[16] The passage in Deuteronomy had not this event specially in mind, or it would have used the same term for a furnace. The word for ashes implies what can be blown upon the wind.
[17] Except in one passage (Gen. ii. 4 to iii. 23) these titles of Deity are nowhere else combined in the books of Moses.
CHAPTER X.
THE EIGHTH PLAGUE.
x. 1–20.
The Lord would not command His servant again to enter the dangerous presence of the sullen prince, without a reason which would sustain his faith: “For I have made heavy his heart.” The pronoun is emphatic: it means to say, ‘His foolhardiness is My doing and cannot go beyond My will: thou art safe.’ And the same encouragement belongs to all who do the sacred will: not a hair of their head shall truly perish, since life and death are the servants of their God. Thus, in the storm of human passion, as of the winds, He says, “It is I, be not afraid”; making the wrath of man to praise Him, stilling alike the tumult of the waves and the madness of the people.
It is possible that even the merciful mitigations of the last plague were used by infatuated hearts to justify their wilfulness: the most valuable crops of all had escaped; so that these judgments, however dire, were not quite beyond endurance. Just such a course of reasoning deludes all who forget that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance.
Besides the reasons already given for lengthening out the train of judgments, it is added that Israel should teach the story to posterity, and both fathers and children should “know that I am Jehovah.”