So also for the murrain on the cattle, and the boils on the Egyptians. None of Israel were affected by these disasters. Did Moses have some kind of salve or prophylactic serum that he used, he being the great medical genius that this article makes him to be? Even that will not account for the fact that when the hail came, it, also, avoided the camp of Moses and his three and a half million compatriots!
But even a great medical genius and an accomplished meteorologist could not have foreseen the coming of the locusts that darkened the sky and the land as well. Nor could this great medical genius, even had he also been an able entomologist, have seen to it that the locusts ate only Egyptian vegetation, as Goshen greenery would have been just as acceptable to hungry locusts! And who ever saw any other kind?
Passing over the supernatural darkness with the simple observation that it was not an ordinary phenomenon such as a sandstorm (which left the houses of the Israelites unaffected), we will hasten to the conclusion of the matter, the death of the first-born. The article we are quoting makes a terribly strained attempt to prove that others died as well as the first-born, but the text of the Scripture does not so state or imply. Indeed, the text very clearly sets forth the fact that it was only the first-born who died. They died dramatically; all at the same hour.
At midnight, simultaneously, death smote a certain restricted class.
The prince in the palace, and the felon in the dungeon; the cattle as well.
But the first-born of Israel did not die!
They were all under the blood!
Quaint epidemic, was it not? It came as a result of disease germs in the river Nile, it killed all its victims out of just one class, the first-born, and it passed over any home that had lamb’s blood on the door posts!
Is it necessary for a man to believe such arrant nonsense, and accept such utterances of folly before he can qualify as an educated man, or a scientist?
Most fortunately, it is not!