When Moses had left the city of On behind him, he spread abroad his hands towards heaven unto his God; and the thunders, and rain, and hail, and lightnings ceased.
Anticipating the removal of the judgment, I had been standing for some hours by the tower and fountain of Jacob. Suddenly the awful mass of ebony-black cloud, which, for three days, had never ceased to utter its voices of thunder, and send forth its lightnings, hail, and fire upon the earth beneath, began to roll itself up, like a scroll, towards the north. The thunder ceased. The lightnings were no more visible. The hail fell no more. And, as the cloud receded, the shadows upon the land—now smitten and desolate—moved with it. Gradually the whole landscape reappeared; first I saw the walls of On, then its towers, then the obelisks caught the light, and all at once the effulgent sun poured, from the clear sky above it, the splendor of his beams, which the shield of Osiris caught and again reflected with its former brilliancy. Slowly, but with awful majesty, the cloud of God's anger descended the horizon, and finally disappeared in the north. And I thought that mayhap its dark volume would be seen passing over the sea, even from Tyre, to your consternation and wonder.
What a scene of desolation the land presented when, the next day, I returned to On! The fields of flax and barley were smitten and consumed; the trees were broken and stripped of their leaves, either by the fire or hail; the houses and villages of the plain were devastated; in all the fields were dead corpses; and cattle and horses which had escaped the former plague, or been purchased from the Hebrews, were lying dead everywhere with their herdsmen. Chariots and their riders, overtaken in flight from On, lay upon the highways; and death, desolation, and horror reigned!
Entering the city, I saw soldiers that had been struck dead at their posts by the hail, still lying where they fell; and the streets filled with the dead and wounded, and with heaps of hail; while the sun shone down upon a scene of universal wailing and woe!
I passed on to the palace of Pharaoh, my position and rank having at all times given me free access to his presence. I found him at a banquet, as for three days and nights he had scarcely tasted food for terror and confusion, neither he, nor his lords, nor servants. They were feasting and drinking wine, and the king's face was flushed with strong drink; for, seizing the present moment of security, he revelled, striving to forget the past terrors. As I entered, his singers were singing a hymn to his gods; and when it was ended, Pharaoh, with his cup in his hand, cursed the God of the Hebrews who had sent such terrors upon his land, for hitherto he had said it was the gods of Egypt who had done these things, forced thereto by the powerful enchantments of the Hebrew brothers.
I turned away from his hall, refusing to go in, when Moses and Aaron passed me, and entered his presence. Upon seeing them, Pharaoh's heart was hardened against them and their God, and he and his lords rose up in fear and anger.
"Are ye come again before me, ye Hebrews?" he cried, in his wrath and wine. "I will not let Israel go! Not a foot nor hoof shall stir from the land! I have sworn it by the life of Pharaoh, and by the gods of Egypt!"
Then Moses answered the king, and said—
"Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, O Pharaoh: 'Let my people go! How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? Let my people go, that they may serve me; else on the morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coasts, and they shall cover the face of the earth, and devour what remaineth in the field, and shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all the Egyptians, even as hath not been upon the earth unto this day!'"
"We have seen locusts in Egypt, O Hebrew, and fear them not," answered Pharaoh, with a laugh of derision. "Go tell your God that Pharaoh and his gods defy Him and His locusts!"