Accordingly it became a favourite title—“The Lord which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” Even the apostates under Sinai would not reject so illustrious a memory: their feast was nominally to Jehovah; and their idol was an image of “the gods which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (xxxii. 4, 5).
Has our land no deliverances for which to be thankful? Instead of boastful self-assertion, should we not say, “We have heard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have declared unto us, the noble works that Thou didst in their days and in the old time before them?” Have we forgotten that national mercies call aloud for national thanksgiving? And in the family, and in the secret life of each, are there no rescues, no emancipations, no enemies overcome by a hand not our own, which call for reverent acknowledgment? “These things were our examples, and are written for our admonition.”
The reproof now spoken to Pharaoh is sterner than any previous one. There is no reasoning in it. The demand is peremptory: “How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself?” With it is a sharp and short command: “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.” And with this is a detailed and tremendous threat. It is strange, in the face of the knowledge accumulated since the objection called for it, to remember that once this narrative was challenged, because locusts, it was said, are unknown in Egypt. They are mentioned in the inscriptions. Great misery was caused by them in 1463, and just three hundred years later Niebuhr was himself at Cairo during a plague of them. Equally arbitrary is the objection that Joel predicted locusts “such as there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after them, even to the years of many generations” (ii. 2), whereas we read of these that “before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such” (x. 14). The objection is whimsical in its absurdity, when we remember that Joel spoke distinctly of Zion and the holy mountain (ii. 1), and Exodus of “the borders of Egypt” (x. 14).
But it is true that locusts are comparatively rare in Egypt; so that while the meaning of the threat would be appreciated, familiarity would not have steeled them against it. The ravages of the locust are terrible indeed, and coming just in time to ruin the crops which had escaped the hail, would complete the misery of the land.
One speaks of the sudden change of colour by the disappearance of verdure where they alight as being like the rolling up of a carpet; and here we read “they shall cover the eye of the earth,”—a phrase peculiar to the Pentateuch (ver. 15; Num. xxii. 5, 11); “and they shall eat the residue of that which has escaped, ... and they shall fill thy houses, and the ... houses of all the Egyptians, which neither thy fathers nor thy fathers’ fathers have seen.”
After uttering the appointed warning, Moses abruptly left, awaiting no negociations, plainly regarding them as vain.
But now, for the first time, the servants of Pharaoh interfered, declared the country to be ruined, and pressed him to surrender. And yet it was now first that we read (ver. 1) that their hearts were hardened as well as his. For that is a hard heart that does not remonstrate against wrong, however plainly God reveals His displeasure, until new troubles are at hand, and which even then has no regard for the wrongs of Israel, but only for the woes of Egypt. It is a hard heart, therefore, which intends to repent upon its deathbed; for its motives are identical with these.
Pharaoh’s behaviour is that of a spoiled child, who is indeed the tyrant most familiar to us. He feels that he must yield, or else why should the brothers be recalled? And yet, when it comes to the point, he tries to play the master still, by dictating the terms for his own surrender; and breaks off the negociation rather than do frankly what he must feel that it is necessary to do. Moses laid his finger accurately upon the disease when he reproached him for refusing to humble himself. And if his behaviour seem unnatural, it is worth observation that Napoleon, the greatest modern example of proud, intellectual, godless infatuation, allowed himself to be crushed at Leipsic through just the same reluctance to do thoroughly and without self-deception what he found it necessary to consent to do. “Napoleon,” says his apologist, Thiers, “at length determined to retreat—a resolution humbling to his pride. Unfortunately, instead of a retreat frankly admitted ... he determined on one which from its imposing character should not be a real retreat at all, and should be accomplished in open day.” And this perversity, which ruined him, is traced back to “the illusions of pride.”
Well, it was quite as hard for the Pharaoh to surrender at discretion, as for the Corsican to stoop to a nocturnal retreat. Accordingly, he asks, “Who are ye that shall go?” and when Moses very explicitly and resolutely declares that they will all go, with all their property, his passion overcomes him, he feels that to consent is to lose them for ever, and he exclaims, “So be Jehovah with you as I will let you go and your little ones: look to it, for evil is before you”—that is to say, Your intentions are bad. “Go ye that are men, and serve the Lord, for that is what ye desire,”—no more than that is implied in your demand, unless it is a mere pretence, under which more lurks than it avows.
But he and they have long been in a state of war: menaces, submissions, and treacheries have followed each other fast, and he has no reason to complain if their demands are raised. Moreover, his own nation celebrated religious festivals in company with their wives and children, so that his rejoinder is an empty outburst of rage. And of a Jewish feast it was said, a little later, “Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy manservant and thy maidservant ... and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow” (Deut. xvi. 11). There was no insincerity in the demand; and although the suspicions of the king were naturally excited by the exultant and ever-rising hopes of the Hebrews, and the defiant attitude of Moses, yet even now there is as little reason to suspect bad faith as to suppose that Israel, once released, could ever have resumed the same abject attitude toward Egypt as before. They would have come back victorious, and therefore ready to formulate new demands; already half emancipated, and therefore prepared for the perfecting of the work.