6. Reminders of Moses’ Lowly Origins (6:9–7:5)

9Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.

10Then the LORD said to Moses, 11“Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country.”

12But Moses said to the LORD, “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me, since I speak with faltering lips?”

13Now the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron about the Israelites and Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he commanded them to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.

14These were the heads of their families:

The sons of Reuben the firstborn son of Israel were Hanoch and Pallu, Hezron and Carmi. These were the clans of Reuben.

15The sons of Simeon were Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jakin, Zohar and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman. These were the clans of Simeon.

16These were the names of the sons of Levi according to their records: Gershon, Kohath and Merari. Levi lived 137 years.

17The sons of Gershon, by clans, were Libni and Shimei.

18The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Kohath lived 133 years.

19The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi.

These were the clans of Levi according to their records.

20Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.

21The sons of Izhar were Korah, Nepheg and Zicri.

22The sons of Uzziel were Mishael, Elzaphan and Sithri.

23Aaron married Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon, and she bore him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.

24The sons of Korah were Assir, Elkanah and Abiasaph. These were the Korahite clans.

25Eleazar son of Aaron married one of the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas.

These were the heads of the Levite families, clan by clan.

26It was this same Aaron and Moses to whom the LORD said, “Bring the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.” 27They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. It was the same Moses and Aaron.

28Now when the LORD spoke to Moses in Egypt, 29he said to him, “I am the LORD. Tell Pharaoh king of Egypt everything I tell you.”

30But Moses said to the LORD, “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?”

7:1Then the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, 4he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.”

COMMENTARY

9–12 In spite of the grandeur of what “I am the LORD” means for Israel in the current situation, the people do not listen “for shortness of breath” (miqqōṣer rûaḥ). The NIV weakly translates “their discouragement” (v.9); but it is the inward pressure caused by deep anguish that prevents proper breathing—like children sobbing and gasping for their breath.

This makes such an impact on Moses that he has another attack of self-distrust and despondency. How can he persuade Pharaoh when he has failed so miserably to impress his own countrymen, who presumably have a naturally deep interest in what he has to say, given their circumstances (vv.11–12a)? Anyway, his lips are “faltering” (v.12b; NIV mg., “uncircumcised”) for the job they have been given to do (cf. the “uncircumcised” ears of Jer 6:10; “uncircumcised” heart of Jer 9:26). Thus Moses has returned to his fourth objection as stated in 4:10. He is not worried about his ability to speak fluent Hebrew after such a long time away from Eygpt, nor is he claiming to have a speech impediment. He is only skeptical of his ability to be persuasive in influencing Pharaoh by means of his oratorical skills.

13–30 Many regard this section as an “interruption” of the narrative. But the narrative itself is at a turning point. The stage has been set in 1:1–6:12, and now the main action begins. However, before that action begins, it is important that the author once again remind his readers just who Aaron and Moses are, “to whom the LORD” has spoken (v.26). In fact, the whole genealogy of vv.14–25 is surrounded and framed by the near verbatim repetition of vv.10–13 in vv.26–30 and v.14a in v.25b. This genealogical list concentrates on the two men and how they happen to be at this precise and momentous juncture in the history of humankind and nations.

Everything in the list suggests that God’s choosing of Moses has nothing to do with natural advantage or ability. The list stops after naming only three of Jacob’s sons—Reuben, Simeon, and Levi—for its object has been reached. Moses and Aaron spring not from the “firstborn,” Reuben, but from Levi, Jacob’s third son—and not even then from Levi’s oldest son but from Kohath, his second son (vv.16–19). And Moses himself is not the oldest son of his father, for Aaron is older. Moses’ calling and election by God are gifts of grace not based on rights and privileges of birth.

Nor is Moses’ pedigree all that noble from a moral standpoint, for the mere mention of each of these three names is enough to remind contemporaries of an “informing theology” that rattles ethical skeletons in his past—Reuben committed incest with his father’s concubine (Ge 35:22), while Simeon and Levi were guilty of unwarranted outrage against Shechem (34:25–31). So wicked were the three older sons of Jacob that they each inherited a curse: Reuben lost his birthright as “firstborn” (Ge 49:3–4), and Simeon and Levi were denied an inheritance with the tribes and were scattered among them instead (49:5–8).

But this is not done in any fatalistic way; for while Reuben’s and Simeon’s descendants do morally follow in their fathers’ footsteps, Levi’s descendants, with devotion to God, turn what was a curse into a blessing and use their dispersion throughout the tribes as an avenue of blessing to all through the priesthood and service at the sanctuary of God.

This honor did not prevent Levi’s descendant Korah (vv.21–24) from destroying himself by his own rebellion (Nu 16); yet his descendants were not thereby forever adversely determined for evil, for they later rose to a place of high position in leading Israel in songs of praise in the temple and in composing Psalms 42–49, 84–85, and 87. So the making of “this same Moses and Aaron” and the uses they are put to after they were made are totally the work of God. There is nothing left for them to claim or boast about in their pedigree. Nevertheless, the record also makes plain that there is a congruity between the experiences and all the endowments that have accrued to Moses during these eighty years of life; thus election works in the natural realm as well as the spiritual.

The text repeats the words of vv.10–13 in vv.26–30 as though to say, “Look who is talking back to God! A man of few credentials except those given him in the providence and grace of God!” But never mind that, v.28 seems to affirm; it is now a whole new game. The style of the Hebrew grammar (see Notes) declares, “I am the LORD.” The hour has come, and the name of Yahweh will be all the equipment Moses needs.

7:1–5 The theme here is similar to the point made in 3:18–22. While Yahweh has made Moses as “God” to Aaron and Aaron in turn as his “prophet” to the people, Moses has also been “ordained, appointed” (nātan) as “God” to Pharaoh in that he will speak and act with authority and power from above as God’s representative. Aaron will be Moses’ “prophet” addressing Pharaoh (v.1; cf. 4:15–16). Moses, then, will be the source of the divine oracles from above, and Aaron is to be God’s mouthpiece. Few texts give us a better view of just what it means to be a prophet for God.

But again this team is warned that Pharaoh’s heart will be “hardened” (qāšâ [GK 7996], v.3; see on 4:21), even though God will graciously provide him with supporting evidence by way of signs and wonders. The announcement from God will be the occasion but not the cause of Pharaoh’s actions. Nevertheless, after God has judged Egypt with his “mighty acts of judgment” (v.4; see Notes on 6:6), Israel will come out by its “divisions” (see Notes on 6:26).

Not only will Israel know what is meant by the name Yahweh, but so will the Egyptians. It will be as Jeremiah 16:21 described what it was to know “the LORD”: “Then they will know that my name is the LORD.” In addition to understanding the significance of the tetragrammaton (yhwh), these miracles will also be an invitation for the Egyptians to personally believe in this Lord. Thus the invitation is pressed repeatedly in 7:5; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 16, 29; 14:4, 18—and some apparently do believe, for “a mixed multitude” (12:38, KJV) leaves Egypt with Israel.

NOTES

13 Whether this verse is a summary of chs. 3–5 (Rawlinson, 1:155) or an anticipation of Aaron’s active involvement in 7:1–5 is debatable, but it seems best to understand it as a renewal of the orders received at the burning bush just as a new start begins in 7:1.

14 (rā ʾšê bēt-ʾabōtām, “heads of their families”) is literally “heads of their father’s houses” (cf. Ge 12:1; 20:13; Ex 1:1; Nu 1:4). The word “house” came to mean “household” and thus “family.” The list for Reuben’s sons is identical to Genesis 46:9 and 1 Chronicles 5:3.

15 The list for the sons of Simeon is the same as Genesis 46:10, but it differs from Numbers 26:12 and 1 Chronicles 4:24. In the later two lists Jemuel is Nemuel, Zohar is Zerah, and Ohad is missing, perhaps because he subsequently died or because of some other unknown reason. In 1 Chronicles 4:24 Jakin appears as Jarib.

20 The “Amram” mentioned here is probably not the “man of the house of Levi” in 2:1, except in a removed sense (see comment on 2:1). The verb (wattēled, “and she bore”) can be used of an ancestor removed by several generations as “bearing” great-grandchildren, even as Jacob’s two wives also “bore” the children their handmaids gave to Jacob (Ge 46:18, Ge 46:25).

26; 7:4 The term (ṣebā ʾôt, “divisions” or “armies”) has not previously been used of the people of Israel. Later this term with the name of Yahweh will become one of the most frequent names for God: “LORD of hosts” (NIV, “LORD Almighty”), e.g., as David was reassured as he went to meet Goliath in 1 Samuel 17:45.

28 (wayehî beyôm dibber, “Now when the Lord spoke”) is literally, “And it came to pass in the day of [Yahweh’s] speaking [to Moses].” The unusual Hebrew grammatical form has the noun “day” in the construct with the verb “he spoke” (cf. Ge 2:3; Hos 1:2 et al.). This construction highlights the fact that a new day has dawned.

D. Judgment and Salvation through the Plagues (7:6–11:10)

OVERVIEW

The plague account exhibits a clear and unified structure. Its unitary character has long been noticed, especially by Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508), Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (d. 1158), and Bahya ben Asher in his thirteenth-century commentary (see Ziony Zevit, “The Priestly Redaction and Interpretation of the Plague Narrative in Exodus,” JQR 66 [1976]: 194, nn. 6–7).

The first nine plagues are arranged in three groups of three plagues each. The first plague in each group (viz., nos. 1, 4, 7) is introduced by a warning delivered to Pharaoh early in the morning as he goes out to the Nile (7:15; 8:20; 9:13 [though this last one does not specify the Nile]). The second plague in each group (nos. 2, 5, 8) is also introduced by a warning, but it is delivered to Pharaoh at his palace (8:1; 9:1; 10:1). The last plague in each group (nos. 3, 6, 9) begins without any warning (8:16; 9:8; 10:21).

When these same nine plagues are considered sequentially, however, they may be viewed in another arrangement of three sets of triplets in an ascending order of severity: the first three (nos. 1, 2, 3) introduce irritations, the second set (nos. 4, 5, 6) destructions, and the final set (nos. 7, 8, 9) death. Again, each plague in the first set is brought on with the use of Aaron’s staff (7:19; 8:5, 16); the first two plagues in the second set (nos. 4, 5) are the work of the Lord directly, while the last one (no. 6) is the result of Moses’ word (8:24; 9:3, 6 and 10); and the last set of three (nos. 7, 8, 9) are all brought on by Moses with his outstretched hand and staff (9:22–23; 10:12–13, 21–22).

Other attempts to find the structure and meaning of the plagues are less convincing. Cassuto, 92–93, suggests that all ten plagues be broken down sequentially into sets of two according to the nature of the things affected: the Nile (nos. 1, 2); then two similar plagues (lice and flies; nos. 3, 4); animals and humans are next affected (nos. 5, 6); then crops are damaged (nos. 7, 8); then darkness of days and darkness of death (nos. 9, 10). There is insufficient evidence from the text to justify this arrangement, and the logic is missing in some (nos. 3, 4) or is forced in others (nos. 9, 10).

Dennis McCarthy (“Moses’ Dealings With Pharaoh,” CBQ 27 [1965]: 341–43) finds a concentric scheme that begins with the miracle of the staff turned into a snake numbered first and that continues through the nine plagues by dividing the miracle and nine plagues into two groups of five, so that the second set of five is matched with the first set in such a way that episode one is paired off with episode ten, two with nine, and so forth. But this chiastic arrangement is highly selective and artificial. Admittedly, it is dependent on certain key phrases and on the observation of the alternation of long and short units, but it neglects to account for some of these same key phrases in other units and includes the snake-staff miracle as number one. Most damaging is its failure to account for the real purpose and aim of these plagues.

Only the triplet grouping brings out the aim of the plagues and their sequence as recorded here. The initial plague in each triplet (nos. 1, 4, 7) has a purpose clause in which God sets forth for Moses his rationale and aim in bringing the hardships in that set:

This display of “power” and “signs” pointing to God’s person are also part of the psalmist’s appeal to these plagues in Psalms 78:42–51 and 105:28–38.

1. Presenting the Signs of Divine Authority (7:6–13)

6Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD commanded them. 7Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.

8The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 9“When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Perform a miracle,’ then say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh,’ and it will become a snake.”

10So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. 11Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: 12Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. 13Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.

COMMENTARY

6–9 After eighty years of preparation Moses begins his life’s work (v.6): “Moses and Aaron did just what the LORD commanded them.” It is only fair for Moses to record his faithfulness to God’s command just as he frankly records his failures to obey God’s commands. He and Aaron must reappear before Pharaoh, who in turn will ask them to perform a miracle, presumably to assure him that they are messengers of Israel’s God (vv.7–9). Undoubtedly his tone is supercilious and he expects there will be no miracle, for he must have judged Moses and Aaron to be nothing but opportunists and insurrectionists. Pharaoh’s literal words are: “Give a miracle for yourselves” (v 9), as though it were more important that it be done for the sake of Moses and Aaron than for Pharaoh.

Significantly, Scripture judges Pharaoh’s demand for validation of such claims as reasonable even if given with the wrong attitude. The Lord informs Moses to use the first of the three signs he used to convince Israel that he is indeed an accredited messenger of God (v.9; see 4:2–9, 30–31). However, in this instance Aaron’s staff (it is the same as Moses’ staff or the staff of God; cf. 4:17; 7:15, 17, 19–20) when cast down becomes a tannîn (“great serpent, dragon, crocodile”; see Notes; in 4:3–4 it became a nāhāš, “snake.”) The connection of tannîn with the symbol of Egypt is clear from Psalm 74:13 and Ezekiel 29:3.

10–13 Moses and Aaron do exactly as God instructs them—only to learn that Pharaoh’s wise men, sorcerers, and magicians (see Notes) are able to imitate the same feat by their magical arts (vv.10–11; see Notes). The use of magic in Egypt is well documented in the Westcar Papyrus, in which magicians are credited with changing wax crocodiles into real ones only to be turned back to wax again after seizing their tails. Montet (92–94, fig. 17) also refers to several Egyptian scarabs that depict a snake charmer holding a serpent made stiff as a staff up in the air before some observing deities (cf. ANET, 326, with a spell on a “spotted” knife [representing a snake?] that “goes forth against its like” and devours it).

The relationship between Aaron’s miracle and the magical act of the magicians (whom Paul calls Jannes and Jambres in 2Ti 3:8) is hard to define. Possibly by illusion and deceptive appearances they are able to cast spells over what appear to be their staffs but which are actually serpents rendered immobile (catalepsy) by pressure on the nape of their necks and by the use of magical spells. Or perhaps it is done via demonic power. (For a fuller treatment of this difficult subject, see Keil and Delitzsch, 1:475–77.) However, as evidence of God’s greater power, Pharaoh’s magicians lose their “staffs” when Aaron’s staff “swallows up” theirs. But Pharaoh is unaffected. His heart “becomes hard” (v.13; there is no reflexive or passive idea to the verb yeḥezaq, as so many translations render it).

NOTES

9 (tannîn, “snake, serpent”) is usually used for larger reptiles (Ge 1:21; Dt 32:33) such as crocodiles (Eze 29:3) or a sea monster and leviathan (Job 7:12; Isa 27:1; 51:9; Jer 51:34). It also is often used metaphorically as a symbol of national empires and power (e.g., Dt 32:33; Ps 74:13; Eze 29:3).

11 (ḥakāmîm, “wise men”) are the learned and schooled men of that day.

(mekaššepîm, “sorcerers, magicians”) is the intensive participle of the verb kšp (“to pray, offer prayers”). It is used in the OT only in the sense of sorcery.

(ḥarṭummîm, “magicians”) is always plural in the OT except in Daniel 2:10 (cf. Ge 41:8, 24; Ex 7:22; 8:7, 18–19; 9:11; Da 1:20; 2:2). It derives from an Egyptian loanword, ḥry-ḥbt, later shortened to ḥry-tp (“the chief of the priests”). In a seventh-century BC Assyrian document it appears as ḥar-ṭibi (D. B. Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph [Leiden: Brill, 1970], 203–4).

(belahaṭêhem, “by their secret arts”) is from the root (lûṭ, “to enwrap”; spelled here with an infixed he but without it in 7:22), hence the meaning “mysterious” or “secret.” The Egyptian word for magic is ḥikeʾ.

2. First Plague: Water Turned to Blood (7:14–24)

14Then the LORD said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is unyielding; he refuses to let the people go. 15Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he goes out to the water. Wait on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was changed into a snake. 16Then say to him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the desert. But until now you have not listened. 17This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. 18The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water.’”

19The LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs’—and they will turn to blood. Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in the wooden buckets and stone jars.”

20Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. 21The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.

22But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said. 23Instead, he turned and went into his palace, and did not take even this to heart. 24And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile to get drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the river.

COMMENTARY

14–18 God instructs Moses to go early (cf. 8:20) in the morning with his brother, Aaron, to intercept Pharaoh and his officials as they go out to the Nile (v.15; cf. v.20). Pharaoh’s purpose for going to the Nile with his officials remains unknown. Perhaps he is there to worship the Nile River god, Hapi. Moses and Aaron, however, are there to remind Pharaoh that “the LORD, the God of the Hebrews” (v.16) has sent them (5:1); yet the king of Egypt remains resolute in his defiance of this Lord. So God will help Pharaoh “know” who he is (v.17), insofar as Pharaoh protested in 5:2, “I do not know the LORD.” God will change the water of the Nile River into blood when Moses strikes it with his staff (v.17).

It is clear that v.17 and later 17:5 make Moses alone the user of the staff against the Nile River, but 7:19 has God instructing Moses to tell Aaron to stretch out his hand over all the waters in all Egypt so that they will be changed into blood. This hardly seems to be two different events of action by the two men. Verses 20–21 treat it as a single event; and it is not a clumsily overlooked inconsistency that leaves the trail of the divergent sources from which the material came. Instead, it is an “example of the phraseology by which an agent is said to do that which he commands or procures to be done” (Bush, 1:96; cf. Hos 8:1).

19–21 When Aaron stretches out his staff and strikes what the Egyptians regard as sacred, the Nile and the water all over Egypt turn to blood. What is the “blood”? W. M. Flinders Petrie (Egypt and Israel [London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1911], 25–36) was the first to suggest that the sequence of the plagues followed a natural cycle and all happened in one year. More recently Greta Hort (“The Plagues of Egypt”) traced this connected sequence by beginning with an unusually high Nile flood in July and August. The sources for the Nile’s inundation are the equatorial rains that fill the White Nile, which originates in east-central Africa (present-day Uganda) and flows sluggishly through swamps in eastern Sudan; and the Blue Nile and the Atbara River, which fill with melting snow from the mountains and become raging torrents filled with tons of red soil from the basins of both rivers—the higher the inundation, the deeper the color of the red waters.

In addition to this discoloration, a type of algae known as flagellates comes from the Sudanese swamps and Lake Tana along the White Nile and produces the stench and deadly fluctuation in the oxygen level of the river that proves to be fatal to fish. Such a process, at the command of God, seems to be the case for this first plague rather than any chemical change of the water into red and white corpuscles (cf. Joel 2:31—“the moon [will be changed] to blood”—or 2 Kings 3:22, where the water looked “like blood”).

Unlike other plagues and in agreement with this natural phenomenon, this plague does not stop suddenly. This explanation was accepted already by such conservatives as Keil and Delitzsch (1:478–79), Lange (20), and more recently Kitchen (NBD, 1000–1002). This change affected the “streams” (= seven [in Herodotus] branches of the Nile), the canals (to fertilize the fields), the ponds (left from the overflowing Nile), and the reservoirs (artificially made to store water for later use).

22–24 Once again Pharaoh’s magicians apply their “secret arts” and imitate the miracle sufficiently to blunt the force of it on Pharaoh’s conscience (v.22). The question of where they find any unblemished water if the fourfold water system in “all Egypt” (vv.19, 21) is affected is answered in v.24—subterranean water from freshly dug wells. The expression “all” or “every” must not be pressed in this case on the analogy of 9:6, 11, and 25 (cf. the obvious hyperbole of 10:5; Ge 41:57, “All the countries came to Egypt to buy grain”; Mt 3:5, “All Judea and the whole region of the Jordan” [emphases mine]). Bush, 1:78, chides, “If they had had any confidence in their own art, they would rather have attempted to turn the blood into water than . . . to ape the miracle of Moses . . . though there is no evidence of their succeeding even in this.” But Pharaoh remains unmoved and merely returns to his palace from the bloody river’s edge; his heart grows rigid and hard in spite of this evidence (v.23).

NOTES

19 (ûbaʿēṣîm ûbā ʾabānîm) is (lit.), “and in wooden [things] and in stone [things].” The NIV’s “in the wooden buckets and stone jars” is doubtful since vessels of wood and stone were not common in Egypt. Hyatt, 106, is most certainly incorrect—“even the sap in the trees and the springs . . . in stony places,” as is Cassuto, 99, when he conjectures that the water used to wash the idols of wood and stone also turned to blood (the preposition b he interpreted as “on”). Rawlinson, 1:172, had a better suggestion: “in the wooden and stone settlement tanks,” which were used for storing the Nile River water so that the sediment would sink before the water was used. Egypt often received no rain and never more than ten inches of rainfall per year in the delta.

23 (welō ʾ šāt libbô, “and [he] did not take even this to heart”) is an expression widely used in the OT (e.g., 9:21; cf. Hag 1:5, 7; 2:15, 18 with the verb śîm). It means simply, “pay attention.”

3. Second Plague: Frogs (7:25–8:15)

25Seven days passed after the LORD struck the Nile. 8:1Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. 3The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. 4The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials.’”

5Then the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.’”

6So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. 7But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

8Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the LORD to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the LORD.”

9Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.”

10“Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said.

Moses replied, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the LORD our God. 11The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile.”

12After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the LORD about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. 13And the LORD did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. 14They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. 15But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said.

7:25–8:5 Seven days after the first plague has begun, God instructs Moses and Aaron to take their demands to the king’s palace (cf. 7:23; 7:25–8:1). If he refuses to grant their repeated request to go to the desert to worship the Lord, they are to announce in the set formula, “I will plague your whole country with frogs” (v.2). This is not to be a “sign” but a “plague” only (see Notes). In comparison with what is to come, this is only a trivial annoyance.

6–7 On Aaron’s signal frogs emerge from the water and “cover” the land, says the text with legitimate hyperbole (v.6). These pesky creatures, though regarded as sacred to the Egyptians, are God’s scourge to whip people into facing the living God. The intensification of the nuisance by Pharaoh’s magicians is totally ignored by him (v.7). Tons of croaking, crawling, creeping intruders are everywhere.

8–15 Why should the frogs so suddenly abandon their natural habitat in August during a high Nile and invade the homes, bedrooms, ovens, kneading troughs, and even the palace itself? And why should they likewise die off so suddenly? Hort, 95–98, finds the connection to be in the dead fish killed by flagellates. The frogs abandon all the polluted and overflowing waterways (cf. 7:19) and seek cover from the sun on dry land in homes where possibly the presence of some unadulterated water attracts them. However, since they have already been exposed to spores of bacillus anthracis from the death spread along the waterways, the frogs also collapse and die.

Pharaoh has finally been forced to acknowledge the power of Yahweh, not by the armies of men, but by squadrons of loathsome little frogs. Now he knows who this “LORD” is (cf. 5:2), and he accedes to Moses’ and Aaron’s request (v.8)—only to renege later on (v.15).

Moses’ response to Pharaoh’s desperate or, as some think, cynical plea is to dare Pharaoh to test his prophetic credentials (v.9) and, more importantly, the power of God (v.10) by setting the time when he wishes to be rid of this plague. Pharaoh’s quick response of “tomorrow” leads Moses to enter into some intensely earnest prayer (v.12, the whole scene recurs with Elijah in a similar daring contest of prayer with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:36–37). Moses’ freedom to negotiate on his own terms and then to have, as it were, God back him up is remarkable.

The frogs drop dead everywhere—in the houses, fields, and open courtyards (v.13). Frogs are piled up in heaps, and there is a firm reminder to aid Pharaoh’s wavering memory—the stench of dead frogs (v.14). Nevertheless, that fades and so does Pharaoh’s permission. This “relief” (hārwāḥâ, v.15) is worse than the plague for this proud king. People do not often learn the righteousness of God when granted mercy and favor (Ps 78:34–42; Isa 26:10).

NOTES

8:1[7:26] The rendering of the waw conjunction to introduce a purpose clause agrees with usage here in (weyaʿabedunî, “so that they may worship me”) and in 7:11–12; 8:7–8.

2[7:27] Surprisingly few Hebrew terms are used for the plagues in this narrative. Actually, only in 9:14 is the word (maggēpōt, “plagues”) used. Here it is (nōgēp, “plague”). In 12:13 it is (negep, “a hit, pestilence”); in 11:1, (negaʿ, “stroke”); and in 9:3, 15, (deber, “pestilence”). The NIV uniformly renders these as “plague.” Hebrew has “border” used as a metonym for Egypt’s “territory” or “land” (NIV has the “whole country”).

(ṣeparde ʿîm, “frogs”) may be the Hebrew equivalent of the Egyptian Arabic name dôda or, as Cole suggests (91), an onomatopoeic form that attempts to imitate the cacophony of their incessant croaks. Frogs were associated with the froghead goddess Heqet, who assisted women at childbirth. The scientific name for these frogs, which are similar to our toads, is Rama Mosaica. Frogs are only mentioned in the OT in connection with this plague (see Pss 78:45; 105:30). Notice in v.6 that “the frog [singular in Hebrew] came up” is again used for the collective (NIV, “frogs”). “Possibly the writer consciously used the sing. ‘frog’ [tsephardē ʿa]: the frogs were so numerous that they could no longer be distinguished; it is as if one humongous frog, one big monster has Egypt in its grip” (Houtman, 2:47).

4. Third Plague: Gnats (8:16–19)

16Then the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.” 17They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came upon men and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats. 18But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not. And the gnats were on men and animals.

19The magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not listen, just as the LORD had said.

COMMENTARY

16–17 The third plague begins without warning to Pharaoh or his magicians. God again uses the outstretched staff in the hand of Aaron to initiate this plague. Aaron strikes the dust of the ground, just as he struck the Nile in the first plague (7:20), and “all the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats” (8:17, emphasis mine)—another hyperbole to stress the tremendous extent and intensity of this pestilence (cf. 7:19, 21; 9:6, 19, 25; 10:5).

The word “gnats” (kinnîm) occurs five times in this passage and nowhere else (except in Ps 105:31, unless another reading is verified in Isa 51:6). It is debatable whether this word means “lice” (as in the KJV, Peshitta, Josephus, and Targum Onqelos) or “gnats, mosquitoes,” as we favor with most interpreters, especially the translators of the LXX (who had firsthand acquaintance with Egypt [Gk. skniphes]).

18–19 On their fourth attempt to duplicate the miracles of Moses and Aaron, the Egyptian magicians admit defeat (v.18). Nevertheless, in spite of what success they experienced in the previous three encounters (and it may well have been through slight of hand, given the advance notice of the nature of the plague or sign in those cases—or perhaps it was just plain demonic, supernatural empowerment to mimic God’s power), they now realize that the plague of the gnats is the “finger of God” (v.19; cf. Dt 9:10; Mt 12:28; Lk 11:20), i.e., the result of his power (see Notes). “Finger” signifies God alone is responsible for this plague, not Moses and/or Aaron. But Pharaoh is not persuaded in his heart and mind; he remains adamant and opposed to any Israelite demands.

NOTES

7[8:3] On “secret arts,” see Notes on 7:11.

9[8:5] (hitpā ʾēr ʿālay) is a difficult phrase. The LXX has “appoint for me,” but more literally it is “glorify yourself over me.” This is more than an ordinary courtesy; it is an invitation to give Pharaoh the upper hand for the moment. The NIV translates it, “I leave to you the honor of.” Houtman, 2:48, translates it, “Please have it your way,” by emending the text from pʾr to bʾr, “make it clear [to me].”

10[8:6] (lemāḥār, “tomorrow”; lit., “for tomorrow”) is Pharaoh’s answer to Moses’ question: (lit.) “For when” or “For what date shall I ask in prayer to God?” (v.9). Pharaoh may have suspected that Moses is stalling for time, so he picks the earliest possible time for the removal of the plague that Moses may not have anticipated or thought of using.

12[8:8] (wayyiṣʿaq, “and [Moses] cried out”) is a strong expression to denote the earnestness and intensity of the prayer.

16[8:12] (kinnîm, “gnats”) appears in vv.17–18[13–14] as a feminine collective (hakkinnam) since it is governed by the third person singular verb (tehî, lit., “she came”). As prolific as is the dust, so there come zillions of gnats!

19[8:15] (ʾeṣbaʿ ʾelōhîm, “finger of God”) is a figure of speech called synecdoche, where a portion (here of the divine person) is used to denote the totality (of his power; see “finger of God” in Ex 31:18; Ps 8:3; Lk 11:20; “hand of God” in 1Sa 6:9; Ps 109:27). Cook, 281, argues that the expression is thoroughly Egyptian. It either attributes this act of God as being hostile to one of their protecting gods (e.g., the god of the earth, Set), or it equates Aaron’s wooden rod with the finger of a specific deity (see, e.g., ch. 153 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead). Synecdoche is the preferable explanation, because the magicians’ attitude is contrasted with Pharaoh’s hardheartedness.

5. Fourth Plague: Flies (8:20–32)

20Then the LORD said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning and confront Pharaoh as he goes to the water and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 21If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies, and even the ground where they are.

22“‘But on that day I will deal differently with the land of Goshen, where my people live; no swarms of flies will be there, so that you will know that I, the LORD, am in this land. 23I will make a distinction between my people and your people. This miraculous sign will occur tomorrow.’”

24And the LORD did this. Dense swarms of flies poured into Pharaoh’s palace and into the houses of his officials, and throughout Egypt the land was ruined by the flies.

25Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God here in the land.”

26But Moses said, “That would not be right. The sacrifices we offer the LORD our God would be detestable to the Egyptians. And if we offer sacrifices that are detestable in their eyes, will they not stone us? 27We must take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God, as he commands us.”

28Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the LORD your God in the desert, but you must not go very far. Now pray for me.”

29Moses answered, “As soon as I leave you, I will pray to the LORD, and tomorrow the flies will leave Pharaoh and his officials and his people. Only be sure that Pharaoh does not act deceitfully again by not letting the people go to offer sacrifices to the LORD.”

30Then Moses left Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD, 31and the LORD did what Moses asked: The flies left Pharaoh and his officials and his people; not a fly remained. 32But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.

COMMENTARY

20–21 As in the first plague, Moses must intercept Pharaoh again as he goes down to the Nile early in the morning. Cook, 281, postulates that the occasion for this royal procession is to open the solemn festival held 120 days after the first rising of the Nile, i.e., at about the end of October or the beginning of November. This time Pharaoh and all of his people and their houses are threatened with a plague of “flies” (heʿārōb).

Modern attempts to identify these creatures include (1) beasts, reptiles, and insects, supposing the word represents an Arabic root meaning “unmixed” (cf. that meaning in 12:38; NIV, “other people”); (2) the “dogfly,” as rendered by the LXX (kynomuia), a bloodsucking gadfly which, however, appears in the spring of the year and not the fall, when this plague occurs; (3) the ordinary housefly, which serves in Isaiah 7:18 as a symbol for Egypt (though the Hebrew word there is zebûb); and (4) the beetle Blatta Orientalis, which gnaws clothes, furniture, plants, humans, and beasts, arrives in late November, and bears a close resemblance to the Hebrew ʿārōb in an Egyptian word retained in Coptic, abeb (Cook, 490; Knight, 63–64, compares it to the scarab beetle).

It seems best to follow Hort, 99, 102, and say that the fly Stomoxys Calcitrans best fulfills all the conditions of the text. This fly multiplies rapidly in tropical or subtropical regions (hence the delta with its Mediterranean climate would be exempt) in the fall by laying its six hundred to eight hundred eggs in dung or rotting plant debris. When it is fully grown, the fly prefers to infest houses and stables, and it bites both humans and animals, usually in the lower extremities. Thus it becomes the principal transmitter of skin anthrax (see the sixth plague), which it contracts by crawling over the carcasses of animals that have died of internal anthrax.

22–24 By inaugurating a “distinction” (see Notes) between Moses’ people and Pharaoh’s people, God aids those hardened Egyptian hearts who suspect that nothing more than chance or difficult times were involved in the preceding three plagues. This distinction is found in the fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth plagues (v.23; 9:4, 6, 26; 10:23; 11:7). The purpose of this preferential treatment of Israel is to teach Pharaoh and the Egyptians that the Lord God of Israel is in the midst of this land doing these works; it is not one of their local deities.

Gods were thought by ancient Near Easterners to possess no power except on their own home ground. But not so here! The innocent are being delivered and the guilty afflicted because Israel’s God is in their midst. God will again do a “miraculous sign” designed to evoke the Egyptians’ faith and their release of Israel (see Notes on 4:8).

In another innovative feature Moses announces in advance when the plague is due to strike, giving the Egyptians time to repent. This advance notice is found in the fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and tenth plagues (v.21; 9:5, 18; 10:4; 11:4). Moreover, Pharaoh and his court are again singled out as the first victims of this plague because of the heavy responsibility they bear for their intransigence (vv.21, 24).

25–32 Moses’ claim that if Israel sacrificed animals in Egypt, it would be extremely offensive to the Egyptians has been challenged by some commentators as a clever ruse on Moses’ part. Yet Rylaarsdam, 901, documents a violent Egyptian reaction to Jewish sacrifices in the fifth-century BC colony at Elephantine (A. E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC [Oxford: Clarendon, 1923], 108–22). Thus Moses rejects Pharaoh’s counteroffer to allow Israel to sacrifice in Egypt (v.25).

Finally, Pharaoh concedes the long-denied permission. With a note of self-importance he pontificates, “I [ʾānōkî] will let you go . . . but [raq] you must not go very far” (v.28). And as though to show what his real thoughts are all along, he quickly adds, “Now pray for me.” Pharaoh shrewdly takes advantage of the fact that Moses has not said this time that they must go outside the country to worship. So Pharaoh—Venenum in cauda est! (“a snake lurks in the grass,” Houtman, 2:59), slips in the words “in the land” with his apparently concessive permission.

Moses will not be put down, for his mission likewise has dignity; thus he, too, begins with the pronoun “I” (ʾānōkî): “I am leaving you, and I will pray” (v.29, lit. tr.). Moses, with an obvious rebuke, says in effect, “Don’t you ‘however’ me when you are in such a poor bargaining position.” But then on a courteous note, with a switch to the third-person form of address, he continues, “Only [raq] be sure that Pharaoh does not act deceitfully again.”

The plague is removed through Moses’ prayer (cf. Elijah, 1Ki 18:42; Amos, Am 7:2, Am 7:5). So effective is the power of prayer and the evidence that God is in their midst that “not a fly remained” (v.31). But Pharaoh once again (cf. second plague, 8:15) returns to his hard-nosed stand once he obtains the physical relief he desires.

NOTES

21[17] (ʾašer . . . ʿāleyhā, “where . . . are”) is literally, “on which, where.” “Even the ground where they [i.e., the Egyptians] are” is sharply contrasted with v.22’s ʿāleyhā (“Where [my people live]”).

22[18] The LXX renders (wehiplêtî, “I will deal differently”) as “I will marvelously glorify,” misunderstanding it as from (pālā ʾ). The term occurs again in 33:16: “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on . . . earth?” (cf. also 9:4; 11:7).

(gōšen, “Goshen”) was the eastern delta region. About fifty miles northeast of modern Cairo is the Wadi Tumilat, a valley five or six miles wide and thirty miles long ending in Lake Timsah, now part of the present-day Suez Canal. The name “Goshen” in an Egyptian (hieroglyphic) name is spelled (like the other two delta names) with a word beginning with a bull, ka (= Hebrew first syllable Go).

23[19] (pedūt, “a distinction”; GK 7014) is correct here even though pedūt generally is rendered “redemption” or “deliverance” (a concept used of the impending exodus in 6:6; cf. gā ʾal, “to redeem [as a kinsman]”). To emend the text to read pelut (“separation”) is unwarranted since that nominal form would be a hapax legomenon. I agree with G. I. Davies (“The Hebrew Text of Exodus VIII 19 [EVV 23]: An Emendation,” VT 24 [1974]: 489–92) that the letter d was omitted by haplography from the text, which originally read prdt (from the verb prd, “to separate”) in the Hiphil, used three times in the OT with bên (“between”; Ru 1:17; 2Ki 2:11; Pr 18:18).

24[20] (ʾereṣ . . . tiššāḥēt, “the land was ruined”) contrasts with Psalm 78:45, which says that the flies “devoured them” (wayyoʾkelēm), i.e., the Egyptians themselves, while it was the frogs that “devastated [= ruined] them” (wattašḥitēm). Apparently both plagues had devastating effects.

6. Fifth Plague: Cattle Murrain (9:1–7)

1Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” 2If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, 3the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field—on your horses and donkeys and camels and on your cattle and sheep and goats. 4But the LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt, so that no animal belonging to the Israelites will die.’”

5The LORD set a time and said, “Tomorrow the LORD will do this in the land.” 6And the next day the LORD did it: All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one animal belonging to the Israelites died. 7Pharaoh sent men to investigate and found that not even one of the animals of the Israelites had died. Yet his heart was unyielding and he would not let the people go.

COMMENTARY

1–4 The fifth plague is patterned after the second: Moses must go to Pharaoh’s palace and announce the next pestilence (v.1). A “terrible plague” (v.3) will be brought, not by God’s “finger,” as the Egyptian magicians put it in 8:19, but by his “hand” (v.3). It will fall on all the cattle in the field. There is no need to press the expression “all the livestock” (v.6) to mean each and every animal and then find there are no Egyptian cattle left for the seventh plague (vv.19, 25), for it is already plain in v.3 that the plague affects only those cattle “in the field.” Normally Egyptian cattle were stabled from May through December, during the flood and the drying-off periods when the pastures were waterlogged. Thus some of the cattle are already being turned out to pasture in the south; so it must be sometime in the month of January. These cattle are then affected when they come into contact with the heaps of dead frogs left from the second plague and died of Bacillus Anthracis, the hoof and mouth disease.

Israelite cattle are exempted from the plague possibly because the delta would be slower in recovering from the effects of the flood, which occurs further downstream. Also, the Israelites’ different attitude toward corpses—they took precautions to deal with dead carcasses—may have spared their own cattle. Rawlinson, 1:199, suggests that the miraculous nature of this plague can be seen in (1) the announcement and timing of the pestilence (vv.3–6), (2) the severity of its effect (v.6), and (3) the selectivity of its impact on the Egyptians’ cattle only (v.7). This is the second plague in which God distinguishes between the Egyptians and the Israelites.

5–7 The interval between the announcement and the morrow (v.5), when the fifth plague is to take effect, will allow time for a believing response from Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Presumably some believe and attempt to rescue their animals by bringing them in from the fields. Others purposely delay turning their cattle out to pasture.

When Pharaoh hears that all the Israelite cattle have miraculously escaped the cattle plague, he sends envoys to Goshen to investigate (v.7). The rumor is true: “Not one animal belonging to the Israelites died” (v.6). Pharaoh probably has his own explanations and rationalizations, for his position and heart again become resolute and unyielding.

Meanwhile, another part of Egypt’s wide array of gods is hard hit: the Apis, or sacred bull Ptah; the calf god Ra; the cows of Hathor; the jackal-headed god Anubis; and the bull Bakis of the god Mentu. The evidence is too strong to be mere coincidence: (1) the time has been set by Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews (v.5); (2) a “distinction” is made between the cattle of the two peoples (v.4); and (3) the results are total—all Egyptian cattle “in the field” (v.3) die, but not one head of Israelite livestock perishes.

NOTES

3 G. S. Ogden (“Notes on the Use of in Exodus IX. 3,” VT 17 [1967]: 483–84) asks why the participle of hyh occurs here— (hôyâ, “[The hand of the LORD] will bring”)—and no other time in the OT when one would expect an imperfect or a nominal clause without a verb. His totally satisfactory answer is: (1) the use of the participle plus hinnēh lends itself to denoting an impending divine action, and (2) it conforms to a pattern in which the participle is used five times in Moses’ and Aaron’s petition for an Israelite pilgrimage, when they threaten Pharaoh with what God will do should Pharaoh fail to comply (7:17; 8:2; 9:3, 14; 10:4). Thus the participial form is “manufactured” to conform to this pattern.

See Notes on 8:2 for (deber, “plague, pestilence”). The word occurs in some fifty places either of the Lord’s judgment on a people (e.g., Lev 26:25; Nu 14:12; 2Sa 24:13–15) or as that from which the Lord is able to save his own (Ps 91:3).

Ever since W. F. Albright’s remark (Archaeology and the Religion of Israel [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1942], 96) that it was only in “the eleventh century [BC] that camel-riding nomads first appear in our documentary sources,” it has been customary to regard verses such as Genesis 12:16 (Abraham’s camels in Egypt), 37:25 (an Ishmaelite camel caravan headed for Egypt), and here— (baggemallîm, “on the camels”)—as being anachronistic. Cassuto, 111, however, affirms that domesticated camels were in Egypt during Moses’ time even though no scholarly agreement exists on the time of their original domestication (see also Kitchen, “Camel,” NBD, 181–83).

4 On (wehiplâ, “a distinction”), see Notes on 8:22 and 8:23.

7. Sixth Plague: Boils (9:8–12)

8Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. 9It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.”

10So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on men and animals. 11The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians. 12But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.

COMMENTARY

8–9 Like the third plague, this one, which completes the second cycle, is sent unannounced. For the first time the lives of humans are attacked and endangered; thus, it is a foreshadowing of the tenth and most dreadful of all the plagues. With a touch of divine irony and poetic justice, Moses and Aaron are each to take two handfuls (the form is dual) of soot from a lime kiln or brick-making furnace, the symbol of Israel’s bondage (v.8; see 1:14; 5:7–19). The soot is likely placed in a container and carried to Pharaoh’s presence, where Moses tosses it into the air. This act is a symbolic action much like those of the latter prophets (e.g., Jeremiah’s smashing of the pottery jar in Jer 19 or Ezekiel’s siege preparations and prophetically symbolic actions in Eze 4–5). There was also a logical connection between the soot created by the sweat of God’s enslaved people and the judgment that is to afflict the bodies of the enslavers.

10–12 When the soot is tossed skyward, festering boils break out on all the Egyptians and their animals (vv.9–10). Attempts to identify this malady have produced various results (see Notes).

In a humorous aside, v.11 notes that the magicians (who bowed out in plague three and are unnoticed, though possibly present, in plagues four and five) literally (and vocationally) “could not stand” before Moses. The same can be said for all the Egyptians. Here for the first time God hardens Pharaoh’s heart (v.12)—a seconding, as it were, of his own motion made in each of the preceding five plagues.

NOTES

8 (pîaḥ) is “soot,” not “ashes” taken from sacrifices, which are called (ʾēper; cf. Nu 19:10). This hapax legomenon is from the verb (pûaḥ, “to breathe, blow”).

(kibšān, “furnace”) appears four times in the Bible: Genesis 19:28 as a simile for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Exodus 19:18 as a simile for the theophany on Mount Sinai, and here in vv.8 and 10. Cook, 490, lists the Egyptian and Coptic word kabusa, meaning “anthrax” or “carbo.” Four other Hebrew words are used elsewhere in the OT for ovens or furnaces. That these kilns were used to make bricks along with the more usual sun-dried bricks is attested in the New Kingdom period.

9–10 (šeḥîn, “boils”) has an Arabic cognate that means “to be hot.” This sickness is associated with Job (Job 2:7–8) and Hezekiah (2Ki 20:7; Isa 38:21) and with various skin diseases (Lev 13:18–23).

(ʾabaʿbuʿōt, “blisters, pustules”; NIV, “festering”) is from an assumed verb buʿ (“to swell up”); but Cook, 490, points to the Egyptian bʿbʿ (“to drink”), which in Coptic means “to overflow.” The initial aleph in the Hebrew spelling is no special problem. Notice the slight difference in the expressions between v.9 and v.10 (lit. tr.): “Boils breaking out in pustules” (v.9) and “boils of pustules breaking out” (v.10).

Various suggestions for the malady are (1) smallpox (Cassuto), (2) Nile blisters similar to scarlet fever (Keil and Delitzsch), (3) skin anthrax (Hort, 101–3), and (4) inflammations or blains that become malignant ulcers (Bush, Greenberg). We side with Hort, since Deuteronomy 28:35 limits this plague principally to the lower extremities of the body—on the knees and legs. Furthermore, the black soot is especially suited, for anthrax (cf. anthracite coal) is a sort of black, burning abscess often occurring with cattle murrain.

The flies of the fourth plague (Stomoxys Calcitrans) have generally been blamed as the carriers of the anthrax spores, but they are totally removed at the conclusion of that plague. Presumably this is another generation of flies (another batch can come in twenty-seven to thirty-seven days). After animals or humans are bitten on the legs by these flies, a small bluish-red pustule with a central depression in the middle of the swelling appears after two or three days. The center of the boil dries up only to have new boils swell up, and the skin festers as though it has been burnt and then peels off (Hort, 101).

8. Seventh Plague: Hail (9:13–35)

13Then the LORD said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, 14or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. 15For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. 16But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. 17You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go. 18Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. 19Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.’”

20Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the LORD hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside. 21But those who ignored the word of the LORD left their slaves and livestock in the field.

22Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that hail will fall all over Egypt—on men and animals and on everything growing in the fields of Egypt.” 23When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; 24hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. 25Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields—both men and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. 26The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were.

27Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron. “This time I have sinned,” he said to them. “The LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28Pray to the LORD, for we have had enough thunder and hail. I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.”

29Moses replied, “When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the LORD. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail, so you may know that the earth is the LORD’s. 30But I know that you and your officials still do not fear the LORD God.”

31(The flax and barley were destroyed, since the barley had headed and the flax was in bloom. 32The wheat and spelt, however, were not destroyed, because they ripen later.)

33Then Moses left Pharaoh and went out of the city. He spread out his hands toward the LORD; the thunder and hail stopped, and the rain no longer poured down on the land. 34When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts. 35So Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the LORD had said through Moses.

COMMENTARY

13–19 As in the first (7:15) and fourth (8:20) plagues, Moses is to begin this third cycle of plagues by rising early in the morning to confront Pharaoh with the Lord’s message (v.13). From these early days in February until the time of the tenth and climactic plague, Pharaoh will spend approximately eight of the most dreadful weeks he has ever known.

To underscore further the theological significance of these weeks and their events, God prompts Moses to preface his latest announcement of divine judgment with a long message filled with doctrinal instruction. This unprecedented message is calculated to move Pharaoh and his subjects from rebellion to belief in Israel’s God. Its ominous contents include the following:

  1. 1. An announcement that God will vent the “full force” (v.14; i.e., “all the remaining plagues”; cf. 29:12 with Greenberg, 160) of the plagues on Egypt so that no one will doubt that there is anyone like this God in all the earth.
  2. 2. A reminder that previous pestilences and plagues may well have swept both king and people off the face of the earth had not God deliberately and purposely spared them for one important reason: that his power and name might be heralded throughout the earth by means of Pharaoh’s stupidity (vv.15–16).
  3. 3. A declaration that in denying the release of Israel, Pharaoh has acted as an obstructionist against Almighty God himself (v.17).
  4. 4. A threat that Egypt will experience the worst hailstorm it has ever seen in its history (v.18).
  5. 5. An extraordinary feature that provides for those Egyptians who believe Moses’ words are a means of escape from the effects of the storm (v.19).

The seventh plague will be judgment with the expectation that it may result in the blessing of belief and trust. Had not Abraham been given this mission to be a means of blessing to “all peoples on earth” (Ge 12:3)? And has not the theme “that the Egyptians might know that I am the LORD” (or slight variations) appeared frequently in the midst of these plagues (7:5; 8:10; 9:14, 16, 29–30; cf. also 14:4, 18)? Moses will sigh over Israel (Nu 14:11), “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them?” The same words apply here.

The months of leniency are almost over. Now the full blast of the ensuing plagues will penetrate directly to Pharaoh’s “heart” (v.14; NIV, “against you”). The “heart” (lēb; GK 4213) does not signify “his person,” as nepeš (GK 5883) can (Keil and Delitzsch, 1:489); rather, it refers to his inner being, nature, and seared conscience. His pride and arrogance will be tossed to the wind as the terrors of these new plagues force him in perplexed and desperate sorrow of soul literally to beg the Israelites to leave his presence immediately.

Yet Pharaoh is no mere pawn to be toyed with at will, for the object is that he too may come to experience personally and believe (“know”) the incomparability of God’s person and greatness. The superlative rating of his deeds (untr. in NIV)—none “like it” (kāmōhû, of the hailstorm in vv.18, 24; of the locusts in 10:6)—should lead the king and his people to the identical rating of God’s person (no one “like you,” kāmōkâ, 15:11; kāmōnî, “like me,” 9:14).

20–26 Rainfall comes only occasionally in Upper Egypt; thus, the prediction of a severe hailstorm accompanied by a violent electrical storm is probably greeted with much skepticism. Only the delta receives on an average about ten inches of rainfall per year, while Upper Egypt has one inch or, more often, none. But some fear “the word of the LORD” (v.20) and act accordingly. This is belief as it should be, resulting in appropriate action based on confidence in God’s word. Some Egyptians receive Moses’ words as being from God himself, for they become a part of that mixed company of Gentile believers who leave Egypt with Israel (see 12:38).

In the three plagues of the third cycle (9:10; 10:13, 20), Moses apparently loses his shyness and diffidence, for he is the one who now stretches forth his staff and his hand (v.22; cf. Aaron’s leading role in the first three plagues: 7:19–20; 8:6, 17). Hail joined by unannounced thunder and balls of fire (see Notes) that run along the ground (v.23) provide Egypt with the most spectacular display in her history (see Notes on vv.18, 23, 24).

The destruction is devastating. Five times in vv.24–25 the word kol (“all, everything”) is used; yet it is used hyperbolically and not literally, because the first two occurrences of kol (“in all Egypt,” vv.24–25a; NIV, “throughout Egypt”) are immediately qualified in v.26 to exempt the land of Goshen, where the Hebrews live. Nevertheless, even though the storm does not take every single tree, herb, or creature in the field, it is tragic enough to impress even the most calloused individual.

27–30 Pharaoh, obviously shaken, concedes the point: “I have sinned,” he admits, though he includes the face-saving qualifier “this time.” The question is, however, what makes this plague any different than the rest—except its severity. Only when the Lord begins to hurt Pharaoh does he (momentarily) seek him (cf. Ps 78:34). Like Jeremiah (Jer 12:1), Pharaoh declared that Yahweh (not Elohim!) is in the right and that he and his people are in the wrong! Indeed! But has not Pharaoh been reduced to plea-bargaining with Moses and Aaron twice before (8:8, 25–28)?

Moses’ reply is simple, confident, and noble. He will spread out his hands in prayer (a gesture of request and appeal to God) once he is back in the country with his own people, and the hail and thunder will stop—to prove once again (in this repeated apologetic and evangelistic refrain) that the whole earth belongs to the LORD. “But,” Moses adds, “I know that you and your officials still do not fear the LORD God” (v.30; an unusual combination of divine names [Yahweh-Elohim] seen only here and in seven other places in the OT besides in Ge 2 and 3; see D. F. Kidner, “Distribution of Divine Names in Jonah,” TynBul 21 [1970]: 126–28, for its use in Jnh 4:6, another Gentile context).

31–35 Even though most commentators complain about either the location of the parenthetical note in vv.31–32 (most prefer it to appear after v.25) or its alleged artless midrashic attempt to explain and harmonize later plagues with the extent of the destruction here, we find it most conveniently located. The integrity of the seasonal observation confirms the order in this text, if the narrative is taken on its own terms and allowed to be innocent until proven guilty. Accordingly, before Moses prays for the hail to cease, he has sufficient time to tell the reader just how extensive the damage has been.

Furthermore, since in Egypt flax is usually sown in the beginning of January and is in flower three weeks later, while barley is sown in August and is harvested in February, both would be exceedingly vulnerable if this plague occurred in the beginning or middle of February (probably a little later than usual with a high Nile year). Wheat and spelt (see Notes) are also sown in August but are not ready for harvest until the end of March.

That Goshen is unaffected by this storm matches the agricultural observations, for the Mediterranean temperate zone has these storms only in late spring and early autumn, but not from November to March (Hort, 48–49). Flax is used for linen garments. The vicinity of Tanis was ideal for producing it. Barley is used in the manufacture of beer (a common Egyptian drink), as horse feed, and for bread by the poorer classes.

After Moses’ prayer is answered, Pharaoh once again rescinds his offer and forgets all about his confession of sin and wrong.

NOTES

13–14 More than wordplay can be found in the divine demand, “Release my people . . . or I will release all my plagues [on you]” (NIV, “Let my people go . . . or . . . I will send”). In both instances the verb is (šlḥ).

14 For (kol-maggēppōtay, lit., “all my plagues”) the NIV has, “the full force of my plagues.” See Notes on 8:2.

(ʾel-libbekā, “against you”) is literally, “at [or] into your heart.” There is no need to emend the text to (ʾēlleh bekā, “all these . . . on you”) with Hyatt, 118, for as Childs, 129, says, “The MT is clear enough.” The NEB renders it, “[I will] strike home.”

17 (mistôlēl) is a Hithpael participle from the root sll, which means “to raise up a mound or bank, to obstruct”; hence the reflexive idea of the stem is, “to elevate oneself [so as] to be an obstructionist” (NIV, “set yourself”). For an illustration of (b) used in the sense of “against,” as here— (be ʿammî, “against my people”), Cassuto points to Micah 7:6.

18 (hiwwāsedâ, “[from the day Egypt] was founded”) is a rare form of the Niphal perfect. B. Couroyer (“Un égyptianisme biblique: ‘depuis la fondation de l’Egypte,’” RB 67 [1960]: 42–48) finds evidence for declaring that this phrase is a common Egyptian expression (cf. Cassuto, 117), though the Hebrew yāsad (“to found”) would correspond to the Egyptian grg.

21 (lō ʾ-šām libbô, “[those who] ignored [the word]”) is literally, “did not set his heart [to the word].” See Notes on 7:23. Observe the singular again.

23 (nātan qōlōt, “give voice”) is a frequent Hebrew expression for the idea, “to thunder.” It is also called the “voices of God” in v.28 (cf. 19:16; 20:18; 2Sa 22:14; Job 28:26; 38:25; Ps 29:3–9). Notice the figure of speech called zeugma, in which two objects (“voice [= ‘thunder’] and hail”) are linked to the one Hebrew verb “give” (= “sent”), but only the first goes naturally with the verb.

(wattihalak ʾēš ʾāreṣâ, lit., “and fire ran along the ground”) is rendered by the NIV, “lightning flashed down to the ground,” which is weaker. Notice the archaic form of the verb for the usual wattēlēk.

24 (ʾēš mitlaqqaḥat, lit., “fire taking hold of itself,” i.e., zigzagging back and forth as though it were trying to grab itself) is clearly retranslated by the NIV as, “the lightning flashed back and forth.” See the exact phrase in Ezekiel 1:4, which also describes a storm.

26 On Goshen, see Notes on 8:22; cf. also Genesis 45:10–47:6.

32 The word (kussemet, “spelt” [?]) occurs only here and in Isaiah 28:25 and Ezekiel 4:9. This may be emmer, which is known from Egyptian tombs while spelt is not. See Cook, 490, for Egyptian smw (“herbs”) used in the Coptic version of v.25 and for a kind of Egyptian grain spelled kmtt, kmdt, or kwt. Rawlinson, 220, calls it doora, a crop sown in late autumn as an after-crop, which ripens at about the time wheat does.

9. Eighth Plague: Locusts (10:1–20)

1Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them 2that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD.”

3So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 4If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. 5They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. 6They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.’” Then Moses turned and left Pharaoh.

7Pharaoh’s officials said to him, “How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the LORD their God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?”

8Then Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. “Go, worship the LORD your God,” he said. “But just who will be going?”

9Moses answered, “We will go with our young and old, with our sons and daughters, and with our flocks and herds, because we are to celebrate a festival to the LORD.”

10Pharaoh said, “The LORD be with you—if I let you go, along with your women and children! Clearly you are bent on evil. 11No! Have only the men go; and worship the LORD, since that’s what you have been asking for.” Then Moses and Aaron were driven out of Pharaoh’s presence.

12And the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over Egypt so that locusts will swarm over the land and devour everything growing in the fields, everything left by the hail.”

13So Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the LORD made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts; 14they invaded all Egypt and settled down in every area of the country in great numbers. Never before had there been such a plague of locusts, nor will there ever be again. 15They covered all the ground until it was black. They devoured all that was left after the hail—everything growing in the fields and the fruit on the trees. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt.

16Pharaoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against the LORD your God and against you. 17Now forgive my sin once more and pray to the LORD your God to take this deadly plague away from me.”

18Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD. 19And the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. 20But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

COMMENTARY

1–2 For the first time we are told that Egypt’s officials are also as obstinate as Pharaoh; therefore the Lord (the pronoun “I” being repeated in Hebrew for emphasis) has hardened them all (v.1). But Moses must find a lesson in this divine work of hardening. There follows, then, another theological preface to the eighth plague (vv.1–2), just as Pharaoh was served in 9:14–16 with a similar lesson prior to the seventh plague. The lesson for Israel is twofold: (1) to educate succeeding generations in how the Lord “makes sport” (see Notes) of the Egyptians and performs his miracles in their land, and (2) thereby to bring Israel to faith in the Lord. Evidence for this recital of their miraculous deliverance from Egypt can be seen in Psalms 77:11–20; 78:43–53; 105:26–38; 106:7–12; 114:1–3; 135:8–9; 136:10–15 (see also Dt 4:9).

3–6 Moses proceeds to the palace, as is his custom in the second plague of each of the three cycles, and announces to Pharaoh the next plague (vv.3–4). The message begins with a question: “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before [the LORD]?” Pharaoh’s act of self-condemnation and abject humility in 9:27 is just that—an act. But here is the consummate question of all questions that God finally raises against all obstinate sinners: “How long?”

The demand for Israel’s release is again laid down along with a time lag providing ample opportunity for reflection and repentance: “tomorrow” (v.4; cf. 8:10, 15, 21; 9:5–6, 18). Moses informs Pharaoh that God will “bring locusts into your country” (Joel 2:25 calls locusts God’s “great army”). They will finish off every living green thing, leaving destruction in their wake (v.5). It will exceed any locust invasion Egypt has ever known (v.6). With that Moses and Aaron turn their backs on Pharaoh (an amazing gesture for normal protocol) and stalk out.

7–11 Pharaoh’s officials—till now, silent observers in this contest of wills—pick up Moses’ “How long?” (v.3) with a “How long?” of their own: “How long will this man [zeh, ‘this (man),’ not zō ʾt, ‘this (situation)’] be a snare to us?” (v.7). Out of loyalty to their king and country they blame Moses; but it is obvious that they are beginning to become impatient with Pharaoh’s intransigence. Cannot Pharaoh see the “snare” this man is setting for them, and does Pharaoh not realize that Egypt is nearly ruined? How long, indeed, can all this continue? Someone has to give in. They urge Pharaoh to yield: “Let the people [hā ʾanāšîm, ‘the men’ in the generic sense] go.”

In another first, Pharaoh asks Moses and Aaron to return to the palace for some negotiations related to the imminent pestilence (v.8). Clearly as a sop to his frightened officials, Pharaoh half-heartedly gives Moses his permission to take Israel to sacrifice in the desert. However, he coyly asks (as though he does not remember Moses’ original request or the advice just given him by his own officials), “Just who will be going [on this religious trip]?” Moses responds out of a position of strength: “We all are going to celebrate this festival to the LORD” (cf. v.9). “Oh no you’re not,” is Pharaoh’s decisive rejoinder (cf. v.10). You take only your “men” (haggebārîm, lit., “strong men,” v.11); that will be enough for religious purposes. It is true, of course, that later Israel required only males to attend the three yearly festivals (23:17; 34:23; Dt 16:16), but the artificiality of this limitation at this time is evident from Herodotus’s note (2.60) that the women accompanied the men at Egyptian religious festivals.

The contempt Pharaoh feels for Moses’ request and for Yahweh himself can be seen in his biting sarcasm and veiled threat of v.10: “The LORD be with you [i.e., ‘May God help you’]—if I let you go, along with your women and children!” To Pharaoh it is plain that Moses and his people are up to no good. Cassuto, 125, believes that all this talk about a three-day journey is just a lot of diplomatic bargaining in which each side knows what the other wants without ever explicitly declaring it. Pharaoh does not yield to this moderate first-step request for fear of what is to be (though unknown at the time to him) the ultimate request (see comment on 3:18b). Moses and Aaron are then insulted by being chased from the premises—another in a string of wicked firsts.

12–15 So the plague is ordered to begin as Moses again (see comment on 9:22) stretches out his hand and staff over Egypt (v.12). Swarms of locusts (see Hort, 48–52) from the bumper crop produced because of the exceedingly wet summer in Ethiopia (which also caused the unusually high Nile) is swept away from natural breeding grounds around Port Susa and Jidda (on the west side of the Red Sea across from the Arabian Peninsula) by an east wind that blows all day and all night (v.13; cf. 14:21).

Thus these locusts (now ready to migrate in February or March after hatching during the winter from the eggs laid in September) are driven into Egypt by a sirocco (a hot wind) from the Arabian Peninsula, instead of into Canaan had the winds been from the southwest. They come in droves (v.14, lit., “exceedingly heavy,” as in 9:3, 18). They finish off everything the hail left (v.15).

16–20 Hastily Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron and, without any qualifications as in 9:27–28, confesses his sin against Yahweh their God and against these men (v.16). But he still insists on having the upper hand. “Now,” he adds, as though to organize Moses’ conclusion, “forgive [śā ʾ, singular] my sin once more [ʾak happaʿam, i.e., this one more time]” (v.17). He pretends that this is it. No more will he change his mind, no more tricks! Just ask your God, he pleads, “(only) [raq, untr. in NIV] to take this deadly plague away from me.”

Once again God graciously answers Moses’ prayer (v.18). He sends a strong “sea breeze” (rûaḥ yām), which for people living in Canaan would have been a “west wind” but for those in Egypt was a wind from the north or northwest, that drove the locusts into the Reed Sea.

NOTES

2 (hit ʿallaltî, “I dealt harshly”) describes an action that brings shame and disgrace on its object. It is used anthropomorphically of Yahweh’s treatment of the Egyptians when he “made toys of” them or even “made fools out of them” (my tr.; cf. 1Sa 6:6). These negative connotations are brought out with Balaam in Numbers 22:29, the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19:25, and Saul’s fear of the Philistines’ final action in 1 Samuel 31:4.

4 (ʾarbeh, “locusts”) is from the root rbh (“to be numerous, many, multiplied”). The use of the collective singular for the plural is again noteworthy. For other names for locusts, see Joel 1:4. The species intended here is either the Acridium Peregrinum or the Oedipoda Migratoria—neither being a stranger to Arabia, Egypt, or Canaan.

5 (ʿên hā ʾāreṣ, lit., “the eye of the ground”) is rendered “the face of the ground” by the NIV. “Surface of the ground” destroys the figure of speech called metonymy, where a faculty is put for an object; here, the sight or visibility of the ground will be hidden by the prodigious numbers of locusts (Bush, 1:122).

6 On (miyyôm heyôtām, “from the day they settled”), see the Notes on 9:18. On the idiom, “till now” (, ʿad hayyôm, lit., “until the day”), see B. S. Childs, “A Study of the Formula, ‘Until this Day,’” JBL 82 (1963): 279.

8 (mî wāmî hahōlekîm, “just who will be going?”) is literally, “Who and who [are] the ones going?” The repetition of the interrogative pronouns may be for emphasis, but the expression appears idiomatic, though it occurs only here.

10 On (ṭāp, “women and children”), see Notes on 10:24.

14 On (kēn . . . kāmōhû, lit., “such [a plague of locusts] as it”), see on 9:14 and 18. See Labuschagne, 14, for formulas of incomparability.

15 The repetition of “all” in this passage may be similar to that in 9:24–25; see comment there.

10. Ninth Plague: Darkness (10:21–29)

21Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.” 22So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. 23No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.

24Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, “Go, worship the LORD. Even your women and children may go with you; only leave your flocks and herds behind.”

25But Moses said, “You must allow us to have sacrifices and burnt offerings to present to the LORD our God. 26Our livestock too must go with us; not a hoof is to be left behind. We have to use some of them in worshiping the LORD our God, and until we get there we will not know what we are to use to worship the LORD.”

27But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. 28Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.”

29“Just as you say,” Moses replied, “I will never appear before you again.”

COMMENTARY

21–23 Unannounced, like the third and sixth plagues, the ninth plague comes in the month of March as Moses once again stretches out his hand (v.21; cf. 9:22; 10:12). No doubt God uses the yearly phenomenon known as the khamsin, meaning the “fifty”-day wind that blows off the Sahara Desert from the south and southwest usually at about the time of the vernal equinox. During two or three of those days the wind blows with great force and picks up sand and dust. Given the unusually high Nile with the red dirt it has spilled over everything and the now barren and baked fields after the hail and locusts have destroyed all the vegetation that would hold the soil in its place, this is no ordinary khamsin. The polluted air got so thick—“no one could see anyone” (v.23)—that the sun itself is blotted out for “three days” (v.22). Israel, meanwhile, is somewhat protected by the hills on the south side of the Wadi Tumilat and by the fact that the red silt has not dried out as much, since their fields are later in clearing the effects of the flood (Hort, 52–54).

24–29 Pharaoh decides to compromise further: Hebrew families can attend this festival celebration, but they must leave behind their flocks and herds (v.24). But Moses yields nothing. “Not a hoof is to be left,” he affirms in a fine hyperbole rising to proverbial status, “for we have to use some of them in worshiping the LORD” (vv.25–26). The festival is brand new, and it is as yet unannounced, explains Moses.

But Pharaoh has had enough. Rudely he demands that they leave and never darken his presence again on penalty of death. But does he think that will prevent further disasters? Have not plagues three, six, and nine come without warning? Is it not strange for him to be threatening Moses with death when the smell of death is all over his court and Egypt? As Bush, 1:30, has said, “It is a sad farewell when God, in the persons of his servants, refuses anymore to see the face of the wicked.”

NOTES

21 (weyāmēš, “can be felt”) is from the root mûš, which means “to feel, grasp” with the hands (Ps 115:7). It is used of Samson’s hands on the pillars in Judges 16:26. Here the darkness is so great that it can be touched.

22 (ḥōšek-ʾapēlâ, “total darkness”) is an intensive expression that literally means “darkness of obscurity.” The LXX strings three Greek words together: two for “darkness” (skotos gnophos) and a third (thyella) for “storm”; therefore Hyatt, 127, suggests that the LXX translator may have been the first commentator to associate this darkness with the khamsin.

24 (ṭappekem) is “your women and children.” Ṭap (lit., “little ones”) means only the children when women are mentioned separately (Ge 34:29; 45:19; 46:5), but at other times it means “women and children” (Ge 43:8; 47:12; Ex 10:10).

24–26 Moses matches Pharaoh’s generous (gam, “even, also”), allowing the children to accompany the worshipers, with two of his own in vv.25 and 26. In the phrase (gam-ʾattâ tittēn beyādēnû, “You must allow us [to have sacrifices]”), many commentators think that Moses makes a new impudent request that Pharaoh donate his animals for this sacrifice, but this makes no sense contextually. Nor does Moses specify their animals. The phrase is either as the NIV has it, “You must allow us,” or as Hyatt, 127, paraphrases it, “You would have to provide us with sacrifices . . . if we did not take along our own livestock” (see 3:18; 5:1–3; 8:25–28).

11. Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn (11:1–10)

1Now the LORD had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. 2Tell the people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbors for articles of silver and gold.” 3(The LORD made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people.)

4So Moses said, “This is what the LORD says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. 5Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. 7But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.’ Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. 8All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.” Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.

9The LORD had said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.” 10Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.

COMMENTARY

1–3 These verses are parenthetical, for Moses has one last message to communicate to Pharaoh before he leaves his presence after the ninth plague in 10:29, and thus he knows that Pharaoh has “spoken correctly” (cf. 10:28) in halting any further audiences. Even though Hebrew does not have a pluperfect tense, its penchant for simply placing side by side events that we would have subordinated in time (Keil and Delitzsch, 1:87, 499; cf. Ge 2:19; Jdg 2:6; 1Ki 7:13) suggests that it is best to translate v.1 thus: “Now the Lord had said” (wayyō ʾmer; cf. NIV).

Thus before Moses goes in to see Pharaoh concerning the ninth plague, God informs Moses that this contest is about to end abruptly. One more plague and Pharaoh will send Israel away, “in the manner of [ke] one’s sending away a slave girl who had been promised to be one’s daughter-in-law” (kāllâ; see Notes), i.e., showered with gifts on her release from slavery. This interpretation leads easily and naturally into their requests of the Egyptians for gold and silver articles (v.2; see comment on 3:22).

The reasons for the extraordinary generosity of the Egyptians are: (1) Yahweh has made them “favorably disposed” (nātan ḥēn, lit., “gave grace”) toward Israel (cf. Ps 106:46), and (2) “Moses himself [hā ʾîš Mōšeh, lit., ‘the man Moses’] was highly regarded [gādôl me ʾōd].” There is no need to regard this second reason as an interpolation, a post-Mosaic addition (as perhaps Nu 12:3), or as a piece of prideful indulgence in self-glorification. The greatness of the man is not because of his personal qualifications but because of the esteem he has accumulated from the magicians (8:18–19), the court officials (9:20; 10:7), and Pharaoh himself (9:27; 10:16).

4–8 Moses’ speech to Pharaoh continues the remarks he began in 10:29. Unlike all the other plagues, this time Yahweh himself (notice the emphatic repetition of the pronoun—ʾanî yôṣē ʾ, “I, I will go out”) will march (yāṣā ʾ is often used in military contexts) through the land of Egypt (v.4). There will be no secondary causes or utilizing instruments such as a strong east wind. The firstborn of all Egyptian families—slaves and cattle (v.5)—will die at midnight (the exact day is not specified). An unprecedented outpouring of grief will follow, but among the Israelites there will be such tranquility on that evening that not even a dog will bark (vv.6–7)!

A possible historical reminiscence of this event has been uncovered by Mordechai Gilula (“The Smiting of the Firstborn: An Egyptian Myth?” TA 4 [1977]: 94–95). In the Pre-Mosaic Pyramid Texts (par. 339a–b), there is a reference to “that day of slaying the firstborn,” spelled smsw in Egyptian. Likewise, the Pre-Mosaic Coffin Texts (VI:178) refer to “that night of slaying the firstborn,” while another Coffin Text has both “that night . . . that day of slaying the firstborn” (II:163b–c). In the Coffin Texts the Egyptian word for “firstborn” is wr or wrw, meaning “great” or “eldest.” Interestingly, the firstborn in the Coffin Texts are gods, while the Pyramid Texts do not identify them more specifically.

9–10 Therefore, as a recapitulation of all Moses’ negotiations beginning in 7:8, readers are reminded that all this takes place as God predicted it. No amount of evidence has persuaded Pharaoh’s hard heart, and Israel is still enslaved.

NOTES

1 On (negaʿ, “plague”), see Notes on 8:2. The NIV’s “And when he does” for (kešalleḥô kālâ) is probably incorrect. The difficulty of this passage was felt already by the LXX, which paraphrased it, “And whenever he sends you forth with everything.” Syn panti (“with everything”) is inserted because the verb is transitive. Targum Onqelos and most modern translations render kālâ adverbially (Ge 18:21) by “completely” or “altogether.” This, however, requires adding an unwarranted “you” (“when he sends you away altogether”), and it yields little sense in the context.

The best solution, I believe, is offered by Reuven Yaron (“On Divorce in Old Testament Times,” Revue Internationale des Droits de l ʾAntiquite 6 [1957]: 122–24), who treats ke as referring to mode, “in the manner” (not to time, “when”), and the third-person singular possessive pronoun “his,” affixed to “sending,” as denoting an indefinite person, viz., “one’s sending.” He reads kālâ as kallâ, a cognate with the Babylonian kallatum (cf. Code of Hammurabi 155, 156; Nuzi Tablet 25 in AASOR X and 30 in AASOR XVI). A Hebrew kāllâ with a compound meaning of a “slave-girl” brought to be married as one’s “daughter-in-law” would be a hapax legomenon, but the Babylonian parallels and the improved meaning of vv.1–3 give it serious weight. Thus the text should be translated: “After that, he will let you go from here, in the manner of one’s sending away a kāllâ [a slave purchased to be one’s daughter-in-law].”

2 On (weyiš ʾalû, “[and they] are to ask”), see comment and Notes on 3:22.

7 On (lō ʾ yeḥeraṣ-keleb lešōnô, “not a dog will bark”), see F. C. Fensham, “Remarks on Keret 114b–136a,” JNSL 11 (1983): 75, who relates this to the Egyptian klb ṣpr (“watchdog”). On (yapleh, “a distinction”), see comment and Notes on 8:22; cf. Notes on 8:23.

9–10 On (mōpetîm, “wonders”), see comment on 4:21.

REFLECTION

In Moses’ final word on the tenth plague, he indicates that the Egyptians, on bended knee, will beg the Israelites to leave those parts immediately (v.8). Moses says, “After that I will leave” (ʾēṣē ʾ, “go out”—reechoing the Lord’s “going out” in v.4). But the stupidity and waste of all of those lives just because Pharaoh’s stubborn sinfulness makes Moses exceedingly angry (“Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh,” v.8). To be in the presence of evil and yet fail to be angry is a dreadful spiritual and moral malady.

E. The Passover (12:1–28)

1. Preparations for the Passover (12:1–13)

1The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2“This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts. 10Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover.

12“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

COMMENTARY

1–2 The instructions for the feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread are the only regulations given while Israel is still in Egypt. Thus it seems evident from the phrase “in Egypt” (lit., “in the land of Egypt”) that the least one can say is that the contents of ch. 12 are written sometime after the exodus. This event is so significant that henceforth the religious year will begin (v.2) in the month of Abib (13:4), the month when “the barley had headed” (ʾābîb being the Canaanite name for the month; cf. also 23:15; 34:18; Dt 16:1). Later the Babylonian month’s name “Nisan” was substituted (Est 3:7), matching our present calendar’s designation for late March to the beginning of April (Ne 2:1).

3–11 The following instructions, communicated through the elders (see v.21), are given to the “whole community of Israel” (v.3; see Notes).

  1. 1. Preparations are to begin on the tenth day of the month of Abib (v.3).
  2. 2. The head of each household is to select a śeh (“lamb, kid”; see v.5) according to the number of people present (v.4).
  3. 3. The animal must be a one-year-old male without any defects (v.5; cf. later Lev 22:20–25; Mal 1:8, 14).
  4. 4. Each animal must be slaughtered at twilight (see Notes) on the fourteenth day (v.6).
  5. 5. The blood from the animals is to be applied to the doorframe (see Notes) of each house (v.7).
  6. 6. That night each family is to eat the roasted lamb or kid along with bitter herbs and unleavened bread (v.8).
  7. 7. The meat must be roasted whole, with the head and legs intact and the washed internals left inside; it must not be eaten raw or boiled in water (v.9).
  8. 8. All leftovers are to be burnt; nothing may become profane by putrification or superstitious abuse (v.10; before daybreak, according to 23:18; 34:25; Dt 16:4).
  9. 9. The meal must be eaten with an air of haste and expectancy. Therefore, the people’s long robes are to be tucked in their belts, their sandals worn, and their staffs ready and on hand (v.11; Dt 16:3).

Thus the whole nation is to be a nation of priests, as Moses later announces in 19:5–6 (cf. 1Pe 2:5; Rev 1:6 of the NT believers). The apparent intervention of the Levites in 2 Chronicles 30:17–18 and 35:5–6 was contrary at least to the original design of the Passover. Here in Exodus we see no priests, no altar, and no tabernacle; families commune in the presence of God and around the sacrificial lamb that is the substitute for each member of that family. The lamb must be a one-year-old male because it is taking the place of Israel’s firstborn males, who are young and fresh with the vigor of life. The bitter herbs (lettuce and endive are indigenous to Egypt) recall the bitter years of servitude (1:14), and the unleavened bread reflects this event’s haste. This is the Lord’s Passover (see Notes), and this is how Israel is to eat it (v.11).

12–13 On that same night, the fifteenth of Abib, the Lord will pass through Egypt and strike down the firstborn of all men and animals whose households have not been believingly placed under the blood of the sacrificial substitute (v.12). This blood is to be a “sign” (ʾôt, v.13). Like the other “signs” or “miracles” Pharaoh has seen, this one also is a pledge of God’s mercy. The Lord will “pass over” (the verb pāsaḥ comes from the same root as the noun pesaḥ, “Passover” in v.11) these homes, and no destructive “plague” (negep) will affect them.

Indeed, even “all the gods of Egypt” (v.12) will be judged by this last plague. Obviously, those deities whose representatives are linked with beasts are dealt direct blows—the bulls, cows, goats, jackals, lions, baboons, rams, etc. With the sudden death of these sacred representatives, it will undoubtedly be interpreted as a direct blow to the gods of Egypt themselves.

NOTES

3 This is the first occurrence of (ʿadat, “community, congregation”) in over one hundred usages in the Bible of what becomes a technical term for God’s “people” gathered together to worship him or to be instructed in spiritual things. Qāhāl (“congregation”), a parallel term preferred by Deuteronomy and many prophetic books, is often associated in meaning with the NT Greek ekklēsia (“assembly, church”).

5 (ben-šānâ, “year-old”) is literally “son of a year.” Rabbinic interpretation took this to mean one year old or less. Keil and Delitzsch correctly argue that it must mean a “yearling,” since other expressions are available to cover anything prior to that (e.g., Ge 21:4, “son of eight days”; Lev 27:6, “son of a month”).

6 Again the collective singular—viz., (ʾōtô, lit., “it”; NIV, “[slaughter] them”)—is used for the plural. See also the same pronoun in vv.7, 11 (2x).

(bên hā ʿarbāyim, lit., “between the two evenings”; NIV, “at twilight”) has given rise to a much discussed question that is explained in two ways: (1) between sunset and dark, or (2) between the decline of the sun (three to five o’clock) and sunset. Deuteronomy 16:6 fixes the time at “when the sun goes down,” the same time set for the lighting of the lamps in the tabernacle (Ex 30:8) and the offering of the daily evening sacrifice (29:39). Later custom necessitated moving this time up to allow the Levites to help everyone with their sacrifice.

7 (hammezûzōt, “the sides [of the doorframe]”) are easily identified, but (hammašqôp, “the tops of [the doorframes]”) may not be the lintel or top of the doorframe, since it is derived from a root meaning to “look out.” It may be the latticed window traditionally placed over the doorway in Egyptian houses and also represented in the facades of tombs (see also vv.22–23). “Lintel” seems best, however, until better evidence for the Egyptian model described here is available.

8 (merōrîm, “bitter herbs”) are wild lettuce or endive. The Mishnah adds four others that may be used: chicory, pepperroot, snakeroot, and dandelion.

9 Meat that was (mebuššāl bammāyim, “cooked in water, boiled”) is forbidden. Deuteronomy 16:7 may appear to contradict Exodus 12:9, but 2 Chronicles 35:13 shows that the verb biššēl can mean to “cook” or “bake” as well as “boil”—that is why Moses adds here, “in water.” Justin Martyr, in a poor example of spiritualizing exegesis, said that two wooden spits were placed at right angles to each other, thus placing the victim on a type of cross.

11 (beḥippāzôn, “in haste”) is literally “in anxious haste” (cf. Dt 16:3; Isa 52:12). The etymology of (pesaḥ, “Passover”; GK 7175) is disputed. Various suggestions include: (1) Hebrew pāsaḥ, “to leap, limp, hobble,” as Jonathan’s lame son in 2 Samuel 4:4; as between two opinions in 1 Kings 18:21; as in dancing in 1 Kings 18:26; or as a parallel, “to protect, save,” in Isaiah 31:5; (2) Akkadian paššāḥu, “to appease, make soft, placate”; (3) Egyptian p3 sḥ3, “the commemoration,” or p3 3sḥ, “the harvest,” or p3 śḥ, “the blow, plague” (see Segal, 95–100, for elaborate documentation and analysis). The context (v.13) explains it as a “passing over” the houses of those under the sign of the blood. We cannot address here the long discussion on the prehistory (see ibid., 42–46) of this festival; but whatever it may have been, it is here entirely associated with an event in Israel’s history.

2. Preparations for the Unleavened Bread (12:14–20)

14“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD—a lasting ordinance. 15For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. 16On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat—that is all you may do.

17“Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. 18In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. 19For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. 20Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”

COMMENTARY

14–16 The connection between the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread is close yet distinct. The OT uses both names to refer to the same feast: “Passover Feast” (Ex 34:25; Eze 45:21), “Feast of Unleavened Bread” (Dt 16:16; 2Ch 30:13, 21; Ezr 6:22). Yet the two rites are treated separately, even if in sequence (see Lev 23:5–6; Nu 28:16–17; 2Ch 35:1, 17; Ezr 6; Eze 45:21). Likewise, the NT uses this twofold designation for the same feast: pascha (Jn 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55) and azymos (Mt 26:17; Lk 22:1, Lk 22:7; cf. Mk 14:12).

“This day” (hayyôm hazzeh) of v.14 refers to the same day in view in vv.1–13. The slaying of the paschal lamb “between the evenings” (a literal Hebrew expression), which divides the fourteenth and fifteenth of Abib (= Nisan), looks forward to the festive celebration that night, the day of the exodus (= the night of the Passover), namely, 15 Abib. The Israelites are to “commemorate” (lezikkārôn, i.e., make it a memorial; see 3:15 above) that day as a “festival” (ḥag) and a “lasting [i.e., perpetual] ordinance” (ḥuqqāt ʿôlām).

For seven days they are to eat maṣṣôt (“unleavened cakes,” i.e., “bread made without yeast,” v.15), to remember Israel’s haste in leaving Egypt (v.39) and to underscore again the conviction that impurity and corruption (sometimes symbolized by leaven) disqualifies persons from religious services (see comment on 3:5–6). The whole household must be pure and clean of heart; thus, all yeast must be removed from the entire house (v.19). The first and seventh days of that week, beginning with the celebration of the Passover, are to be holy convocations (v.16).

17–20 “I brought your divisions out” (emphasis mine; on “divisions,” see Notes on 6:26) reflects a post-exodus stance. Thus (as commentators such as Keil and Delitzsch, and Rawlinson argue) the words of vv.17–20 may not be the verbatim words of revelation. Instead, they are either a recasting of the original revelation to incorporate the proper time perspective and the institutional nature of the ordinance now given, or they are a new extension of the original use of unleavened bread in the Passover to a new seven-day festival.

Verse 19 is not an empty repetition of v.15 but adds the important notice that Gentiles celebrate along with Israel, even as was contemplated in the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 12:3: “all peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.” The “alien” (gēr) includes the “mixed multitude” (v.38, KJV; NIV, “many other people”) who left Egypt with Israel, the Kenites who joined them in the desert (Nu 10:29–31; Jdg 1:16), and those converted later, such as Rahab and her family (Jos 2:10–14). Rawlinson, 1:262, notes how the whole law is filled with references to this class of persons beginning in 20:10; 23:12. Those “native-born” are, no doubt, Abraham’s descendants, who are here regarded as the true natives to the land of Canaan since God assigned it to them some six hundred years prior to the exodus.

NOTES

15 The exact etymology of (maṣṣôt, “bread [or ‘cakes’; notice the plural] made without yeast”) is unknown. Suggestions are: (1) mṣṣ (“to squeeze, press”)—thus flat cakes; (2) yṣʾ (“to go out”), as the Aramaic paṭṭira (“unleavened bread”) may be related to the Syriac pṭr (“depart”) or even the Akkadian pṭr (“ransom”); (3) the Egyptian ms.t or msw.t (“food, cake”) or msw.t (“evening meal”); or (4) the Greek maza (“barley bread”) instead of the Greek artos (“wheat bread”). Each suggestion has problems according to Segal (107).

15, 19 Two distinct words are used for “yeast” or “leaven”: (śe ʾōr), perhaps the “old leaven” hidden and secret (Lk 12:1) that Paul urges believers to “get rid of” in 1 Corinthians 5:7 (Bush, 142); and (ḥāmēṣ, perhaps related to ḥôtmēs, “vinegar”), emphasizing “sourness,” open malice, and a putrifying form (cf. Pss 71:4; 73:21).

(wenikretâ, lit., “that soul [feminine, ‘she’] shall be cut off [from Israel]”) probably refers to expulsion from the community of Israel with the possibility that it might prove fatal to the person. Some argue it is the death penalty; others assure us that it is merely ostracism from the community. See Donald Wold, “The Meaning of the Biblical Penalty Kareth” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1978).

16 (miqrā ʾ-qōdeš) is a called or convened gathering for sacred purposes, a “sacred assembly.”

3. Celebration of the Passover (12:21–28)

21Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. 23When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.

24“Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. 25When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. 28The Israelites did just what the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron.

COMMENTARY

21–23 When the instructions for the preparation of the Passover (and the topically connected but subsequent enlargement of the Passover in the Feast of Unleavened Bread) are completed, the elders are briefed on what each Israelite family must do (v.21). Two new items are included here: (1) blood must be applied to each doorframe by a “bunch of hyssop” dipped into a basin of blood, and (2) no one may leave the house “until morning” (v.22). This cannot be used to prove that these instructions are not part of God’s original revelation to Moses or that these verses preserve a different tradition of the Passover; as Cassuto, 143, argues, there is no need to repeat all the details of vv.1–20, nor is there any literary law that says additional particulars may not come out in subsequent rehearsing of the same material.

The lamb or kid to be slaughtered by each family is called (by the figure of speech known as metonymy, the exchange of one noun for a related noun) “the Passover” (happāsaḥ) itself. (The NIV attempts to aid the reader by rendering it, “the Passover lamb” [v.21].) Blood from this animal is placed in a basin and with “a bunch of hyssop” (v.22; see Notes) is “slapped” (the verb ngʾ is cognate with one of the words for “plague,” negaʾ, in 11:1) on the doorframe. The Hebrews will know the grounds and means of their deliverance and redemption: a sacrificed substitute and the blood of atonement in which the paschal animal dies in place of the firstborn of all who take shelter from the stroke of the destroyer.

“The destroyer” of v.23 (see Notes) is not a demonic power that rivals God but is probably an angel of the Lord who expedites the divine will. In Psalm 78:49, however, which uses four different words for anger to express God’s letting loose on the Egyptians, this wrath is collectively called “a band of destroying angels” (mišlaḥat mal ʾakê rā ʿîm). Thus, whether an angel is the mediating agent or the term is a figurative personification of the final judgment of God on Egypt, it is still God’s direct work. The NT remembers this “destroyer” (ho olothreuōn) in Hebrews 11:28. God’s work in bringing the plague on Israel for Korah, Dathan, and Abiram’s rebellion in Numbers 16:41–49 and the serpents in 21:5–6 will also be labeled the work of “the destroying angel” in 1 Corinthians 10:9–10 (see Notes).

24–28 Once again God makes provision for the annual observance of this ceremony and for the parental obligation to instruct children in the meaning and significance of this reenactment (v.24). The section closes with one of those rare notices in Israel’s history: the people do exactly what the Lord commands (v.28)—and well they might after witnessing what has happened to the obstinate king and people of Egypt! (See also Hag 1:12, where the people obey the Lord.)

NOTES

22 (ʾēzôb, “hyssop”) occurs ten times in the OT. (Hyssop appears twice in the NT: in Jn 19:29, as the instrument for lifting the vinegar to Jesus’ lips while on the cross, and in Heb 9:19–20, where the people and the book are sprinkled with blood, though probably a different plant is meant.) Seven of the OT references are found in two rituals: cleansing a leper (Lev 14:4, 6, 49, 51–52) and cleansing those defiled through contact with the dead (Nu 19:6, Nu 19:18). The other three references are Exodus 12:22; 1 Kings 4:33; and Psalm 51:7.

Most identify ʾēzôb with Origanum Maru L., the Syrian marjoram (Arabic ṣaʿtur and Akkadian zūpu), or Origanum Aegyptiacum from Egypt. It is an aromatic herb in the mint family with a straight stalk, somewhat woody at the base, forming a dwarf bush with opposite deciduous leaves decreasing in size as they go up the stalk. This plant is found in the Sinai desert—it grew on the walls of Jerusalem (1Ki 4:33)—and has white flowers tinged with red on the outside. See L. Baldensperger and G. M. Crowfoot, “Hyssop,” PEQ 63 [1931]: 89–98.

The LXX, Vulgate, and other passages translate (sap, “basin”) as “threshold.” Rylaarsdam, 923, reports how Armenian miniatures depict the slaying of the lamb on the threshold and the blood spilled in a hollow place—perhaps one especially made for this purpose.

23 The substantive (hammašḥît, “the destroyer”) appears thirty-five times in the OT, but only here does it seem to be a technical term (cf., however, v.13: [lemašḥît, “destructive (plague)”]; see especially 2Sa 24:16; Isa 37:36).

F. The Exodus from Egypt (12:29–51)

1. Death at Midnight (12:29–32)

29At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. 30Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.

31During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. 32Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”

COMMENTARY

29–30 The final stroke comes at midnight, 15 Abib. While the previous plagues may have utilized some of the natural and secondary agencies of nature, vv.23 and 29 attribute this tenth plague solely to Yahweh, who goes throughout the land of Egypt; death touches every “family” (bayit, “house,” v.30), from Pharaoh’s to the prisoner’s (v.29; cf. 11:5, from Pharaoh to the slave girl working the hand mill).

Once again the “all” (kol), or “every,” must be understood comparatively and not absolutely (cf. comment on 9:24–25), for strictly speaking, it would apply only to those households that have firstborn among their members or livestock. Bush, 146, notes that such universal negatives or affirmatives (“none,” “all”) leave the exceptions unstated when such are so few that they hardly deserve mention in comparison to the overwhelming number of cases being considered. (He mentions 1Sa 25:1: “All Israel assembled and mourned for [Saul],” i.e., with few exceptions there was a tremendous outpouring of national feeling; John 12:19: “The whole world has gone after [Jesus],” but that too is hyperbolic. Such hyperboles are especially idiomatic in Semitic languages.)

31–32 How Pharaoh “summons” (qrʾ) Moses and Aaron is unknown. Whether the king retracts his rash oath never to see these two men again (10:28) and recalls them one more time or uses ambassadors to convene his unconditional release cannot be determined—the verb is used in both senses. If it were the latter, however, then it is a striking fulfillment of 11:8.

The release granted Israel is for more than a three-day journey to worship the Lord. Previously when Pharaoh gave permission to leave (only immediately to rescind it or place unacceptable restrictions on it), he said, “Go, worship the LORD your God” (10:8, 24), or “Go, sacrifice to your God” (8:25); but now it is, “Up! Leave my people!” (v.31). As Keil and Delitzsch, 2:25, argue, this “cannot mean anything else than ‘depart altogether.’” In fact, God had predicted that the effect of this tenth blow would be so hard that Pharaoh would “drive [them] out completely” (11:1). They are to take everything Moses ever bargained for (“as you have said,” 12:32), including their flocks and herds.

As Moses is taking leave of the king and Egypt, Pharaoh has one more request as a final gesture. “Bless me,” he begs. Pharaoh, the god of Egypt, entreats Moses’ God to bless him! Israel is both blessed and a means of blessing others, even though in this case that blessing falls on an unrepentant heart, as 14:5–9 shows.

NOTE

29 (habbôr, “dungeon”) is usually a “well” or “cistern” but by extension is used of “those [= the dead] who go down to the pit.”

2. Preparations for the Exodus (12:33–36)

33The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!” 34So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing. 35The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. 36The LORD had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.

COMMENTARY

33 The Egyptians urge the Israelites most vehemently (watteḥezaq; cf. the same root ḥzq [GK 2616] for Pharaoh’s hardening of his heart) that they should leave immediately, for soon no Egyptians will be left if things continue as they are going.

34 The Israelites wrap the unleavened lumps of dough in sacks made from their outer garments or mantles and sling them over their shoulders along with their kneading troughs (see Notes) and whatever other incidentals they planned to take with them.

35–36 On the spoiling of the Egyptians, see comments on 3:21–22 and 11:1–3.

NOTE

34 On (yeḥmāṣ, “[before] the yeast was added”), see Notes on 12:15, 19. (miš ʾarōt, “kneading troughs”) occurs also in 8:3[7:28] and Deuteronomy 28:5, 17. These were probably something like the old Egyptian kneading trough, portable and wooden (cf. Pritchard, ANEP, no. 152).

3. The Exodus and the Mixed Multitude (12:37–51)

37The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. 38Many other people went up with them, as well as large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. 39With the dough they had brought from Egypt, they baked cakes of unleavened bread. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves.

40Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. 41At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the LORD’s divisions left Egypt. 42Because the LORD kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the LORD for the generations to come.

43The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “These are the regulations for the Passover:

“No foreigner is to eat of it. 44Any slave you have bought may eat of it after you have circumcised him, 45but a temporary resident and a hired worker may not eat of it.

46“It must be eaten inside one house; take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones. 47The whole community of Israel must celebrate it.

48“An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the LORD’s Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land. No uncircumcised male may eat of it. 49The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you.”

50All the Israelites did just what the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. 51And on that very day the LORD brought the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.

COMMENTARY

37 The wilderness itinerary now begins. George W. Coats (“The Wilderness Itinerary,” CBQ 34 [1972]: 135–52) has collected the itinerary formulas to examine their unity and special function. Usually they consist of two elements: (1) the departure place name with min (“from”) and the verb nāsaʿ(“to journey,” 12:37; 13:20; 16:1; 17:1; 19:2) and (2) the arrival location with be (“at,” 13:20; 17:1; 19:2), ʾel (“to,” 15:22; 16:1), ʿal (“to,” 14:2; 15:27), and various verbs such as ḥānan (“to camp,” 13:20; 15:27; 17:1; 19:2), bô ʾ (“to come,” 15:23, 27; 16:1; 19:2), and yāṣā ʾ(“to lead,” 15:22).

“Rameses” is best identified with Qantir instead of the remoter but more popular Tanis (seventeen miles northeast), since Qantir was situated near the water—as the Egyptian documents observe, on the “Waters of Ra,” the Bubastite-Pelusiac eastern arm of the Nile River (see comment on 1:11; cf. Introduction: Route of the Exodus and the map). Succoth is now generally identified with Tell el Maskhuta in the Wadi Tumilat near modern Ismailia. Naville, 23, argued that Succoth was a district and not a city, the region of Tkw near Tell el Maskhuta. Thus the Hebrews pitch their tents in the land of Succoth, only a few miles from the store city of Pithom, where many had labored for years.

With the number of fighting men at six hundred thousand, the total number of Israelites could well be around two million. All attempts to explain ʾelep (“thousand”) as “clan” or “tribe” (George E. Mendenhall, “The Census Lists of Numbers 1 and 26,” JBL 77 [1958]: 52–66) in this context (cf., however, Jdg 6:15) fail to meet the test of consistency in other contexts (e.g., see comment on 38:25–26).

38 The “many other people” (ʿēreb rab; KJV, “mixed multitude”; cf. the “swarms” of flies in 8:21[17], ʿārōb) are composed of Egyptians (some “feared the word of the LORD” in 9:20), perhaps some of the Semitic population left from the Hyksos era and slaves native to other countries. Some of this group must be part of the “rabble” (hā ʾsapsup, lit., “a collection”) mentioned in Numbers 11:4. Thus the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, of being a blessing to “all peoples on earth,” receives another fulfillment in this swarm of foreigners who are impressed enough by God’s power to leave Egypt with Israel after all the plagues have been performed. Another aspect of God’s display of his power is so that the Egyptians can, if they only would, be evangelized (7:5; 8:10, 19; 9:14, 16, 29–30; 14:4, 18).

39 As the Lord predicted in 11:1, the Israelites “had been driven out [grš] of Egypt.” Indeed, they leave so quickly that they have no time to prepare anything, much less set the yeast in the dough; so they leave with unleavened bread and make unleavened cakes during those early days (see comment and Notes on v.34).

40–42 Appropriately, now that the exodus has begun, the narrator takes a moment to reflect on the total Egyptian experience. Twice he comments that the sojourn in Egypt had been 430 years, “to the very day” (be ʿeṣem hayyôm hazzeh, v.41; notice the same expression in vv.17, 51). The LXX and Samaritan texts added the words “and in the land of Canaan” to the Hebrew text, thus making the total sojourn in Egypt only 215 years—a figure also allegedly supported by the genealogy of Moses and Aaron in Exodus 6:16–20 and Paul’s statement in Galatians 3:17. But it is a mistake to suppose that the genealogy of Moses was intended to be complete (see comment on 2:1–4 for evidence to the contrary). One need only consult the genealogy of Joshua (1Ch 7:22–27) to see that there are many omissions of generations in Moses and Aaron’s genealogy, for Joshua’s genealogy has ten generations covering the same time span as Moses’ four generations!

With respect to Paul’s 430 years, it is important to notice that “the law” came “430 years later” (Gal 3:17) as an addition (cf. v.19) to “the promises . . . spoken to Abraham and to his seed” (v.16, emphasis mine). The terminus a quo for the 430 years in Paul’s thinking would seem to be when Jacob received the last of those repeated patriarchal promises (Ge 46:2; 47:27) as he arrived in Egypt. The 430 years accord also with the four hundred years predicted in Genesis 15:13–16, when a nation (Egypt) whom they would “serve” could “mistreat” them, at the end of which time that nation would be “judged.”

This night is to be observed by all future generations as a “Watchnight Service” (Cole, 113), for on that night the Lord “preserved” or “kept” the destroyer from touching them (v.42). There is a clear play on the word šāmar (“watch, preserve, keep vigil”): as Yahweh watched over Israel that night, so Israel is to watch for Yahweh by keeping this feast perpetually (cf. v.17).

43–49 With the mention of this night and the requirement that it be remembered by all future generations, it does bring to mind, especially in this context, the question of the “mixed multitude” who came out of Egypt with Israel and all such persons who might join them from time to time. Are they to keep the Passover also? Thus arises the necessity for repeating and elaborating instructions already given in two preceding sections.

No man is allowed to participate in that meal unless he is circumcised and thus a member of the community of faith (v.44; however, notice the requirement in Ge 17:13–14 to be part of the Hebrew community). This excludes temporary residents, hired workers, aliens, and all foreigners. Furthermore, each lamb is to remain in one house (as implied in vv.3–10). Its parts are not to be divided and eaten in separate homes; it serves as the basis of a fellowship meal stressing the unity and joy of the participants. Moreover, no bones of the paschal lamb are to be broken (cf. Ps 34:20 and Jn 19:33–36 for the same teaching about the antitype). This is “the LORD’s Passover” (pesaḥ layhwh, v.48) and not the table of Israel; therefore, the same requirement is made of all, whether native-born (see Notes) or alien (v.49).

50–51 The concluding notice is that Israel does “just what the LORD had commanded” (v.50; cf. v.28); and “on that very day” (v.51; cf. vv.17, 41) the much-delayed exodus finally takes place as Yahweh brings the Hebrews out “by their divisions” (see Notes on 6:26). Surprisingly, the desert journey begins on the Sabbath!

NOTES

37 (wayyisʿû, “[Israelites] journeyed”) comes from a verb meaning “to pull up or out,” i.e., the stakes or pins holding the tent. On (ṭāp, “women and children”), see Notes on 10:24.

39 (leḥitmahmēah) is a Hithpalpel infinitive construct of mhh (“to tarry”; NIV, “[not] have time”).

G. The Consecration of the Firstborn (13:1–16)

1The LORD said to Moses, 2“Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal.”

3Then Moses said to the people, “Commemorate this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the LORD brought you out of it with a mighty hand. Eat nothing containing yeast. 4Today, in the month of Abib, you are leaving. 5When the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites and Jebusites—the land he swore to your forefathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey—you are to observe this ceremony in this month: 6For seven days eat bread made without yeast and on the seventh day hold a festival to the LORD. 7Eat unleavened bread during those seven days; nothing with yeast in it is to be seen among you, nor shall any yeast be seen anywhere within your borders. 8On that day tell your son, ‘I do this because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ 9This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that the law of the LORD is to be on your lips. For the LORD brought you out of Egypt with his mighty hand. 10You must keep this ordinance at the appointed time year after year.

11“After the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites and gives it to you, as he promised on oath to you and your forefathers, 12you are to give over to the LORD the first offspring of every womb. All the firstborn males of your livestock belong to the LORD. 13Redeem with a lamb every firstborn donkey, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem every firstborn among your sons.

14“In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal. This is why I sacrifice to the LORD the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.’ 16And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the LORD brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand.”

COMMENTARY

1–2 Closely linked with the account of Israel’s release from Egypt and the Passover is the consecration of all the firstborn in Israel. The connection of v.1 with the preceding events is secured by comparing the repeated reference to “that very day” (12:41, 51) with “this day” (13:3) and “today, in the month of Abib, you are leaving” (v.4). Therefore, the sanctification of all the firstborn is commanded by God probably at Succoth, the first stopping place after the exodus (12:37); and it falls within the seven days set aside for the Feast of Unleavened Bread (12:15).

The general principle is set forth in v.2: every “firstborn” (bekôr) male of both man and beast (as explained in vv.12–13, i.e., the first “offspring” (peṭer, “that which opens [the womb]”) belongs to the Lord and is therefore “to be set apart” (qādaš) from common usage for holy purposes. Thus God set aside the seventh day, the tabernacle, the tribe of Levi—and here all the firstborn.

The basis for God’s claim is not connected here with his lordship over all creation (cf. Ps 24:1); rather, as Keil and Delitzsch, 2:33, point out from Numbers 3:13 and 8:17, it is based on the fact that God already set apart to himself the firstborn in Israel on the day he smote all the firstborn of Egypt. Their sanctification does not rest on their deliverance from the tenth plague; rather, God’s adoption of Israel as his “firstborn” (see comment on 4:22) led to his delivering them. From that time on, the spared nation must dedicate the firstborn of its men and beasts in the way detailed in vv.12–16 in commemoration of God’s acts of love and deeds that night.

3–10 Further directions are given relating this consecration of the firstborn to the Feast of Unleavened Bread. When Israel possesses the land promised to her, this ceremony (see Notes on v.5) is to be observed annually. The Israelites are to explain to their children (v.8) that they are eating unleavened bread and setting apart the firstborn to the Lord because of what Yahweh did personally for each subsequent Israelite (and believer)—“for me” (lî)—when he brought Israel out of Egypt. Likewise, in v.16 subsequent generations will be taught that he brought “us” out of Egypt (cf. Ps 66:6, “There [at the Red Sea] we rejoiced in him” [lit. tr., emphasis mine]; or Hos 12:4, “There [at Bethel when God spoke to Jacob] he spoke with us” [lit. tr., emphasis mine]; more examples of past events being used to speak to those in the present are Mt 15:7; 22:31; Mk 7:6; Ac 4:11; Ro 4:23–25; 15:4; 1Co 10:11; 2Co 9:8–11; Heb 6:18; 10:15; 12:15–17).

This festival and consecration are to be a “sign” (see comment on 3:12) on the people’s hands and a “reminder” or “memorial” (see comment on 3:15) between their eyes (v.9). No doubt this injunction is a figurative and proverbial mode of speech (cf. Pr 3:3, “Bind them around your neck, write them on . . . your heart”; also Pr 6:21; 7:3; SS 8:6), for the law of the Lord was “to be on [their] lips” (Ex 13:9).

The Jewish practice of writing Exodus 13:1–16 on two of the four strips of parchment (along with Dt 6:4–9 and 11:13–21 on the other two) and placing them in two cubical leather boxes (tepillîn; cf. “phylacteries,” Mt 23:5) strapped on to the forehead and left arm seems to have originated in the Babylonian captivity. These were worn especially at daily morning prayers. This practice, however, exchanged the intended inner reality for an external ritual. God intends his word to activate our lips, hearts, and hands, not to be trapped in a box.

11–16 As Israel “passed over” (ʿbr) the Red Sea and the destroyer “passed over” their firstborn, so now they were “to cause to pass over” or “give over” (ʿbr) to the Lord all their firstborn when they enter the land (v.12). (Notice also the connection between the “Passover” and the “pass[ing] over” of the death angel in the comment on 12:13.) Only two slight modifications (13:13) are made to this principle: (1) all firstborn male humans (firstborn females were exempted) are to be redeemed (pādâ) or “bought back at a price” (fixed at five shekels per male in the fuller description in Nu 18:16; cf. also Nu 3:46–47), and (2) donkeys are to be “bought back” or “ransomed” (pādâ) by a lamb or kid, since donkeys are unclean animals and therefore unfit for sacrifice. To prevent any refusal to follow this command to ransom their animals, the Israelites are to kill them by breaking their necks.

The obligation of the firstborn to serve Yahweh in some nonpriestly work around the sanctuary is later transferred to the Levites, who become God’s authorized substitutes for each firstborn boy or man (Nu 3). When the number of Levites is exhausted, additional males can be ransomed or redeemed at the price of five shekels apiece. Verses 15–16 again reiterate the explanation: the firstborn are owned by Yahweh, for he dramatically spared them in the tenth plague, and he had previously called them to be his firstborn in 4:22.

NOTES

3 (mibbêṭ ʿabādîm, “land of slavery”) is literally “from a house of slaveries” (also 20:2; Dt 5:6; 6:12). Bush, 1:155, reminds us of Egypt’s being called “the iron-smelting furnace” in Deuteronomy 4:20; 1 Kings 8:51; and Jeremiah 11:4.

3–4 The interchange of plural second-person pronouns in vv.3 and 4 with second-person singular pronouns in vv.2 and 5ff. is another extension of the collective singular phenomenon seen before and another illustration of Israel’s corporate solidarity (see William Kesecker, “A Study of the Literary Phenomenon of the Second Person Interchange in Deut 1–11,” M.A. thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1977).

5 On the list of Canaanite nations, see Notes on 3:8. On the land “flowing with milk and honey,” see comment on 3:8.

Although (hā ʿabōdâ) is rendered “ceremony” here and in 12:25–26, it was translated “slavery” and “work” in 2:23 and 5:9; but it is a “work [or service of the LORD]” in 35:24; 36:5; 39:42. Thus Israel was saved from “slavery” into “service” for God as remembered by a “ceremony”! A veritable theology in a single word!

10 (miyyāmîm yāmîmâ, “year after year”) is literally “from days to days” and is an example of the frequent use of “days” for the concept “years” (Bush, 1:157).

16 (ûleṭôṭāpōt; NIV, “a symbol”) is (lit.) “as frontlets/bands about the forehead” (cf. v.9 and Dt 6:8; 11:18). Rawlinson, 1:300, believes that Moses borrowed and reinterpreted the Egyptian practice of wearing as amulets “forms of words written on folds of papyrus tightly rolled up and sewn in linen.”

H. Journey to the Red Sea (13:17–15:21)

1. Into the Wilderness (13:17–22)

17When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” 18So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.

19Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.”

20After leaving Succoth they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert. 21By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. 22Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.

COMMENTARY

17–18 There were three possible routes of escape: (1) a northeasterly route going to Qantara through the land of the Philistines to Gaza and Canaan; (2) a middle route heading across the Negev to Beersheba, which incorrectly assumes Mount Sinai is Gebel Halal near Kadesh Barnea; and (3) a southeasterly route leading from the wilderness east of modern Ismailia to the southern extremities of the Sinai Peninsula. Israel is warned not to take the shorter route through Philistia, for the prospects of fighting the bellicose Philistines (see Notes) would so demoralize Israel that they would change their minds (see Notes) and return to the servitude in Egypt (v.17). This judgment proves correct when Israel is threatened with war in Numbers 14:4.

Thus God leads Israel around by the “desert road” or the “way of the wilderness” (derek hammidbār) toward the “Red Sea” or, better, “Sea of Reeds” (yam-sûp; Egyp. p3 t [w] f, pronounced pa tjû and meaning “papyrus” or “papyrus marshes”). Kenneth Kitchen (ZPEB, 5:46–49) associates this body of water with Lake Menzaleh or Lake Ballah; he notes that Yam Suph (NIV mg.) may also be connected with the Gulf of Suez.

Israel camps on the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula by Yam Suph on their way to Horeb/Sinai (Nu 33:10–11), and later Yam Suph is also used to refer to the salt waters of the Gulf of Aqabah (Dt 1:1; 1Ki 9:26; see Notes on 2:3). Thus nothing prevents our linking Yam Suph with the Red Sea. (The Red Sea of that day did not include the Gulf of Suez—a modern extension of the Red Sea.)

19 This verse is a verbatim report of Joseph’s words in Genesis 50:25 except for the words “with you.” God’s promise of the land is never far from sight in any of these passages.

20 The exact location of Etham (ʾētām) is unknown. Many associate it with the Egyptian city of Khetem (spelled ḥtm, meaning “fort”), but the Hebrew aleph sound hardly equals the strong Egyptian guttural ḥ sound. Naville, 24, suggests the region of Atuma, a desert that begins at Lake Timsah and extends west and south of it, where Asiatic Bedouin from the land of Atuma grazed their flocks (Papyrus Anastasi IV.55, ANET, 259; Egyp. ʾidm).

Etham is described as a region in Numbers 33:6 and presumably is the desert of Shur (Ex 15:22). Kitchen (ZPEB, 2:430) locates the wilderness of Shur/Etham from Lake Timsah (near Ismailia) north to the Mediterranean Sea and east of the present Suez Canal, perhaps to El-Arish and the “Brook of Egypt.” Rawlinson, 1:xxix, noting that Etham is “on the edge of the desert” (13:20), places Etham at El-Qantara, on the line of the Suez Canal and eleven to twelve miles due east of Tel Defneh (ancient Daphnae). Everyone is guessing!

21–22 How God leads the Israelites (v.17) is now explained. This single “pillar” (14:24)—a cloud by day and a fire by night, whose width at the base is sufficiently large to provide cover for Israel from the intense heat (Ps 105:39)—is a visible symbol of the presence of Yahweh in their midst.

The pillar of the cloud and fire is another name for “the angel of God,” for 14:19 equates the two (see also 23:20–23). In fact, God’s Name is “in” this angel who goes before his people to bring them into Canaan (23:20–23). He is the “angel of his presence” (Isa 63:8–9). According to Malachi 3:1, this angel is the “messenger of the covenant,” who is the Lord, the owner of the temple. Obviously, then, the Christ of the NT is the shekinah glory, or Yahweh of the OT. Through this cloudy pillar the Lord speaks to Moses (33:9–11) and to the people (Ps 99:6–7). We have seen such easy movement from the pillar of cloud and fire to the angel and back to the Lord himself in the interchange between the burning bush, the angel, and the Lord in ch. 3 (see Notes on 3:2).

NOTES

17 All references to the Philistines before the twelfth century BC, it is alleged, are anachronistic since they only arrived on the scene around that time, along with various waves of other Sea Peoples. Yet already in the early twentieth century Flinders Petrie argued that there was substantial evidence for Philistine presence as early as the patriarchal era if but for no other reason than to raise crops to be transported back to their homeland on Caphtor/Crete (see Ed Hindson, The Philistines and the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1970], 39, 59).

(yinnāḥēm, “[lest the people] change [their] minds”) is from the famous root nḥm (“to repent”) and illustrates its meaning in a nontheologically sensitive passage.

18 The MT has (waḥamušîm, “armed for battle”; so Gesenius, Rashi, the Vulgate). The LXX has “the fifth generation”; Ewald opts for “in five divisions,” viz., vanguard, center, rearguard, and two flanking wings, from hāmēš (“five”). See also Joshua 1:14; 4:12; Judges 7:11 for its other usages.