12. The sixth was yet more distressing, for it sent boils and “blains” upon man and beast, not even the magicians being able to stand in the presence of Moses “because of the boils.”
13. The seventh plague was one not only of hail, but of fearful displays of lightning and peals of thunder, such as were never before known in the land.
14. The eighth was a terrific visitation of locusts which began, in unprecedented numbers, to eat up all vegetation left by the hail.
15. The ninth was intense darkness, in which plague not only was there an exceeding discomfort felt throughout the land, but the sun, which was the most sacred object of reverence, the supreme god of Egypt, withdrew his light before the command of Moses, as servant of the most high God.
16. The tenth plague was by far the most fearful of all. It was to the Egyptians both distressing and ominous. The first-born was, in a most loving sense, the most important member of the family—the one, above all the rest, upon whom the privileges of birthright were laid and who was, accordingly, regarded with special attention and love. Besides, in this fearful and sudden death of the first-born in every place there was felt, as never before, the presence of some awful power immediately back of this plague, which seemed to them to presage the approach of the destruction of the entire nation, and hence their outcry, “We be all dead men,” Exod. 12:33.
The Exodus, or the “departure,” began immediately, and Moses and Aaron, who had anticipated the result of this last plague, had prepared all the Israelites by giving them sufficient notice for a hurried flight.
CHAPTER II.
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SINAI AND THE DESERT.
1. It is necessary that we should obtain a general knowledge of the country over which the Israelites were now to travel. The land of Goshen, where the great majority of the Israelites were stationed, was included, probably, in the greater district of Rameses, as we have said. They left some general rendezvous early in the morning for Succoth, which was twenty or twenty-five miles southeast of the district of Goshen. The treasure city Pithom, mentioned with Rameses in the first chapter of Exodus (verse 11), was in Succoth, as a recent discovery has shown. The west arm of the Red Sea was about sixty miles farther south. The triangular district of the country between the two northern arms of the Red Sea, to which they were going, is a mountainous tract gradually ascending from the Gulf of Suez, or western arm, to the mountainous region of Horeb,of which Sinai was a chief mountain.[65] These mountains are entirely of granite. The large plain at the base of Sinai is 400 feet above the sea. The Sinai mountain seems to rise directly up from thisplain to the height of from 1,200 to 1,500 feet, and in some parts, at its base, the rock is for a long distance almost perpendicular, like a high bluff above the level soil. Parts of the rocky heights are 2,000 feet above the plain.
2. North of this region, about 50 miles, a sandy stretch of country comes abruptly to a general rise of sandstone cliffs, which extend many miles east and west, and the granite rocks disappear, having been left behind in Horeb.