So we must suppose that frogs were often inconveniently plenty in Egyptian waters. This visitation of such masses of them brought an evil by no means foreign to their experience. The miracle lay in their numbers and was none the less a miracle because there had been frogs there before. It must have been excessively annoying and humiliating,—if the frog as a near neighbor is as unamiable in that country as in this.
Essentially the same must be said of the lice [gnats]; of the flies; and of boils. All these were forms of evil not unknown in Egyptian life; but yet in the present case were truly miraculous and fearfully afflictive.
Their cattle were so useful and so highly esteemed that some of them were made objects of idolatrous worship. The golden calf of Hebrew history was an Egyptian idea. There was special pertinence therefore in this fearful slaughter among Egypt’s gods!
The hail, with most terrific lightning, was by far the more appalling because rain rarely falls there; hail and lightning yet more rarely.
In the natural course of events, locusts are among the fearful visitations of Oriental countries—not unknown in Egypt. In this case the fearfulness of the plague lay in their numbers, and the miracle was none the less because they had had some experience before of this form of desolation.
3. The case of the magicians.
The entire account of them is in these words. After Aaron had cast down his rod before Pharaoh and it became a serpent, “Then Pharaoh called the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did so with their enchantments. For they cast downevery man his rod and they became serpents; but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods” (Ex. 7: 11, 12). Again, after the miracle of turning the water to blood, “The magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments” (7: 22). After the miracle of the frogs, “the magicians did so with their enchantments and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt” (8: 7). Next, when all the dust became lice “the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man and upon beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh—This is the finger of God” (8: 18, 19). Finally, under the plague of boils, “The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians” (9: 11). We hear of them in this history no more.
The Hebrew word for “sorcerers” involves the practice of magic arts and incantations. The word for “magicians of Egypt” contemplates them originally as writers, the learned class, but couples with that the idea of special skill in horoscopy—the interpretation of dreams and the doing, or at least pretending to do, things beyond the skill of the uninitiated. The word for “enchantments” originally suggests secret arts, things covered, veiled from the public gaze.——The passage Deut. 18: 10–14, gives most if not all the nearly synonymous words by which this class of men and their arts were designated, showing also that they were regarded before the Lord with most intense abhorrence as an abomination. By the Mosaic law the practice of these arts was punishable with death (Ex. 22: 12).
In regard to the case of the magicians as presented in this history, the point of chief interest will be this—Did they really perform miracles? Did they in fact turn rods into serpents, and water into blood, and produce some frogs in addition to what were there before?——I am not sure that we have data sufficient to determine with certainty whether these things ascribed to them were simply tricks of hand, arts of jugglery; or whether there was really some power exerted, more and other than human.——The cases were of a sort in which deception was at least supposable. All the waters it would seem were turned to blood before their effort was made. If so, they had to do with what wasalready blood and had only to make it appear to be water before they began operations.——So of the frogs. When frogs were every-where in such numbers, it would not be specially difficult to make it appear that they produced yet more. The turning of rods into serpents is not unknown in the tricks of jugglery the world over.