we leave them off
in act, we
dwell fondly upon them in thought and imagination. O hard human
hearts,
that will not yield to God’s discipline of pain, when sent as
chastisement!
What can ye expect, but that chastisement will give place to
vengeance?
Physical suffering is sometimes sent, not to punish, but to
refine and
purify. Job’s comforters supposed that one so afflicted must
have
committed some great crime, or be concealing some habitual vice of a
grave
character. But it was not so. The sufferings of saints are blessing.
They give a fellowship with Christ,
which nothing else can give. They make
the saint
rehearse in thought, over and over again, each step of that
grievous,
yet blessed via dolorosa, along
which he went upon His way to
the Cross
of
of
acceptance (Hebrews 12:6) — they elevate, purify, sanctify. Earth
has no
lovelier sight than that not uncommon one of a crippled sufferer,
stretched
day after day and year after year upon a bed of pain, yet always
cheerful,
always thoughtful for others, always helpful by advice, kind word,
even (if
their strength allows) kind acts. Such Blessed ones live with Christ,
suffer with
Christ, feel themselves to be in Christ; as
up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in
their flesh”
(Colossians 1:24), and “are joyful in their tribulation” (II Corinthians
7:4).
THE
SEVENTH PLAGUE – HAIL AND FIRE
vs. 13-26 – “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. The same
message is
constantly repeated in the same words as a token of God’s unchangingness. (ch. 8:1-20; 9:1;
10:3; “I am the Lord, I change not”; (Malachi
3:6); “with whom there is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning”; (James
1:17).
“I will at this time send
all my plagues upon thine
heart”. A very emphatic announcement. At
this time contrasts
the immediate future with the past, and tells Pharaoh that the
hour of mild warnings and slight
plagues is gone by. Now he is to expect something far
more terrible God will send “all His
plagues” — every worst form of evil — in rapid succession;
and will send them “against
his heart”. Each will strike a blow on that perverse and
obdurate heart — each will stir his
nature to its inmost depths. Conscience will wake up and insist on being heard.
All the
numerous brood of selfish fears and alarms will bestir
themselves. He will tremble, and be
amazed and perplexed. He will forego his pride and humble
himself, and beg the Israelites
to be gone, and even entreat that, ere they depart, the
leaders whom he has so long opposed,
will give him their blessing (ch.
12:32). “That thou mayest know” Pharaoh was
himself to be convinced that the Lord God of
He was not
likely to desert at once and altogether the religion in which he had
been brought up, or to regard its gods as nonexistent.
But he might be persuaded of one thing
— that Jehovah was far above them. And this he practically
acknowledges in vs. 27-28.
“For now
I will stretch out my hand” It is generally agreed by modern writers that
this
translation fails to give the true sense of the original
God does not here announce what He is
going to do, but what He might have done, and would
have done, but for certain
considerations. Translate, “For now might I have stretched out my hand, and
smitten
thee and thy people with
pestilence; and then thou hadst been cut off from
the earth.” Scripture
shows that pestilence is always in God’s power, and may at any
time be let loose to scourge His foes, and sweep
them into the pit of destruction. (See
Leviticus
26:25; Numbers 11:33; 14:12; 16:46; II Samuel 24:13-15) He had not done
now what He might have done, and what Pharaoh’s obstinacy might well have provoked
him to do; and why? On account of the considerations
contained in the next verse.
“And in very
deed” - Rather, “But truly for this cause have I caused thee to
stand,”
“kept thee alive and sustained thee in
the position thou occupiest” – “for
to shew to
thee my power” — i.e., to
impress thee, if it
is possible that thou canst be impressed, with
the greatness of my power, and the foolishness of any attempt to resist it, and
also “that my
name may be declared throughout all the earth” —
i.e., that attention
may be called widely among the neighboring nations to the great
truththat there is
really but one God, who alone can deliver, and whom it
isimpossible to resist.
“As yet exaltest
thou thyself against my people, that thou wilt not let them go?
Behold, to morrow about this time I will
cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such
as hath not been in
therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field; for upon
every man and beast which shall be found in the field,
and shall not be brought
home, the hail shall come down upon them, and
they shall die”. Human
life was
now for the first time threatened. Any
herdsmen that remained with the cattle in the
open field and did not seek the shelter of
houses or sheds would be smitten by the
huge jagged hailstones with such force that
they would be killed outright, or else die
of their wounds. “He that
feared the word of the LORD among the servants of
Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee
into the houses”: It is
a new fact
that any of the Egyptians had been brought to “fear the word of Jehovah.”
Probably,
the effect of the plagues had been gradually
to convince a considerable number, not
so much that Jehovah was the one True God as
that He was a great and powerful god,
whose chastisements were to be feared.
Consequently there were now a certain
number among the “servants of Pharaoh” who
profited by the warning given (v.19),
and housed their cattle and herdsmen, in
anticipation of the coming storm. “And he
that regarded not the word of the LORD left his
servants and his cattle in the
field. And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch forth
thine hand toward heaven,
that there may be hail in all the
upon every herb of the field, (upon
all forms of vegetable life – compare Genesis 1:30;
9:3) throughout the
and the LORD sent
thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; (some
very peculiar electrical display seems to be
intended) and the LORD rained hail upon the
as there was none like it in all the
to mean a fire that was not a mere flash, but
collected itself into a mass and was seen for
some considerable time) And
the hail smote throughout all the
was in the
field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and
brake every tree of the field. Only in the
Israel were, was there no hail”. The sixth
plague had had no effect at all upon the hard
heart of the Pharaoh, who cared nothing for the
physical sufferings of his subjects, and
apparently was not himself afflicted by the malady. Moses
was therefore ordered to appear
before him once more, and warn him of further and yet
more terrible visitations which were
impending. The long message (vs. 13-19) is without any
previous parallel, and
contains matter calculated to make an impression even
upon the most callous of
mortals. First there is an announcement that God is
about to send “all His
plagues”
upon king and people (v. 14); then a solemn warning
that a pestilence might have been
sent which would have swept both king and people
from the face of the earth (v.15);
and finally (v. 18) an announcement of the actual judgment
immediately impending,
which is to be a hailstorm of a severity never
previously known in
rarely experienced elsewhere. Pharaoh is moreover told
that the whole object of his having
been allowed by God to continue in existence is the
glory about to accrue to
His name from the exhibition of His power in the deliverance of His
people (v.16).
A peculiar
feature of the plague is the warning (v.19) whereby
those who believed the
words of Moses, were enabled to escape a great part
of the ill effects of the storm. It
is a remarkable indication of the impression made by the
previous plagues, that
the warning was taken by a considerable number of the
Egyptians, who by this
means saved their cattle and their slaves (v.20). The
injury caused by the plague was
very great. The flax and barley crops, which were
the most advanced suffered
complete destruction. Men and beasts were wounded by the
hail-stones, which might
have been — as hail-stones sometimes are — jagged
pieces of ice; and some were
even killed, either by the hail (see Joshua 10:11),
or by the lightning which
accompanied it. Even trees were damaged by the force of the
storm, which destroyed
the foliage and broke the branches
“For now might I have stretched out my hand and
smitten thee and thy
people with pestilence”. Pharaoh had
opposed himself to God so long, had
shown
himself in various ways so wicked, that he well deserved to have
been
stricken with plague and made to perish miserably. He had been
insolent
and blasphemous, when first appealed to in the name of Jehovah
(ch. 5:2); cruel and vindictive, when he increased the
Israelites’ burdens
(ib. 7-9); hard-hearted, when the taskmasters
complained to him (ib. 15-18);
obdurate
and perverse, in resisting so many signs and wonders wrought for
the purpose
of moving him (chps. 7:10-13, 20-23; 8:5-7, 16-19,
20-24; 9:6-7,
10-12); pitiless
and false, in twice breaking his promises (ch.
8:8-15, 28-32).
Yet God had spared him. He had “made him to stand” (v.16) — i.e.,
preserved
him in being — and had retained him in his high station, when He
might
readily have caused his overthrow by conspiracy or otherwise. So long-
suffering
was He, that He even now addressed to him fresh warnings, and
gave him fresh
signs of His power, thus by His goodness striving to lead him
to
repentance.
DETERMINED SINNER. God can so multiply, and vary, and prolong His
judgments, that at last the power of endurance, .even in
the case of the most
obdurate sinner, is worn out. First He sends comparatively slight
afflictions,
then more serious ones; finally, if the stubborn
will still refuses to bend, He
visits the offender with “all His plagues” (v. 14). Man cannot triumph over
God. Kings may oppose their wills to His, but they cannot make
Him succumb.
He “refrains the spirit of princes,” and
shows Himself “wonderful
among
the kings of the
earth” (Psalm 76:12). Unfortunately kings, and even
less
exalted sinners, will rarely learn
wisdom till too late. He has to send “all His
plagues” upon them; whereas, if
they had been wise, they might have escaped
with a light chastisement.
TENDS TO
INCREASE, AND IS DESIGNED TO INCREASE, HIS GLORY.
The fierceness of
man turns to God’s praise., He has
endowed men with free will,
and allows them the free exercise of their free
will, because, do as they
like, they cannot thwart His purposes. Being, as He is, the God of order, and
not of
confusion or anarchy, He could not have allowed free will at all to His
creatures,
if their employment of it prevented the accomplishment of His own
designs and
intentions. The message sent by God to Pharaoh through Moses
adds, that the result
is designed. “For this cause have I made thee stand
(marg.), for to show
to thee my power; and that my name may be
declared throughout all the earth”(v.16).
Compare chps. 14:17-18;
15:14-16; Joshua 2:9-11.
GOD
GETS PHARAOH’S ATTENTION
vs. 27-35 – “And Pharaoh sent, and called for
Moses and Aaron, and said unto
them, I have sinned this time: the LORD is
righteous” - Literally, “Jehovah is the
Just One; and I and my people are the sinners.” The
confession seems, at first sight,
ample and satisfactory; but there is perhaps
some shifting of sin, that was all his own, upon
the Egyptian “people,” which indicates
disingenuousness. “and I and my people are
wicked. Entreat
the LORD (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty
thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and ye
shall stay no longer. And
Moses said unto him, As soon as I am gone
out of the city, I will spread abroad
my hands unto the LORD; and the thunder shall
cease, neither shall there be
any more hail; that thou mayest know how that the earth is
the LORD’s.
The other
plagues sufficiently showed that
from the open heaven that surrounds and embraces the
whole world, indicated that
the entire earth was his. (Comp. Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the
Lord’s and the
fullness thereof: the world, and they that dwell
therein.”) “But as for thee and thy
servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the LORD
God. True fear of God
is shown by obedience to His commands.
Pharaoh and his servants had the sort of
fear which devils have — they “also believe and tremble.” (James
2:19) - But they
had not yet that real reverential fear which is
joined with love, and has, as its fruit,
obedience. So the event showed. (vs 34, 35.) “And the flax and the barley was
smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax
was bolled”. Flax
blossoms towards the end of January or beginning of
February, and the barley comes
into ear about the same time, being commonly
cut in March. Barley was employed largely
as the food of horses, and was used also for
the manufacture of beer, which was a
common Egyptian beverage. A certain quantity was
made by the poorer classes into bread.
“But the wheat and the rie
were not smitten: for they were not grown
up. And
Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh,
and spread abroad his
hands unto the
LORD: and the thunders and hail ceased, and
the rain was not poured upon
the earth.
And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and
the thunders
were ceased, he
sinned yet more, and hardened his heart” – Altogether
there are
three different Hebrew verbs, which our translators
have rendered by “harden,” or
“hardened” — kabad, qashah, and khazaq. The first of these, which occurs in chps.
7:14; 8:15,
32; 9:7 and 34, is the weakest of the three, and means to be “dull” or
“heavy,” rather than “to be hard.” The
second, which appears in chps. 7:3, and 13:15,
is a stronger term, and means “to be hard,” or, in the
Hiphil, “to make hard.”
But the
third has the most intensive sense, implying fixed and stubborn resolution. It occurs
in chps. 4:21; 7:22; 8:19; 9:35; and elsewhere. He and his
servants. Pharaoh’s
“servants,” i.e. the officers of his court, still, it
would seem, upheld the king in his impious
and mad course, either out of complaisance, or because they were really
not
yet convinced
of the resistless might of Jehovah. After the eighth plague, we shall find their
tone
change (Exodus
10:7). “he and
his servants. And the heart of Pharaoh was
hardened, neither would he let the children
of
by Moses.”
The plague of hail impressed the Pharaoh more than any
previous one. It was
the first which had inflicted death on men. It
was a most striking and terrible manifestation.
It was
quite unlike anything which the Egyptians had ever experienced before (vs. 18,
24).
It
was, by manifest miracle, made to fall on the Egyptians only (v. 26). Pharaoh
was
therefore more humbled than ever previously. He
acknowledged that he “had sinned”
(v.
27); he added a confession that “Jehovah [alone] was righteous, he and his
people wicked” (ibid.).
And, as twice before, he expressed
his willingness to let the
Israelites
take their departure if the plague
were removed (v. 28). The ultimate results,
however, were not any better than before. No sooner had Moses prayed to God, and
procured the
cessation of the plague, than the king repented of his repentance,
“hardened his heart;” and,
once more casting his promise to the winds, refused to
permit the Israelites to depart (vs. 33-35). His people
joined him in this act of
obduracy (v. 34), perhaps thinking that they had
now suffered the worst that could
befall them.
(But they were wrong!)
COUNTERFEITS
THE TRUE BUT HAS FEATURES BY WHICH IT
MAY BE KNOWN. It is not
always easy to distinguish between a true and
a mock
repentance.
Here was the Pharaoh at this time very visibly — it
might have
seemed deeply — impressed. He was
disquieted — he was
alarmed —
he was ready to humble himself — to
make confession — to
promise
obedience in the future. In what did his
repentance differ from true,
godly
penitence?
What points did it possess in common with such penitence?
What points did it lack?
sinned this time — I and my people are wicked.” Confession
of sin is a
very
important point in true penitence. There can be no true penitence
without it.
“I said, I will confess my sin unto the
Lord, and so thou
forgavest the wickedness of my
sin” (Psalm 32:5). But it may be made,
under a
sort of compulsion, as a necessity, without the rightful feeling of
contrition,
or sorrow for sin, out of which it should spring, and apart from
which it is
valueless. We may doubt whether Pharaoh’s confession sprang
from a
true, contrite heart. There was a ring of insincerity in it. “I, and
my
people,” he said,
“are wicked.” True penitence leads us to confess our own
sins, not
those of others. There was no occasion for introducing the
mention of
his people’s sins, and, as it were, merging his own in theirs. The
people had
not been appealed to, in order that they might say whether the
Israelites should be allowed to
depart or not. They had no doubt many sins
of their
own to answer for; but they had had no part in this particular sin.
There is a covert self-justification
in the introduction of the words “and my
people,” as
if the national sentiment had been too strong for him, and he
had only
“refused to let
“The Lord is righteous,” or “Jehovah is the righteous
one,” was such a
full
and frank
acknowledgment of the perfect justice and righteousness of God as
the heart of man does not very readily make, unless in
moments of exaltation.
We need not
suppose that the monarch was insincere in his utterance. He was
temporarily lifted up out of himself — so
impressed with the power and
greatness of Jehovah, that he had for the time
true thoughts and high thoughts
concerning Him. He had doubtless a very
insufficient feeling or appreciation of
the awful purity and holiness of God; but he did feel His justice. He knew in
his
inmost heart that he had deserved the judgments sent upon him, and meant
to
acknowledge this. He was willing that God should be “justified in his sayings,
and overcome when He was
judged” (Romans 3:4). He may not have had an
adequate sense of the full meaning of his own words, but
he had some sense of
their meaning,
and did not merely repeat, parrot-like, phrases from a ritual.
APPEAL TO THE MINISTERS OF GOD FOR
AID. Pharaoh “sent and
called for Moses and Aaron.” Not very
long before, he had dismissed them
from his
presence as impertinent intruders, with the words, “Get you to
your burdens” (ch. 5:4). Now he
appeals to them for succor. He asks their
prayers —
“Entreat for me.” Such appeals are constantly made, both by the
true and by
the mock penitent. Reliance on self disappears. God’s ministers
take their
due place as ambassadors for Him and stewards of His mysteries.
They are asked to intercede for the
sinner, to frame a prayer for him, and offer
it on his
behalf. All this is fitting under the circumstances; for lips long
unaccustomed
to prayer cannot at once offer it acceptably, and intercessory
prayer is
especially valuable at the time when the half-awakened soul feels a
yearning
towards God, to which, if unassisted, it is unable to give effect.
AMENDMENT. “I will let
you go.” Let but his prayer be granted, let but
the plague
be removed, and the king promises that all his opposition to the
will of
Jehovah shall cease — the children of
shall not
be detained any longer. Amendment of life is the crown and apex
of
repentance, and is rightly first resolved upon, then professed, finally
practiced
by the true penitent. But profession alone is no criterion of the
nature of
the repentance. The sole certain criterion is the result. If the
resolutions
made are kept, if the profession is carried out in act, then the
repentance
is proved to have been genuine; if the reverse is the case, then it
was
spurious. The event, however, can alone show how the case stands.
Meanwhile, as we must “judge nothing before the time,” (I
Corinthians
4:5) - it would seem to be best that
in every case a professed repentance
should be
treated as real when it is put forward, whatever suspicions may be
entertained
respecting it. No harm is done by treating a mock penitent as if he
were a real
one. Great harm might be done by a mistaken rejection of a true
penitent.
The sinner
who truly repents desires above all things the pardon and removal
of his sin. He cares little, comparatively, for the removal of
its
chastisement.
Sin, which
separates him from God, is the great object of his abhorrence; and
when he asks the prayers of ministers or other pious persons, he
requests them
to intercede for him, that he may find pardon and cleansing, may have
his past
sins forgiven, and strength granted him to forsake sin in
the future. When
Pharaoh, instead
of such a prayer as this, asked for nothing but the removal of
the temporal evil which had been sent upon him as
a punishment, it was easy
for one experienced in the words of man to see
that his was not a real, genuine
repentance. And this Moses seems to have perceived. “As for thee and thy
servants,” he said to
the
king, “I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord
God.” I know
that the fear which now fills your hearts is not the true fear
of
God — not a dread of His displeasure,
but of the pains and sufferings that He
can inflict. I know that what you seek is not
reconcilement with God, but
exemption from calamity. You are driven upon your
course by alarm and
terror, not drawn by love. I know that when the affliction is
removed you will
relapse into your former condition. Some more terrible judgment
will be
needed to make you really yield. Note, then, that the
minister, if he possesses
spiritual discernment, may generally detect an unreal
repentance, and, however
closely it
apes the true, may escape being deceived by it.
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