XI. ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE TENTH PLAGUE. (1) AND THE LORD SAID. — Rather, _Now the Lord had said._ The passage (Exodus 11:1) 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... [ Continue Reading ]
LET EVERY MAN BORROW. — See the comment on Exodus 3:22. The directions _to “_ask” the Egyptians for presents is extended here from the women alone to both women and men. Egyptian obduracy and Israelitish loss through some of the plagues may have caused the enlargement of the original instruction.... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LORD GAVE THE PEOPLE FAVOUR — i.e., when the time arrived. (See below, Exodus 12:36.) THE MAN MOSES. — At first sight there seems a difficulty in supposing Moses to have written thus of himself. “The man” is not a title by which writers of any time or country are in the habit of speaking of them... [ Continue Reading ]
AND MOSES SAID. — In continuation of the speech recorded in Exodus 10:29, face to face with Pharaoh, Moses makes his last appeal — utters his last threats. The Pharaoh has bidden him “see his face no more” (Exodus 10:28), and he has accepted the warning, and declared “I will see thy face again no mo... [ Continue Reading ]
ALL THE FIRSTBORN... SHALL DIE. — The Heb. word translated _firstborn_ is applied only to males; and thus the announcement was that in every family the eldest _son_ should be cut off. In Egypt, as in most other countries, the law of primogeniture prevailed — the eldest son was the hope, stay, and su... [ Continue Reading ]
THERE SHALL BE A GREAT CRY. — The shrill cries uttered by mourners in the East are well known to travellers. Mr. Stuart Poole heard those of the Egyptian women at Cairo, in the great cholera of 1848, at a distance of two miles (Smith’s _Dictionary of the Bible,_ vol. ii., p. 888). Herodotus, describ... [ Continue Reading ]
SHALL NOT A DOG MOVE HIS TONGUE. — Com pare Joshua 10:21. The expression is evidently proverbial.... [ Continue Reading ]
ALL THESE THY SERVANTS — i.e., the high officers of the Court who were standing about Pharaoh. These grandees would come to Moses when the blow fell, and prostrate themselves before him as if he were their king, and beseech him to take his departure with all his nation. The details are given more fu... [ Continue Reading ]
AND. THE LORD SAID... — The series of the nine wonders wrought by Moses and Aaron is terminated by this short summary, of which the main points are — (1) God had said (Exodus 4:21) that the miracles would fail to move Pharaoh; (2) He had assigned as the reason for this failure His own will that the... [ Continue Reading ]