(3.) Most of these plagues if not all discriminated sharply between the Hebrews in Goshen, and the Egyptians elsewhere in Egypt—e. g. flies (8: 22, 23) and murrain (9: 4–7), etc. This discrimination assumes that the plagues followed no general law of nature, but were altogether special, i. e. were truly miraculous.
(4.) They surpassed and even totally eclipsed the achievements of the magicians; in fact, routed them utterly from the field and showed before all Egypt that the Almighty God was there!——The case of the magicians will be considered more fully below.
(5.) The conviction was forced upon Pharaoh and the confession extorted from his lips (utterly against his will), that God’s hand wrought these achievements; that these calamities came at his command, and could be removed by his power and not otherwise. Hence over and over he begs Moses to pray to his God for their removal. See this in the case of the frogs (8: 8); of the flies (8: 28, 29); of the hail (9: 27–29); and the locusts (10: 16–18). It is not easy to see how stronger testimony to the reality of miracles can ever exist.
(6.) That these plagues were real miracles, direct from the hand of God, it is unquestionably the intent of the whole narrative to set forth and affirm. So much, no candid reader of the account has ever questioned. Some may say, the narrator was himself deceived: none will deny that he saw God’s finger there and meant to make all his readers see it. None can deny that according to his account even proud Pharaoh saw and felt the very finger of God in them. In fact the narrative makes this its main purpose, viz. to show that these judgments were nothing less than immediate visitations from the hand of the Almighty. Take out this element and there is nothing left.
(7.) Or thus: If there is any truth in history, the children of Israel were for a long period bondmen in Egypt. Ultimately the day of their deliverance broke and they came forth free. How came this to pass? Was it by forcible insurrection—the uprising of slaves cutting their way out of bondage into freedom with brave hearts and strong arms of their own? Or was it achieved by diplomacy? Or did Pharaoh relax his grasp and let the people go, under the impulses of humanity, or as a measure of political economy? All suppositions of this sort are not only unhistorical but utterly chimerical. No solution of this great problem—the redemption of Israel from bondage in Egypt—can ever find rational support save the one given in this record, viz. that the Almighty wrenched them from the grasp of Egypt’s proud and hardened king by a series of terrible judgments launched upon him and his people in quick and hot succession, until they were only too glad to hasten and drive the people out lest they should all be dead men. They were made to feel that the battle was against Almighty God and that they could not succumb too soon.
The events of this wonderful conflict and victory were stamped into the national life of Israel; they reappear all along the course of future ages, interwoven into the very warp and woof of her national history and into the moral forces which developed the nation’s piety. It might as reasonably be maintained that there never was any Hebrew nation as that God did not bring them forth out of Egypt with a high hand, first loosing Pharaoh’s grasp by these ten plagues, and last, burying his pursuing hosts and himself in the waters of the Red Sea.
The supernatural character of these plagues will stand out yet more distinctly when we shall place them in contrast with the things done or attempted by the magicians.
2. Several of these plagues were very specially adapted to Egypt.
This does not mean that they were at all less miraculous than any other supposable inflictions would have been; but only that they had more or less special fitness to the ends God had in view and were made to touchthe sensibilities of Egypt and her king in tender points. Thus, the Nile was Egypt’s pride and glory, indeed her very life, and not improbably (as some maintain) was worshiped by the Egyptians as one of their gods. How terrible then to wake in the morning to find it one vast sea of blood!—to have only blood for themselves and their cattle to drink; blood every-where for the eye to rest upon in place of the glory of the Nile! How terribly suggestive of their national sin—of the male infants of the Hebrews murdered there, and of the resources of Israel’s God to punish the guilty!