CHAPTERXII.EXODUS.

CHAPTERXII.EXODUS.THISsecond book of the Pentateuch takes its modern name from its principal event, the exodus of the Hebrew people—their marching forth out of their house of bondage from the land of their oppression, to be replanted under God’s gracious providence in the goodly land promised to their fathers.——This one main event as recorded in this book includes many subordinate points,e. g.I.Theoppressionsof the Hebrews by the Egyptians.II.Moses, who became in the hand of God their great Deliverer; his history; his early training and his call from the Lord to this great work.III.The great mission of Moses to Egypt’s king; his reception; the ten successive plagues—miraculous judgments from the hand of God; the case of the magicians; the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, and the ultimate result.I.The Oppression.The narrative shows that this oppression consisted in part in the exacting of terribly severe labors, especially in building, including the making of brick, the preparation of mortar, the transportation of these materials, and the erection of buildings. The ancient monuments of Egypt confirm the statements of sacred history, showing that the Egyptians employed national bondmen in the construction of their vast national works; that they placed over them task-masters; that when the workmen fell short of the required tale of brick, their masters put them to more severe labors, and in some cases to labors of other sort. It has been supposed by some that the ancient paintings represented some of these laborers with the well-known physiognomy of the Hebrews.It should be noted that this bondage differed from the slavery of modern times in this one respect—that the bondmen were held by the king and the nation in their national capacity and not by individuals. The Hebrewswere not held as private but as public property. The king and the nation as such bore therefore the responsibility and guilt of this oppression, and God let his judgments smite them for the most part in such a way as to indicate their sin.A second feature in this oppression was the king’s cruel edict to murder the male infants. This was first enjoined upon the Hebrew midwives. Fearing God more than Egypt’s king, they evaded obedience; whereupon the king commanded all his people to cast the male infants into the river.——The reason assigned for both these measures waspublic policy, to prevent the rapid increase of Hebrew population which the king assumed might be dangerous to his throne and people in case of a foreign invasion. Such a policy is at once short-sighted and wicked; short-sighted, since kind treatment would have made this rapidly growing people their fast friends and helpers; wicked, because it violates common morality, insulting God, and provoking his wrath by outraging all the obligations which he imposes on men toward their fellows. Egypt’s king and court presently found themselves arrayed against Almighty God and saw him take up the challenge in a fearful conflict for mastery. We shall see in the final issue that the Lord improved this occasion to illustrate some of the noblest principles of his government over nations and indeed over individuals as well, showing that he abhors oppression; takes the side of the oppressed; hurls his fiercest thunderbolts against giant oppressors in every age; and every-where holds men to the responsibility of using their power to befriend and not to oppress their human brethren.This oppression began with “a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph.” It is generally held that these words indicate a new dynasty—one royal line superseded by another, perhaps a foreign power coming in to supplant the former dynasty. The points of historic contact between Egyptian and Hebrew chronology may at some future day be adjusted with reasonable certainty. They are not yet. The subject is undergoing a somewhat thorough investigation with some prospect of ultimate success. At present I am not prepared to express positive opinions.Two of the disputed periods in Hebrew chronology are necessarily involved;(a.) The period of the Judges, which as shown above some reduce to 339 years; others extend to 450;(b.) The period of the sojourn in Egypt, made by some 215 years; by others, 430. Some of the theories which attempt to locate this new king of Egypt in his relation to Hebrew history place the Exodus about B. C. 1600; others B. C. 1491. Some put the commencement of the sojourn in Egypt B. C. 2030; others B. C. 1706; yet others B. C. 1815. I have given my reasons for adopting the longer periods. It is possible that Egyptian authorities may yet throw a strong influence upon the decision of these much disputed points of Hebrew chronology.The narrative shows that the Hebrews had become numerically strong and were rapidly growing stronger. Joseph had been dead probably a considerable time and all the men of his generation. Being 39 years old when his father came into Egypt and dying at the age of 110, he lived to protect his people 71 years. Moses was 80 years old when he came before Pharaoh, bearing the command of the Almighty—“Let my people go.” It is probable that the terrible edict to destroy all the male infants did not long precede the birth of Moses. The interval between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses will depend on the duration of the entire sojourn in Egypt, since from this entire sojourn we must subtract the years of Joseph’s life after the sojourn began and the years of Moses before it closed,i. e.71 + 80 = 151. This sum must be subtracted either from 215, leaving 64; or from 430, leaving 279. The latter I assume to be the true period. It provides abundantly for the great increase of the Hebrew people, and accounts for the fear felt by Egypt’s “new king.”II.MOSES.We shall study the history of Moses withoutthe keyif we overlook the point made by the writer to the Hebrews (11: 23): “By faithMoses when he was born was hid three months because they saw that he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.” Faith in God made them fearless of Egypt’s cruel king. It would seem also that they saw in thepeculiar beauty of this child a sort of prophecy of his future, something at least which raised expectation and put them upon special ventures to save his life. Three months they secreted him within their home. When this expedient could suffice no longer, they prepared an ark of bulrushes—a little box, water-tight, constructed to float—and moored it with its treasure among the flags on the river’s bank. We may suppose that his mother knew the spot where the king’s daughter was wont to take her baths, and that her faith and prayer lay back of this venture to throw her darling infant upon the compassion of a stranger woman’s heart. It need not be supposed that she foresaw his future adoption into the royal family, his training for forty years in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and his consequent qualification to become the great Hebrew Lawgiver and Deliverer. Suffice it that these results lay in the thought of God. She had faith enough to commit her darling to God’s care and to leave all the future unknown results to his adjustment.The ways of God were mercifully kind toward this Hebrew mother. She stationed his elder sister as a sentinel to watch the issue, and then (let us presume) gave herself to prayer. When this elder sister with palpitating heart saw the daughter of Pharaoh take the beautiful child to her bosom, she felt that her time had come. Modestly advancing, she said, “Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for thee”? Pharaoh’s daughter said, Go. How joyfully did she go and call the child’s own mother! God’s finger was there. The mother’s faith has come up as sweet incense before Him and her heart is made glad, as only a praying mother’s can be. There was no occasion to tell us that she consecrated this child to Israel’s God for any service he might have for him in his after life. Such a mother, drawn by her sweet faith into such relationship to God, could do nothing less. Moreover, this was no barren consecration—was not a vow once made and soon forgotten. Nothing can be more certain than that she cared diligently for the moral training and culture of this marvelously saved son. Else how could it happen that “when he was come to years, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to sufferaffliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming reproach for Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect to the recompense of the reward” (Heb.11: 24–26)? The seeds of this world-conquering faith must have been dropped early into his tender mind. This hired Hebrew nurse, permitted to come into the royal palace by some back-way, was indulged this privilege freely, we know not precisely how long; but let us presume that the same faith and prayer kept this door open, at least for her occasional visits in his future years. How many testimonies of God’s love to the fathers of their nation she dropped into his youthful ear; how much she told him of God as “the exceeding great reward” of his believing people; how well she put the contrast between “the treasures of Egypt” and the treasures laid up for God’s then persecuted people:—these points are rather left to our inference than definitely stated; but we may be very sure that the faith of Moses took hold of these grand truths of then extant revelation; fixed its hold early; and held fast through all his future life.We have three co-ordinate narratives of the early years of Moses: that given inHeb.11: 24–27, very brief, and touching only its specially religious side; while that of Stephen (Acts 7: 20–29) is full, even somewhat more full than the narrative inEx.2: 10–15. Particularly Stephen adds that Moses was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in words and in deeds”—a man like Joseph of immense efficiency:—also that he was “full forty years old” when it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel—a statement which shows that he distinctly recognized this relationship of brethren. Seeing a brother Hebrew abused by an Egyptian he interposed, smote the Egyptian dead, and buried him in the sand. Stephen’s words suggest that this was not merely one of those quick, spontaneous impulses felt by noble souls in view of outrageous wrong, but was a first step toward a contemplated career of interposed force for the rescue of his people from their oppression. “For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; but they understood not” (Acts 7: 25). The whole of thefact seems to be that the Lord was not yet ready and had not fully prepared Moses for this great life-work of his yet,and certainly had not inaugurated him intoit.27——Interposing the next day in a quarrel between two of his own Hebrew brethren, he learned that his slaying of the Egyptian was known, and immediately sought safety by flight to the land of Midian. The Lord had more objects than one in turning his steps thither; not only his then present safety, but the spiritual culture of so much solitude and of long-continued, unbroken communion with God and of long tried faith, coupled with the incidental advantage of becoming perfectly familiar with that great wilderness through which he was to lead the hosts of Israel for forty years.Scarcely had he penetrated this desert land in his flight when he made the acquaintance of a priest of Midian [Jethro], and of his seven shepherdess daughters, one of whom became his wife.Like the somewhat similar experience of Abraham, falling in with the priest of Salem,Melchizedek, the circumstance suggests the inquiry how much of the true knowledge and worship of God existed in those early ages outside the line of Abraham’s family. The historical traces of such piety are certainly very few, yet they recur so incidentally that we are justified in the hope that these cases are not exhaustive; stood not altogether alone. When we come to consider the history of Job we shall take occasion to observe, that his location is certainly in this great region of Arabia, and that his date must in all probability have somewhat preceded this residence of Moses in the land of Midian. Here Moses may have found the story in a traditional form; may perhaps have seen Job’s immediate descendants; may possibly have put the story in its present form as one of the pastimes of a literary shepherd’s life; and then, retaining it in his possession during his subsequent years, may have himself solved the problem—How came this book in the archives of the Hebrew nation, on an equal footing as to inspired authority with their historical books?The Great Mission of Moses.Of the second forty-year period in the life of Moses, little is reported save its first scenes and its last.Ex.3 opens the latter. Moses is keeping the flock of his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He has “led them to the back side of the desert”—i. e.to the west side of it, for in designating the points of compass the Hebrews always turned the face toward the east. The east is in front—before; and of course the west is behind. Horeb and Sinai lay on the western margin of the great Arabian desert.——Here “the angel of the Lord appeared to him” (v.2), called “angel” however only as one who comes or is sent with divine manifestations;for in every subsequent mention he is called “the Lord” and “God” (vs.4, 6, 7, 11, 13,etc.)28——Remarkably this visible manifestation was made by the symbol of fire in a bush—the bush all aflame yet not consumed. This strange sight attracted the attention of Moses, and he turned aside to look into it more closely, when a voice from the bush called him by name; warned him not to approach in the spirit of mere curiosity, but to take off his shoes because the place on which he stood was holy ground. The mystery before Moses’ mind is solved—the Lord is there! His purpose in this appearing is soon told. He has heard the cry of distress from his oppressed people, has come down to deliver them and to bring them forth into Canaan. He has a mission for Moses in this work. “Come” said he, “I will send thee to Pharaoh.” Moses knew the power and the pride of Pharaoh, and saw at a glance the difficulties of this enterprise. No wonder he shrank back saying—“Who am I that I should do this”? God replied: “I will certainly be with thee”—a sufficient answer to any amount of conscious weakness and faintness of heart. The Lord added—“This shall be a token to thee that I have sent thee; when thou hast brought the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve [i. e.worship] God in this mountain.” From that moment this token was God’s pledge to Moses of success in bringing the people forth fromEgypt; and when it was fulfilled in the scenes of national worship and consecration on Horeb, it became doubly a sign to all the people that the Lord their God was in this great movement.Moses anticipates that the people will ask for the name of God, and he therefore inquires—What shall I answer them? To which the Lord replies: “I am that I am”; and then abbreviating the phrase, adds, “Thus shalt thou say to Israel,I amhath sent me to you.” What immediately follows should be carefully noted. God said moreover to Moses (still reiterating the same thought though in other and more familiar terms): “Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord—i. e.Jehovah, God of your fathers, hath sent me unto you; this is my name forever and this is my memorial through all generations.” Thisv.15 is without doubt the key to the true sense of the names as previously given—“I am that I am,” and in briefer form, “I am.” Their true meaning is in the nameJehovah. This name contemplates God as evermore existing, the same unchangeable God, and therefore ever faithful to his promises. This view of God assumes that he reveals himself personally as the God of his trustful people, entering into covenant with them and never failing to remember and fulfill that covenant.In order to see the full force and pertinence of the passage, it should be considered that by common Hebrew usage, the names of persons were significant. They were words with a meaning. This is true of all the names by which the true God is made known. And when Moses suggests that the people will ask for God’s name, it is not implied that they had never heard any name for God and did not know what to call him; but this—They would know what new or special feature of his character was to be manifested then. Their question was equivalent to asking—What does God propose to do now? What new movement does he contemplate? What new development of God may we expect?——To the question so understood, the Lord made a direct answer:—I have come to reveal my eternal faithfulness to my covenant with your fathers. I pledged myself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that I would bring their posterity into the goodly land of Canaan: I have come down to fulfill that word and toput into your national history an enduring testimony that my name is truly, “I am that I am”—the immutable and eternal God, whose word of promise faileth not forevermore.The same course of thought appears againEx.6: 1–8—a passage which should be studied in connection with this. “God said to Moses, I am the Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them”—the meaning of which is, not that the name Jehovah was never used by them, or given of God to them; but that its special significance had not been manifested to them as he was then about to make it manifest. HispowerGod had revealed—his power to protect them in their perils, his power to fulfill to Abraham the promise of a son; but such a glorious testimony to his faithfulness in fulfilling promise as was then to be given, the patriarchs had never seen. The redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage was destined to stand through all the ages of their history as the crowning manifestation of God’s faithfulness—the standard and unsurpassed testimony to the significance of his most honored nameJehovah. By this shall ye know that I am Jehovah your God when I bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and bring you into the land given by solemn oath to your fathers and to their posterity for a heritage (vs.7, 8).In entering upon this redemption of his people the Lord understood well the difficulties to be overcome and fully comprehended the situation. If Moses saw them at a glance, so did the Lord also. It was not possible that Moses could have a deeper sense or a juster view than God had of Pharaoh’s great pride, of his consciousness of power and stubbornness of purpose. The Lord expected a conflict; was ready for it; and by no means disposed to shun it. “I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go; no, not by a mighty hand”—not even under fearful visitations of God’s supernatural power. The precise sense of this seems to be that Pharaoh would resist God’s willfor a long timedespite the inflictions of his mighty hand and would yield only in the last extremity. In fact he never honestly yielded his will to God’s will, but only bent for the momentbefore the blast, to rally again with more desperate madness after it had swept by. When at length he saw that the people were really gone, his unsubdued will rose again in towering hardihood, to rush more madly than ever before against the uplifted arm of the Almighty and meet his doom in the bottom of the Red Sea!This chapter closes (vs.21, 22) with directions to the children of Israel toaskthe Egyptians for gold, silver, and raiment. The Lord promised to give them such favor with the people that they would readily grant them what they asked. Our English version puts it “borrow”—as if the Israelites at least tacitly promised to bring these borrowed things back, or if nothing more, left the Egyptians to expect this. But this English word “borrow” misrepresents the Hebrew and consequently the sense of the passage. The Hebrew verb used here never has the sense ofborrow, but means simply toask. Indeed borrowing was out of the question because the Israelites were not coming back again. It was never God’s thought that they should come back. He had come down to deliver them from their bondage and to bring them into Canaan. There is no reason to suppose that the Egyptians expected them back again. They gave what Israel asked, therefore, not as a loan, but because the Lord brought them into such relations to Israel that they were glad to get them out of the country any way, and perhaps hoped to avert more fearful plagues by these gifts to God’s people. The historian in this case says (Ex.12: 33)—“The Egyptians were urgent upon the people that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said—We be all dead men”; which the Psalmist confirms (Ps.105: 38)—“Egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of them fell upon them.” Manifestly the Lord counted it simple justice that Egypt should pay her slaves for long years of unrequited toil, and not send them away empty. Therefore he took measures to make the old masters but too glad to do this tardy justice.A new instrumentality of most vital importance now came to view, designed to bring about the redemption of God’s people from Egypt,viz.supernatural agencies—miraclesin the legitimate sense of the word. Noticeably these miracles were two-fold in character and purpose;one class designed to identify God to the people and be a witness to his present hand, to confirm their faith in him as their Deliverer: the other designed by terrible inflictions of calamity, to force upon Pharaoh’s hardened heart the conviction of Jehovah’s power and compel him to let God’s people go. These two objects were to be accomplished; the Hebrew people were to be assured that their own God had indeed come; Pharaoh must be made to know who Jehovah is; how fearful the judgments of his uplifted hand are; and how vain it is for mortals, though on thrones of human power, to lift up themselves against the Almighty.In the list of miraculous signs sent to convince the Hebrew people, we have (Ex.4: 1–8) the rod of Moses turned to a serpent and then turned back again to a rod; then his hand withdrawn from his bosom leprous, white as snow; then again withdrawn, perfectly restored.The narrative gives the reader a strong sense of the reluctance of Moses to enter upon this new mission. Over and over again, in varying forms, he pleads his want of adaptation; that he is slow of speech, not eloquent; that he sees no improvement in this regard since the Lord first spake to him; and finally he begs the Lord to send by any body else he pleases, only (he implies) excuse me. Plainly he pushed this plea for excuse not merely to the verge of modest propriety but beyond it, for we read—“The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.” Yet he did so far regard the plea of Moses as to give him Aaron his elder brother to speak in his behalf. “Thou shalt speak to him and put words into his mouth; he shall be thy spokesman to the people,” and to Pharaoh.The way is now prepared for Moses and his family to return from Midian to Egypt. He took his wife and his two sons and proceeded on his journey. The scenes of the first night at the inn are recorded in these words: “And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that theLORDmet him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and castitat his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husbandartthou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husbandthou art, because of the circumcision.” This account is very brief, leaving various points unexplained.Probably the facts were substantially these. Of their two sons, one had been circumcised; the other had not—the prescribed rite having been disobeyed or at least neglected out of the deference of Moses to the opposition or reluctance of his wife. But as Moses is now about to assume the highest responsibilities between God and the Hebrew people, it is vital that his example in this respect should be spotless. The Lord therefore called him suddenly to account in this manner, threatening his very life. The cause is instantly understood; the wife of Moses yields and herself performs the rite, though perhaps not in the most submissive and amiable spirit. After this transaction and the developments attending it, we must suppose that Moses (prudently) sent back his wife and the two children to remain with her father until the redeemed Israelites should reach the home of Jethro. We hear no more of her and her children till the narrative inEx.18 brings them to view thus: “When Jethro had heard all that the Lord had done for Moses and Israel, he took Zipporah, Moses’ wife,after he had sent her back, and her two sons and brought them to Moses”etc.——Shortly after this scene at the inn, Aaron, sent of God for this purpose, meets Moses yet in the wilderness and is introduced to his responsibilities in the issues then pending before Pharaoh and the people. Their first introduction to Pharaoh and the reception he gave to their message (Ex.5) revealed his character and gave pre-intimations of the conflict. They put their case before him:—“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” “And Pharaoh said—Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.” Am not I king over all Egypt? Do you tell me there is some higher king than I and bid me obey his command? I know nothing of your Jehovah: I will never submit to his authority! And as if to show how fearlessly he could resist their summons he at once puts heavier tasks upon the people, in proud defiance, daring the vengeance of their Great Defender! Verily the issues hasten to their crisis!The suffering people are entirely disheartened and evince a painful lack of faith in the God of their fathers. When Moses rehearsed to them the inspiring words recordedEx.6: 1–8, “They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage.” Ah, how frail is poor human nature! How weak is the faith of this long-oppressed people! But God’s compassions are a great deep and he does not frown severely upon them, broken down though they were in their manhood and in their religious trust.——Moses too seems to falter before this stern reception from Pharaoh and this disheartening attitude of Israel (6: 12); but the loving kindness of the Lord endures, despite of these sad imperfections in his servants. For the glory of his own name and not for the worthiness or virtue of his people, he has entered upon this redeeming work and he will carry it through.The narrative pauses a moment more (Ex.6: 16–27) to give us the genealogy of Levi, for the obvious purpose of showing the place of Moses and of Aaron in this record; and then proceeds (Ex.7 and onward) with the impressive scenes ofthe ten plagues on Pharaoh and on Egypt.A brief preliminary explanation of some of these plagues will be in place, after which the following points will have special attention:1. That these ten plagues on Egypt were really supernatural, miraculous.2. That several of them were very specially adapted to Egypt.3. The case of the magicians.4. The divine purpose and policy in shaping the demand made upon Pharaoh to let the people go.5. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.6. The final result as shown in the last of the ten plagues.The ten plagues in their historical order stand thus:1. Water turned to blood (Ex.7: 14–25);2. Frogs (8: 1–15);3. Lice (8: 16–19);4. Flies (8: 20–32);5. Murrain upon cattle (9: 1–7);6. Boils (9: 8–12);7. Hail (9: 18–35);8. Locusts (10: 4–20);9. Darkness (10: 21–27);10. Death of all first-born (11: 4–8, and 12: 12, 29–33).References to these plagues by name may be seen inPs.78: 43–51, and 105: 27–38.By way of preliminary explanation it should be said—that the turning of water into blood should not be toned down to a mere discoloration of the waters of Egypt—a reddening of such sort as customarily attends the annual rise of the Nile, only carried in the present case somewhat beyond the ordinary degree. For, be it noticed, the record is that the waters wereturned to blood; that fish could no longer live in it but died (were the fish deceived by the mere appearance, the color?); that the river became offensive to the smell; its waters could not be drank; “there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.” If this language does not mean far more than a merediscoloration—something totally different from a visual deception; in short, if it does not mean “turned to blood,” then no language can be found to express it.In the third plague, the Hebrew word for“lice”29were better renderedgnats, yet an insect unknown to our country. Herodotus (B. C. 400) speaks of the great trouble which they cause and of the precautions used against them. Hartmann testifies:“All travelers speak of these gnats as an ordinary plague of thecountry.”30“So small as to be scarcely visible to the eye, their sting notwithstanding causes a most painful irritation. They even creep into the eyes and nose, and after harvest rise in great swarms from the inundated rice fields.” (Keil.)In the fourth plague, the word translated “swarms offlies”31does not mean a mixed mass or swarm of various insects as our translators assumed, but “a stinging, scorpion-like insect” [Fuerst], “so called from its sucking the blood” [Gesenius]. Sonnini (in Hengstenberg’s Moses,p.117) says—“Men and animals are grievously tormented by them. It is impossible to form an adequate conception of their fury when theywish to fix themselves upon any part of the body. If they are driven away they light again the same instant, and their pertinacity wearies the most patient. They especially love to light in the corners of the eyes or on the edge of the eyelids, sensitive parts to which they are attracted by a slight moisture.” “They are much more numerous and annoying than the gnats; and when enraged, they fasten themselves upon the human body, especially upon the edge of the eyelids and become a dreadful plague” [Keil].——Obviously the American house-fly gives us no adequate idea of this fourth plague on Egypt.Of the sixth plague, “boils with blains,” it need only be said that they were inflamed ulcers breaking forth into pustules, intensely painful. The word for “boils” is the same which describes the plague brought by Satan upon Job.The seventh plague,hail with lightning, was not unknown in Egypt, yet was by no means common, and was specially rare in Upper Egypt—more frequent in Lower.——The other plagues will be readily understood.1. It is now in place to show that these plagues were reallysupernatural—miraculous inflictions from the hand of the Almighty.(1.) Note, they were wrought in response to Pharaoh’s challenge to Moses and Aaron to “show a miracle for themselves” (Ex.7: 9). The Lord accepted this challenge. Of course the achievements wrought can be nothing less than miracles. Given on the side of the Lord honesty and power; then nothing less than miracles can follow.His purpose in these terrible inflictions God announces to Pharaoh in these words: “By this shalt thou know that I am the Lord” (Ex.7: 19 and 9: 14). Events in the common course of nature do not suffice for this purpose upon such a heart as Pharaoh’s. The case demands real miracles—things done outside and apart from the ordinary laws of nature.(2.) The plagues came and went at the behest of Moses acting under God; in some cases, at a definite time previously indicated. (9: 5, 18, 29, 33 and 10: 4); while some were removed at a time which Pharaoh himselffor his more full satisfaction was allowed to fix (8: 9, 10). So I construe the somewhat disputed words (v.8); “Moses said to Pharaoh—Glory over me: When shall I entreat for thee,”etc.Moses would say—I yield to you the honor of fixing the time: say when; and I meet your time.——Some critics translate simply—Explain; declare yourself (Gesenius); or utter plainly, definitely (Fuerst); but the usual sense of the verb, coupled with the preposition (“over”) which follows, strongly favors the construction above given.(3.) Most of these plagues if not all discriminated sharply between the Hebrews in Goshen, and the Egyptians elsewhere in Egypt—e. g.flies (8: 22, 23) and murrain (9: 4–7),etc.This discrimination assumes that the plagues followed no general law of nature, but were altogether special,i. e.were truly miraculous.(4.) They surpassed and even totally eclipsed the achievements of the magicians; in fact, routed them utterly from the field and showed before all Egypt that the Almighty God was there!——The case of the magicians will be considered more fully below.(5.) The conviction was forced upon Pharaoh and the confession extorted from his lips (utterly against his will), that God’s hand wrought these achievements; that these calamities came at his command, and could be removed by his power and not otherwise. Hence over and over he begs Moses to pray to his God for their removal. See this in the case of the frogs (8: 8); of the flies (8: 28, 29); of the hail (9: 27–29); and the locusts (10: 16–18). It is not easy to see how stronger testimony to the reality of miracles can ever exist.(6.) That these plagues were real miracles, direct from the hand of God, it is unquestionably the intent of the whole narrative to set forth and affirm. So much, no candid reader of the account has ever questioned. Some may say, the narrator was himself deceived: none will deny that he saw God’s finger there and meant to make all his readers see it. None can deny that according to his account even proud Pharaoh saw and felt the very finger of God in them. In fact the narrative makes this itsmain purpose,viz.to show that these judgments were nothing less than immediate visitations from the hand of the Almighty. Take out this element and there is nothing left.(7.) Or thus: If there is any truth in history, the children of Israel were for a long period bondmen in Egypt. Ultimately the day of their deliverance broke and they came forth free.How came this to pass?Was it by forcible insurrection—the uprising of slaves cutting their way out of bondage into freedom with brave hearts and strong arms of their own? Or was it achieved by diplomacy? Or did Pharaoh relax his grasp and let the people go, under the impulses of humanity, or as a measure of political economy? All suppositions of this sort are not only unhistorical but utterly chimerical. No solution of this great problem—the redemption of Israel from bondage in Egypt—can ever find rational support save the one given in this record,viz.that the Almighty wrenched them from the grasp of Egypt’s proud and hardened king by a series of terrible judgments launched upon him and his people in quick and hot succession, until they were only too glad to hasten and drive the people out lest they should all be dead men. They were made to feel that the battle was against Almighty God and that they could not succumb too soon.The events of this wonderful conflict and victory were stamped into the national life of Israel; they reappear all along the course of future ages, interwoven into the very warp and woof of her national history and into the moral forces which developed the nation’s piety. It might as reasonably be maintained that there never was any Hebrew nation as that God did not bring them forth out of Egypt with a high hand, first loosing Pharaoh’s grasp by these ten plagues, and last, burying his pursuing hosts and himself in the waters of the Red Sea.The supernatural character of these plagues will stand out yet more distinctly when we shall place them in contrast with the things done or attempted by the magicians.2.Several of these plagues were very specially adapted to Egypt.This does not mean that they were at all less miraculous than any other supposable inflictions would have been; but only that they had more or less special fitness to the ends God had in view and were made to touchthe sensibilities of Egypt and her king in tender points. Thus, the Nile was Egypt’s pride and glory, indeed her very life, and not improbably (as some maintain) was worshiped by the Egyptians as one of their gods. How terrible then to wake in the morning to find it one vast sea of blood!—to have only blood for themselves and their cattle to drink; blood every-where for the eye to rest upon in place of the glory of the Nile! How terribly suggestive of their national sin—of the male infants of the Hebrews murdered there, and of the resources of Israel’s God to punish the guilty!So we must suppose that frogs were often inconveniently plenty in Egyptian waters. This visitation of such masses of them brought an evil by no means foreign to their experience. The miracle lay in their numbers and was none the less a miracle because there had been frogs there before. It must have been excessively annoying and humiliating,—if the frog as a near neighbor is as unamiable in that country as in this.Essentially the same must be said of the lice [gnats]; of the flies; and of boils. All these were forms of evil not unknown in Egyptian life; but yet in the present case were truly miraculous and fearfully afflictive.Their cattle were so useful and so highly esteemed that some of them were made objects of idolatrous worship. The golden calf of Hebrew history was an Egyptian idea. There was special pertinence therefore in this fearful slaughter among Egypt’s gods!The hail, with most terrific lightning, was by far the more appalling because rain rarely falls there; hail and lightning yet more rarely.In the natural course of events, locusts are among the fearful visitations of Oriental countries—not unknown in Egypt. In this case the fearfulness of the plague lay in their numbers, and the miracle was none the less because they had had some experience before of this form of desolation.3.The case of the magicians.The entire account of them is in these words. After Aaron had cast down his rod before Pharaoh and it became a serpent, “Then Pharaoh called the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did so with their enchantments. For they cast downevery man his rod and they became serpents; but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods” (Ex.7: 11, 12). Again, after the miracle of turning the water to blood, “The magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments” (7: 22). After the miracle of the frogs, “the magicians did so with their enchantments and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt” (8: 7). Next, when all the dust became lice “the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice,but they could not: so there were lice upon man and upon beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh—This is the finger of God” (8: 18, 19). Finally, under the plague of boils, “The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians” (9: 11). We hear of them in this history no more.The Hebrew word for “sorcerers” involves the practice of magic arts and incantations. The word for “magicians of Egypt” contemplates them originally aswriters, the learned class, but couples with that the idea of special skill in horoscopy—the interpretation of dreams and the doing, or at least pretending to do, things beyond the skill of the uninitiated. The word for “enchantments” originally suggests secret arts, things covered, veiled from the public gaze.——The passageDeut.18: 10–14, gives most if not all the nearly synonymous words by which this class of men and their arts were designated, showing also that they were regarded before the Lord with most intense abhorrence as an abomination. By the Mosaic law the practice of these arts was punishable with death (Ex.22: 12).In regard to the case of the magicians as presented in this history, the point of chief interest will be this—Did they really perform miracles? Did they in fact turn rods into serpents, and water into blood, and produce some frogs in addition to what were there before?——I am not sure that we have data sufficient to determine with certainty whether these things ascribed to them were simply tricks of hand, arts of jugglery; or whether there was really some power exerted, more and other than human.——The cases were of a sort in which deception was at least supposable. All the waters it would seem were turned to blood before their effort was made. If so, they had to do with what wasalready blood and had only to make it appear to be water before they began operations.——So of the frogs. When frogs were every-where in such numbers, it would not be specially difficult to make it appear that they produced yet more. The turning of rods into serpents is not unknown in the tricks of jugglery the world over.Of two facts we may be very sure. (1) They had no help from God. Their wonders were not wrought by God’s power. We may put this denial on two independent grounds:——​(a.) The moral purpose of their work utterly forbids the least participation on God’s part. God never fights against himself.——​(b.) Their power was infinitely less than divine. Compared with God’s, it was shown to be simple weakness. “Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.” Before the plague of lice they were compelled to succumb, and (utterly against their will and against their interest) they declare to Pharaoh—“This is the finger of God”! It utterly distances all our skill. We can not approach it. Before the boils, they writhed in agony. They could not even screen themselves from the terrible infliction. Moreover it is made plain throughout the whole transaction that they were powerless to remove even the slightest of these plagues. If they had possessed this power Pharaoh would have put them to this service. It is plain they shrank from even the attempt. The whole scene was a competition between God’s power as manifested through his servants, Moses and Aaron, and the power of Egypt’s magicians—resulting in most overwhelming proof that the latter had not the first element of God’s power in it.——It follows therefore that if the magicians had extra-human help—if they had any power beyond human skill,they obtained it from Satan. We may readily suppose they were in league with him, working according to his will. He may have sharpened their wits by his influence, helped their arts by his suggestions, and possibly may have given them superhuman aid in the line of physical power. It is not given to us to know the exact limits of his power to aid his servants. It is not essential that we should know precisely where these limits are. We know enough to impress the injunction—“Be sober, be vigilant, because of your adversary the devil” (1 Pet.5: 8).It may always be our consolation that whenever he matches his power or his skill against the Almighty, he will come off, as, in the case before us, utterly worsted in the fight, overwhelmed with defeat and shame.4. Some attention should be given to the divine purpose and policy in shaping the demand made upon Pharaoh to let the people go.——The point of special importance here is one which has been thought to involve the question of strict moral honesty—it being claimed that the divine demand at first ran on this wise: “Let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God” (Ex.3: 18)—leaving Pharaoh to assume that, this being granted, they would return to his service.The facts on this point are:(1.) It was never promised or even intimated that they would return. If Pharaoh construed the words of God and of Moses to imply this, he did so on his own responsibility.(2.) The demand made upon him that he should let the people go was based in part at least on the religious duty of sacrificing to God in the wilderness (Ex.5: 1, 3)—an entirely appropriate demand—one which Pharaoh ought to have appreciated, and one which would be more likely to have weight with him than any other. For he was himself a worshiper of his own gods; he knew the strength of the religious element in human nature; he was able to recognize the universal rights of conscience by which every man may claim to worship God according to his own convictions of duty. If Pharaoh would not yield to this request he would yield to none. The policy pursued was, therefore, the most hopeful and the least likely to arouse opposition.(3.) Even the severest honesty did not require that the Lord should put this demand in its most revolting form in the outset. True, he might have said from the beginning: “My people shall never return”; but this would have at once foreclosed all hope of gaining Pharaoh’s consent.(4.) If the question of the return of the people was thus left a very little open—or more correctly, was not peremptorily closed, it served the better to test theheart of Pharaoh. It left the way open to ply him with inducements most likely to be successful; and at the same time if he proved obstinate and self-willed, he might show it by bantering over the conditions, higgling as tradesmen and their customers sometimes do over the price, negotiating like diplomatists for the most favorable terms. But this was the fault of Pharaoh, not of God.(5.) Most frequently the demand was made in these significant words: “Let my people go that they may serve me” (Ex.8: 1, 20, and 9: 1, 13). Israel is my son; his service is due to me and I claim it (Ex.4: 22, 23). You have no right to his services; I demand therefore that you let my son go that he may serve me.——This is at least sufficiently definite, and is by no means open to the slightest imputation of lacking in the point of honesty.5.The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.In this topic, as in the one next preceding, the point of chief interest is the moral one—that which locates the moral responsibility for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart—that which defines and places truthfully the really responsible agency in the case. Was this hardening the work of God, by his immediate hand? Was it wrought by his power so exclusively and in such modes as to overrule and throw out of account Pharaoh’s own responsible agency?Or was the responsible agency that of Pharaoh only, altogether his and his alone? Did he harden his own heart, in the exercise of his own free will, in carrying out the purpose and desire of his own soul, essentially as other sinners and as all sinners do?This question is one of immensely vital moment. Let us approach it with both care and candor.We may reach the true answer by studying,(1.) The history of the case;(2.) What is said of God’s purpose in this matter;(3.) What he has taught us of his character, and of his agencies in the existence of sin.(1.) The history of the transaction will doubtless throw light on the question—How came Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened?How was it done?The history of the transaction, developing the steps of the process, bears more vitally upon the question, Who is responsible?—than may at first view be realized. For, let it be carefully considered: God’s ways of working by his immediate, direct, exclusive agency will forever be mysterious and inscrutable to us. It is idle for us to ask—Howdoes God work a miracle? Of course it must be idle for us to inquire after the natural law of such working because the very idea of a miracle is that of a worknotwrought according to any known laws of nature. If now the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart were wrought by God’s miraculous, direct, immediate hand, we shall look in vain for the law of his operations. It would be simply preposterous to inquire after the laws of mind in accordance with which the thing was done—the supposition being that it was done according tonoknown laws of mind whatever.On the other hand if Pharaoh hardened his own heart, there will be no mystery about it. It so happens that we all know but too well how sinners harden their own hearts. There is rarely the least difficulty in tracing the operations of the human mind and the influences of temptation which produce this result. Therefore, if the history of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart brings out the working of his mind, according to the common modes of human sinning—if we see that his mind worked as the minds of other proud sinners are wont to work under like circumstances, then the whole question is settled at once and forever. If we can actuallyseehow Pharaoh hardened his own heart and can identify the whole process as being the very same which occurs in the case of all proud sinners who resist God’s power and especially resist the appeals of his love and mercy, what more can we ask? It were worse than idle—it were impious to exonerate Pharaoh from the least portion of the moral responsibility for his hardened heart and to seek to cast it over upon God.In entering upon thehistory of the case, it is well to note the attitude of Pharaoh’s mind toward the God of Israel in the outset. We have it brought out fully (Ex.5: 1, 2): “Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh: ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel; let mypeople go that they may serve me.’ And Pharaoh said—Whois the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.”——This is plain; he says he does not know this God; he does not recognize his authority or admit his claims. His soul is full of practical unbelief in God—a fact which commonly lies at the bottom of all the hardening of sinners’ hearts in every age.——Pharaoh did not at first contemplate crossing swords and measuring strong armswith the Almighty God. If he had taken this view of the case, he might have paused awhile to consider.——So it usually is with sinners. Unbelief in God conduces to launch them upon this terrible conflict. Once committed, they become more hardened; one sin leads on to more sinning till sin becomes incurable—shall we say it? an uncontrollable madness.We may now fitly proceed to give attention to each particular case.The first miracle (Ex.7: 10–13) that of changing Aaron’s rod to a serpent, was rather atestthan aplague. Pharaoh met it by calling in his magicians to try their hand—his thought being, My men can do that! They didseemto do it, and though Aaron’s rod-serpent swallowed up theirs, yet Pharaoh did not love to be convinced and therefore was not. Under this result, which perhaps seemed to him a partial victory, he braced himself against God this time.Next, in the turning of water into blood we read (Ex.7: 22) “The magicians did so with their enchantments, and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.” This seemed to him a complete success for his side. Naturally, therefore, his heart is hardened to withstand God yet.Under the plague of frogs—not by any means one of the most severe—Pharaoh seemed to yield; he at least begged the prayers of Moses and Aaron; and promised to let the people go (Ex.8: 8). To make God’s hand the more distinctly visible, Moses said—Set your own time, and I will pray that this plague may cease. Done: “but when Pharaoh saw that there wasrespite, he hardened his heart and hearkened not unto them” (8: 15). Alas, how he abused God’s mercy! God lifted the plague—and up springs the old rebellion of his soulagainst God. Perhaps he flatters himself that this is the last, or he hopes that Moses will pray the rest away as he has this; or, as often happens, the simple sense of respite without any particular reasoning in the case makes him feel strong again to withstand God. Not the least sense of gratitude for the favor—the mercy of removing the plague! O how many of the sinners of our world have done this very thing! Stricken down with sickness, have they not begged for life and besought the prayers of all the good, and promised the Lord that with restoring mercy they would give him their hearts and their lives? But when the respite came their vows were forgotten; their hearts were hardened.The plague of lice brings out another element of depraved hearts. The magicians try, but make an utter failure, and (what is to Pharaoh more provoking still) they frankly declare to him, “This is the finger of God.” They retire from the contest, and leave Pharaoh to fight it out alone. They can help him no longer. He is apparently vexed and maddened, but not at all subdued. Rather, he rouses himself to greater desperation, for the record puts these points in the closest connection: the frank admission, “This is the finger of God”; and the stiffening of Pharaoh’s rebellious will—“AndPharaoh’s heart was hardened and he hearkened not unto them.”The plague of flies brings out yet another element of human nature which not unfrequently comes into play in the hardening of men’s hearts against God—viz.the habit of bantering—shall we say dickering, driving a bargain and quibbling over the terms and conditions of God’s requirements. The flies are terribly annoying: Pharaoh sees that something must be done; in fact he concludes he must make some concessions: so he calls for Moses and Aaron and says—“Go ye, sacrifice to your Godin the land.” The last words were emphatic—inthisland: stay here, and you shall have time to offer your sacrifices. I can not let you go three days journey into the wilderness lest ye never come back.——Moses insists on the original terms; and then Pharaoh concedes yet a little more: “I will let you go that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only ye shall not go very far away. Entreat forme”—i. e.entreat the Lord to take away these flies—the same word being used here as inv.8. Moses entreated: the Lord removed the plague, and according to the record “Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the people go.” Allowing himself to make terms with God and to banter him upon the conditions, coupled with the respite—the temporary relief found in the removal of the plague—are manifestly the causes and modes in this case of his hardening his own heart.Next is the plague of murrain—a terrible loss of their cattle. In the antecedent threatening of this plague, Moses said to Pharaoh, “The Lord willseverbetween the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt: there shall nothing die of all that belongs to Israel.” So it was; for we read—“Pharaoh sent [i. e.to inquire] and lo! not one of the cattle of the Israelites was dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go” (9: 1–7). This discrimination gave a keener edge to the plague; it cut the deeper; but in the result it only maddened him the more. It showed most clearly that God’s hand was in these plagues and that he was on the side of Israel; but Pharaoh was committed to the contest and seemed to have but the one ruling purpose—to fight it out to the bitter end.The plague of boils was a visitation of physical suffering, perhaps somewhat adapted to make a fretful man irritable. The narrative notes the circumstance that the magicians were completely broken down by this plague: “They could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians” [not upon the Israelites]. As to Pharaoh, all human help fails him; every man among his people seems to quail and give up the contest; yet his proud heart is only the more maddened and the more determined! It is said, “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he hearkened not unto them;” but such mad infatuation is wont to appear in depraved human souls without any miraculous infliction of hardness from the hand of God. There is not the least occasion to assume any other influences than those of a proud, maddened human heart, working out its own obstinate will against God.The hail with attendant thunder and lightning(next in order) were fearfully appalling. All Egyptian hearts seemed to quiver with terror under this infliction. Pharaoh is brought (shall we say) to his knees: he sends hastily for Moses and Aaron and says to them: “I have sinned this time; the Lord is righteous and I and my people are wicked.” Truly this seems hopeful. For the first time he appears penitent. “Entreat the Lord (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go and ye shall stay no longer.”——This seems to be a final victory over the proud heart and the long time inflexible will of Pharaoh. He confesses sin; he begs again for prayer; he promises to yield to God’s entire demand and let the people go. Consequently the plague was removed. “And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder were ceased, he sinned yet more and hardened his heart, he and his servants.”——Alas for man’s perverse and false nature—his proud heart and his lying lips! How readily he relapses back into his old and much-loved sin and becomes more hardened than ever! The judgments of God extort confessions and tears and prayers; but God’s mercies let off this pressure and leave the guilty soul to fly back to its old sins again. So it was with Pharaoh. God’s mercies, abused, worked out his ruin. But it were simply monstrous to say that this showing of mercy is on God’s part a moral wrong and that it throws over upon him the moral responsibility of hardening the sinner’s heart. Yet it was precisely in this way—perhaps more really and potently than in any other—that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh.The plague of locusts brings to view a new group of elements. Egypt had known something about locusts before: so when this scourge was announced, Pharaoh’s servants beg him to yield the contest. “How long shall this man” [Moses] “be a snare unto us? Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God. Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed”? (10: 7).——Pharaoh yields to their entreaty only so far as to send for Moses and Aaron, and again try his hand upon bantering with them and with God over the conditions. “Go serve the Lord, said he; butwho are they that shall go”? Moses answers, Every thing must go; we with our young and with our old; with sons andwith daughters; with flocks and with herds—all, absolutelyallmust go.——No indeed, replies Pharaoh—with what we must take as his royal oath—with the most fearful threat he could make and the most solemn asseveration—he says, “Not so; goye that are menand serve the Lord, for that ye did desire.” That was all ye asked at first: it is the utmost I shall give! “And they were driven out of his presence.” Pharaoh is thoroughly mad! This allowing himself to banter them as to the terms of the arrangement helped him to a stronger feeling of his own importance. He seemed to himself to be yet more a king on his throne, and why should not he dictate the conditions?——Soon the plague comes, and for the moment it quite changes the face of affairs. “Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste, and said” [again]—“I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. Now, therefore, forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat the Lord your God that he may take away from me this death only.” Apparently he remembers that once before he confessed, and more than once has begged their prayers, and more than once has promised to let the people go. So he labors to give a little more emphasis to his beseechings this time by confessing his sin against Moses, and especially by the limitation—“for this once”—once moredohear me—this time only. But he has been through this very process once before; most of its points, many times before; and it is much more easy for him to turn back upon every promise and break every most solemn vow than it ever has been before. It is safe to predict that any sinner who has broken so many solemn vows of amendment will never do any thing better than break vows when God’s mercy lifts off the plague. So Pharaoh’s heart is hardened yet again. The statement is—“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”—yet the way he did it, here as before (9: 34), was by removing the plague; by hearing his prayer for relief and apparently trusting his sacred promise to let the people go. This was the way and these the agencies by which the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.The plague of darkness is next in order. Again Pharaoh sets himself to negotiate as to the terms. He will consent that not only the men may go, but their wivesand their little ones;but their flocks must be left behind. He must have some hostages—something left in his hands that will bring his bondmen back. Moses saysNo!we need our flocks for sacrifice; not a hoof is to be left behind! Pharaoh is more mad than ever: he not only drives Moses out from his presence, but adds—“Take heed to thyself; see my face no more; for in the day thou seest my face thou shalt die.” In this case it is said—“The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”; but these terrible uprisings and outbursts of madness well up from the depths of a depraved sinner’s soul. No supernatural miracle of divine hardening is at all needful to create them. Pharaoh is too proud a king to bear such confrontings of his will. Shall he yield to such a man as Moses, or even to the God of Moses? Not he. It stirs up all the elements of his pride and madness to have his propositions of compromise so peremptorily rejected. It is this in special that works in this present case to the hardening of his heart.There remains but one more plague—that awful night on Egypt when the wailing cry rang out over all the land, “for there was not a house where there was not one dead”! and that thefirst-born! Under this, Pharaoh for the time really broke down; he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said—“Go ye and all your people, and take your flocks and herds as ye have said and be gone, and bless me also.” This conceded everything, closing off with begging their blessing upon his consciously guilty soul! The Egyptians too were all astir; they were urgent upon the people to send them out of the land in haste; for they said—“We be all dead men.” And the people of Israel do really go.——But strange as it may seem, when “it was told the king of Egypt that the people had really gone, then the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people and they said—Why have we done this that we have let Israel go from serving us”?——Forthwith armed chariots are made ready and are off in hot pursuit;—till they find themselves battling the mighty waves of the Red Sea, quailing before the awful eye and under the uplifted arm of the Almighty!——This last instance of hardening the heart seems most like pure and simple infatuation. No doubt Pharaoh and his servants had a fresh sense of what they had lost inletting go such a host of hard working bondmen. No doubt they also felt the mortification of having been worsted in the long-fought struggle over this national question of letting the people go; but after all they had seen and felt of God’s power to curse and to plague and to crush them, nothing but the most senseless infatuation can rationally account for this last desperate dash upon Israel with the armed force of the nation. Yet no one will say that such infatuation does not often appear in the history of human sinning. In his own sphere many a poor sinner is just as madly infatuated as Pharaoh and his people were—is altogether as senseless, as void of wisdom, as reckless of the hot thunderbolts of the Almighty! It is an awfully sad fact, a most humiliating confession as to the manner of human sinning; but it is only too true! There is no need of assuming any direct supernatural divine interposition to produce it.Nothing more seems necessary to complete the argument from the history of the case unless it be to suggest that when we have accounted for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart satisfactorily on the one principle—the well-known proclivities and activities of a proud, stubborn human heart, it is entirely unphilosophical to bring in another principle,viz.the miraculous, immediate, direct action of Almighty Power. When we have proved the former power adequate to produce all the results, we have virtually precluded the latter. There can be no reason whatever for assuming a joint, co-ordinate action of both the natural laws of the human mind and of the supernatural power of God. If the former suffices, the latter is uncalled for. Miracles are never to be assumed where non-miraculous agency is fully adequate.If it be still argued that the very words declare, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” the answer is: God is said to do what he foresees will be done by others and done under such arrangements of his providence as make it possible and morally certain that they will do it. Joseph said to his brethren (Gen.45: 5, 7, 8), “Be not angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life. So now it was not you that sent me hither but God.” Yet it is simply impious to put the sin of selling Joseph into Egypt overupon God. God did it only in the same sense in which he hardened Pharaoh’s heart. He had a purpose to subserve by means of the sin of Joseph’s brethren; and he did no doubt permit such circumstances to occur in his providence as made that sin possible and as resulted in their sinning and in the remote consequences which God anticipated.It is of no particular use for us to find fault with the way in which the Scriptures speak of God’s hand in the existence of sin. There is no special mystery about it. It certainly does not involve the least moral obliquity on God’s part; and it is therefore every way prudent and wise to interpret such language in harmony with the common sense of the case and with the well-known character of God.2. We proceed to notice what is said ofGod’s purposein the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It is the more important to speak of this because an extreme view is sometimes taken of the central passage (Ex.9: 14–16); “And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up for to show in thee my power,”etc.The extreme view referred to is that God made Pharaoh a great king, put him on a high throne, for the avowed purpose of displaying his own great power in his sin and punishment.By consent of Hebrew lexicographers, the verb translated “raised up” means in this casepreserved alive—havecaused thee to standor continue among the living. The previous context moreover seems not to be quite accurately put in our English version. It should rather be thus, beginning withv.14: “For at this very time I am sending [present tense] all my plagues to thine heart and upon thy servants and upon thy people that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For I might now have stretched out my hand and smitten thee and thy people with pestilence [i. e.might have smitten you all dead], and thou wouldest have been cut off from the earth. But truly for this very reason have I preserved thee alive to the end that thou mightest show forth [make others see] my power, and for the sake of proclaiming my name in all the earth.” To the same purport are the words (Ex.14: 17, 18) with reference to the final destruction of Pharaoh’shost; “And I will get me honor upon Pharaoh and upon all his host,etc.And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I shall have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh and upon his chariots and his horsemen.” The great thought is that God turns to account the sin and madness of Pharaoh for the purpose of making known his power to save his people and to crush their foes. He shapes his ways of providence to this end. He might have swept off Pharaoh and his people with the same pestilence which destroyed so many of their cattle; but he had a wiser purpose. He could make a better use of their sin and of their life; so he spared them till he had wrought all his wonders upon Egypt before all the nations of the earth; and then he let them plunge into the mighty waves of the Red Sea and make their grave there!——Now if wicked menwill sin, who shall object against God that he makes the best possible use of it? Why may he not reveal his power thereby and exalt his name as one “mighty to save” or to destroy?3. It only remains to ask—What has God taught us of his character as bearing on the question before us, and of his agencies in the existence of sin?Here few words ought to suffice. Nothing can be more plain than the revelations of scripture concerning God’s character as infinitely pure and holy—as a Being who not only can never sin himself but can never be pleased to have others sin, and above all can never put forth his power tomake them sin. God can not be tempted with evil, “neither tempteth he any man” (Jam.1: 13). When he declares so solemnly and so tenderly: “O do not that abominable thing which I hate”! shall it still be said—But he puts men to sinning; pushes them on in their sin; inclines their heart to sin and hardens them to more and guiltier sinning? Never!Shall it be claimed that with one hand God gives his Spirit to impress the truth on human souls unto their salvation; and with the other sends his Spirit to augment the forces of temptation and to harden men’s hearts unto their damnation? Shall the same fountain send forth both sweet water and bitter? Shall the same God renew some human hearts unto holiness and harden other human hearts in sin—all by the same direct and similarly purposed agency, each work beingdone under the same impulses of infinite love?——Surely there must be some egregious misconception of God’s character involved in supposing him capable of acts so fundamentally opposite and incompatible—not to say, in supposing him capable of tempting men into more and greater sin!The fact that He wisely and mightily over-rules sin to bring good forth from it should never be construed to imply that he abhors sin any the less because he can extort some good results from its existence.

THISsecond book of the Pentateuch takes its modern name from its principal event, the exodus of the Hebrew people—their marching forth out of their house of bondage from the land of their oppression, to be replanted under God’s gracious providence in the goodly land promised to their fathers.——This one main event as recorded in this book includes many subordinate points,e. g.

I.Theoppressionsof the Hebrews by the Egyptians.

II.Moses, who became in the hand of God their great Deliverer; his history; his early training and his call from the Lord to this great work.

III.The great mission of Moses to Egypt’s king; his reception; the ten successive plagues—miraculous judgments from the hand of God; the case of the magicians; the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, and the ultimate result.

I.The Oppression.

The narrative shows that this oppression consisted in part in the exacting of terribly severe labors, especially in building, including the making of brick, the preparation of mortar, the transportation of these materials, and the erection of buildings. The ancient monuments of Egypt confirm the statements of sacred history, showing that the Egyptians employed national bondmen in the construction of their vast national works; that they placed over them task-masters; that when the workmen fell short of the required tale of brick, their masters put them to more severe labors, and in some cases to labors of other sort. It has been supposed by some that the ancient paintings represented some of these laborers with the well-known physiognomy of the Hebrews.

It should be noted that this bondage differed from the slavery of modern times in this one respect—that the bondmen were held by the king and the nation in their national capacity and not by individuals. The Hebrewswere not held as private but as public property. The king and the nation as such bore therefore the responsibility and guilt of this oppression, and God let his judgments smite them for the most part in such a way as to indicate their sin.

A second feature in this oppression was the king’s cruel edict to murder the male infants. This was first enjoined upon the Hebrew midwives. Fearing God more than Egypt’s king, they evaded obedience; whereupon the king commanded all his people to cast the male infants into the river.——The reason assigned for both these measures waspublic policy, to prevent the rapid increase of Hebrew population which the king assumed might be dangerous to his throne and people in case of a foreign invasion. Such a policy is at once short-sighted and wicked; short-sighted, since kind treatment would have made this rapidly growing people their fast friends and helpers; wicked, because it violates common morality, insulting God, and provoking his wrath by outraging all the obligations which he imposes on men toward their fellows. Egypt’s king and court presently found themselves arrayed against Almighty God and saw him take up the challenge in a fearful conflict for mastery. We shall see in the final issue that the Lord improved this occasion to illustrate some of the noblest principles of his government over nations and indeed over individuals as well, showing that he abhors oppression; takes the side of the oppressed; hurls his fiercest thunderbolts against giant oppressors in every age; and every-where holds men to the responsibility of using their power to befriend and not to oppress their human brethren.

This oppression began with “a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph.” It is generally held that these words indicate a new dynasty—one royal line superseded by another, perhaps a foreign power coming in to supplant the former dynasty. The points of historic contact between Egyptian and Hebrew chronology may at some future day be adjusted with reasonable certainty. They are not yet. The subject is undergoing a somewhat thorough investigation with some prospect of ultimate success. At present I am not prepared to express positive opinions.

Two of the disputed periods in Hebrew chronology are necessarily involved;

(a.) The period of the Judges, which as shown above some reduce to 339 years; others extend to 450;

(b.) The period of the sojourn in Egypt, made by some 215 years; by others, 430. Some of the theories which attempt to locate this new king of Egypt in his relation to Hebrew history place the Exodus about B. C. 1600; others B. C. 1491. Some put the commencement of the sojourn in Egypt B. C. 2030; others B. C. 1706; yet others B. C. 1815. I have given my reasons for adopting the longer periods. It is possible that Egyptian authorities may yet throw a strong influence upon the decision of these much disputed points of Hebrew chronology.

The narrative shows that the Hebrews had become numerically strong and were rapidly growing stronger. Joseph had been dead probably a considerable time and all the men of his generation. Being 39 years old when his father came into Egypt and dying at the age of 110, he lived to protect his people 71 years. Moses was 80 years old when he came before Pharaoh, bearing the command of the Almighty—“Let my people go.” It is probable that the terrible edict to destroy all the male infants did not long precede the birth of Moses. The interval between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses will depend on the duration of the entire sojourn in Egypt, since from this entire sojourn we must subtract the years of Joseph’s life after the sojourn began and the years of Moses before it closed,i. e.71 + 80 = 151. This sum must be subtracted either from 215, leaving 64; or from 430, leaving 279. The latter I assume to be the true period. It provides abundantly for the great increase of the Hebrew people, and accounts for the fear felt by Egypt’s “new king.”

II.MOSES.

We shall study the history of Moses withoutthe keyif we overlook the point made by the writer to the Hebrews (11: 23): “By faithMoses when he was born was hid three months because they saw that he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.” Faith in God made them fearless of Egypt’s cruel king. It would seem also that they saw in thepeculiar beauty of this child a sort of prophecy of his future, something at least which raised expectation and put them upon special ventures to save his life. Three months they secreted him within their home. When this expedient could suffice no longer, they prepared an ark of bulrushes—a little box, water-tight, constructed to float—and moored it with its treasure among the flags on the river’s bank. We may suppose that his mother knew the spot where the king’s daughter was wont to take her baths, and that her faith and prayer lay back of this venture to throw her darling infant upon the compassion of a stranger woman’s heart. It need not be supposed that she foresaw his future adoption into the royal family, his training for forty years in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and his consequent qualification to become the great Hebrew Lawgiver and Deliverer. Suffice it that these results lay in the thought of God. She had faith enough to commit her darling to God’s care and to leave all the future unknown results to his adjustment.

The ways of God were mercifully kind toward this Hebrew mother. She stationed his elder sister as a sentinel to watch the issue, and then (let us presume) gave herself to prayer. When this elder sister with palpitating heart saw the daughter of Pharaoh take the beautiful child to her bosom, she felt that her time had come. Modestly advancing, she said, “Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for thee”? Pharaoh’s daughter said, Go. How joyfully did she go and call the child’s own mother! God’s finger was there. The mother’s faith has come up as sweet incense before Him and her heart is made glad, as only a praying mother’s can be. There was no occasion to tell us that she consecrated this child to Israel’s God for any service he might have for him in his after life. Such a mother, drawn by her sweet faith into such relationship to God, could do nothing less. Moreover, this was no barren consecration—was not a vow once made and soon forgotten. Nothing can be more certain than that she cared diligently for the moral training and culture of this marvelously saved son. Else how could it happen that “when he was come to years, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to sufferaffliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming reproach for Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect to the recompense of the reward” (Heb.11: 24–26)? The seeds of this world-conquering faith must have been dropped early into his tender mind. This hired Hebrew nurse, permitted to come into the royal palace by some back-way, was indulged this privilege freely, we know not precisely how long; but let us presume that the same faith and prayer kept this door open, at least for her occasional visits in his future years. How many testimonies of God’s love to the fathers of their nation she dropped into his youthful ear; how much she told him of God as “the exceeding great reward” of his believing people; how well she put the contrast between “the treasures of Egypt” and the treasures laid up for God’s then persecuted people:—these points are rather left to our inference than definitely stated; but we may be very sure that the faith of Moses took hold of these grand truths of then extant revelation; fixed its hold early; and held fast through all his future life.

We have three co-ordinate narratives of the early years of Moses: that given inHeb.11: 24–27, very brief, and touching only its specially religious side; while that of Stephen (Acts 7: 20–29) is full, even somewhat more full than the narrative inEx.2: 10–15. Particularly Stephen adds that Moses was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in words and in deeds”—a man like Joseph of immense efficiency:—also that he was “full forty years old” when it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel—a statement which shows that he distinctly recognized this relationship of brethren. Seeing a brother Hebrew abused by an Egyptian he interposed, smote the Egyptian dead, and buried him in the sand. Stephen’s words suggest that this was not merely one of those quick, spontaneous impulses felt by noble souls in view of outrageous wrong, but was a first step toward a contemplated career of interposed force for the rescue of his people from their oppression. “For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; but they understood not” (Acts 7: 25). The whole of thefact seems to be that the Lord was not yet ready and had not fully prepared Moses for this great life-work of his yet,and certainly had not inaugurated him intoit.27——Interposing the next day in a quarrel between two of his own Hebrew brethren, he learned that his slaying of the Egyptian was known, and immediately sought safety by flight to the land of Midian. The Lord had more objects than one in turning his steps thither; not only his then present safety, but the spiritual culture of so much solitude and of long-continued, unbroken communion with God and of long tried faith, coupled with the incidental advantage of becoming perfectly familiar with that great wilderness through which he was to lead the hosts of Israel for forty years.

Scarcely had he penetrated this desert land in his flight when he made the acquaintance of a priest of Midian [Jethro], and of his seven shepherdess daughters, one of whom became his wife.Like the somewhat similar experience of Abraham, falling in with the priest of Salem,Melchizedek, the circumstance suggests the inquiry how much of the true knowledge and worship of God existed in those early ages outside the line of Abraham’s family. The historical traces of such piety are certainly very few, yet they recur so incidentally that we are justified in the hope that these cases are not exhaustive; stood not altogether alone. When we come to consider the history of Job we shall take occasion to observe, that his location is certainly in this great region of Arabia, and that his date must in all probability have somewhat preceded this residence of Moses in the land of Midian. Here Moses may have found the story in a traditional form; may perhaps have seen Job’s immediate descendants; may possibly have put the story in its present form as one of the pastimes of a literary shepherd’s life; and then, retaining it in his possession during his subsequent years, may have himself solved the problem—How came this book in the archives of the Hebrew nation, on an equal footing as to inspired authority with their historical books?

The Great Mission of Moses.

Of the second forty-year period in the life of Moses, little is reported save its first scenes and its last.Ex.3 opens the latter. Moses is keeping the flock of his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He has “led them to the back side of the desert”—i. e.to the west side of it, for in designating the points of compass the Hebrews always turned the face toward the east. The east is in front—before; and of course the west is behind. Horeb and Sinai lay on the western margin of the great Arabian desert.——Here “the angel of the Lord appeared to him” (v.2), called “angel” however only as one who comes or is sent with divine manifestations;for in every subsequent mention he is called “the Lord” and “God” (vs.4, 6, 7, 11, 13,etc.)28——Remarkably this visible manifestation was made by the symbol of fire in a bush—the bush all aflame yet not consumed. This strange sight attracted the attention of Moses, and he turned aside to look into it more closely, when a voice from the bush called him by name; warned him not to approach in the spirit of mere curiosity, but to take off his shoes because the place on which he stood was holy ground. The mystery before Moses’ mind is solved—the Lord is there! His purpose in this appearing is soon told. He has heard the cry of distress from his oppressed people, has come down to deliver them and to bring them forth into Canaan. He has a mission for Moses in this work. “Come” said he, “I will send thee to Pharaoh.” Moses knew the power and the pride of Pharaoh, and saw at a glance the difficulties of this enterprise. No wonder he shrank back saying—“Who am I that I should do this”? God replied: “I will certainly be with thee”—a sufficient answer to any amount of conscious weakness and faintness of heart. The Lord added—“This shall be a token to thee that I have sent thee; when thou hast brought the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve [i. e.worship] God in this mountain.” From that moment this token was God’s pledge to Moses of success in bringing the people forth fromEgypt; and when it was fulfilled in the scenes of national worship and consecration on Horeb, it became doubly a sign to all the people that the Lord their God was in this great movement.

Moses anticipates that the people will ask for the name of God, and he therefore inquires—What shall I answer them? To which the Lord replies: “I am that I am”; and then abbreviating the phrase, adds, “Thus shalt thou say to Israel,I amhath sent me to you.” What immediately follows should be carefully noted. God said moreover to Moses (still reiterating the same thought though in other and more familiar terms): “Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord—i. e.Jehovah, God of your fathers, hath sent me unto you; this is my name forever and this is my memorial through all generations.” Thisv.15 is without doubt the key to the true sense of the names as previously given—“I am that I am,” and in briefer form, “I am.” Their true meaning is in the nameJehovah. This name contemplates God as evermore existing, the same unchangeable God, and therefore ever faithful to his promises. This view of God assumes that he reveals himself personally as the God of his trustful people, entering into covenant with them and never failing to remember and fulfill that covenant.

In order to see the full force and pertinence of the passage, it should be considered that by common Hebrew usage, the names of persons were significant. They were words with a meaning. This is true of all the names by which the true God is made known. And when Moses suggests that the people will ask for God’s name, it is not implied that they had never heard any name for God and did not know what to call him; but this—They would know what new or special feature of his character was to be manifested then. Their question was equivalent to asking—What does God propose to do now? What new movement does he contemplate? What new development of God may we expect?——To the question so understood, the Lord made a direct answer:—I have come to reveal my eternal faithfulness to my covenant with your fathers. I pledged myself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that I would bring their posterity into the goodly land of Canaan: I have come down to fulfill that word and toput into your national history an enduring testimony that my name is truly, “I am that I am”—the immutable and eternal God, whose word of promise faileth not forevermore.

The same course of thought appears againEx.6: 1–8—a passage which should be studied in connection with this. “God said to Moses, I am the Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them”—the meaning of which is, not that the name Jehovah was never used by them, or given of God to them; but that its special significance had not been manifested to them as he was then about to make it manifest. HispowerGod had revealed—his power to protect them in their perils, his power to fulfill to Abraham the promise of a son; but such a glorious testimony to his faithfulness in fulfilling promise as was then to be given, the patriarchs had never seen. The redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage was destined to stand through all the ages of their history as the crowning manifestation of God’s faithfulness—the standard and unsurpassed testimony to the significance of his most honored nameJehovah. By this shall ye know that I am Jehovah your God when I bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and bring you into the land given by solemn oath to your fathers and to their posterity for a heritage (vs.7, 8).

In entering upon this redemption of his people the Lord understood well the difficulties to be overcome and fully comprehended the situation. If Moses saw them at a glance, so did the Lord also. It was not possible that Moses could have a deeper sense or a juster view than God had of Pharaoh’s great pride, of his consciousness of power and stubbornness of purpose. The Lord expected a conflict; was ready for it; and by no means disposed to shun it. “I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go; no, not by a mighty hand”—not even under fearful visitations of God’s supernatural power. The precise sense of this seems to be that Pharaoh would resist God’s willfor a long timedespite the inflictions of his mighty hand and would yield only in the last extremity. In fact he never honestly yielded his will to God’s will, but only bent for the momentbefore the blast, to rally again with more desperate madness after it had swept by. When at length he saw that the people were really gone, his unsubdued will rose again in towering hardihood, to rush more madly than ever before against the uplifted arm of the Almighty and meet his doom in the bottom of the Red Sea!

This chapter closes (vs.21, 22) with directions to the children of Israel toaskthe Egyptians for gold, silver, and raiment. The Lord promised to give them such favor with the people that they would readily grant them what they asked. Our English version puts it “borrow”—as if the Israelites at least tacitly promised to bring these borrowed things back, or if nothing more, left the Egyptians to expect this. But this English word “borrow” misrepresents the Hebrew and consequently the sense of the passage. The Hebrew verb used here never has the sense ofborrow, but means simply toask. Indeed borrowing was out of the question because the Israelites were not coming back again. It was never God’s thought that they should come back. He had come down to deliver them from their bondage and to bring them into Canaan. There is no reason to suppose that the Egyptians expected them back again. They gave what Israel asked, therefore, not as a loan, but because the Lord brought them into such relations to Israel that they were glad to get them out of the country any way, and perhaps hoped to avert more fearful plagues by these gifts to God’s people. The historian in this case says (Ex.12: 33)—“The Egyptians were urgent upon the people that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said—We be all dead men”; which the Psalmist confirms (Ps.105: 38)—“Egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of them fell upon them.” Manifestly the Lord counted it simple justice that Egypt should pay her slaves for long years of unrequited toil, and not send them away empty. Therefore he took measures to make the old masters but too glad to do this tardy justice.

A new instrumentality of most vital importance now came to view, designed to bring about the redemption of God’s people from Egypt,viz.supernatural agencies—miraclesin the legitimate sense of the word. Noticeably these miracles were two-fold in character and purpose;one class designed to identify God to the people and be a witness to his present hand, to confirm their faith in him as their Deliverer: the other designed by terrible inflictions of calamity, to force upon Pharaoh’s hardened heart the conviction of Jehovah’s power and compel him to let God’s people go. These two objects were to be accomplished; the Hebrew people were to be assured that their own God had indeed come; Pharaoh must be made to know who Jehovah is; how fearful the judgments of his uplifted hand are; and how vain it is for mortals, though on thrones of human power, to lift up themselves against the Almighty.

In the list of miraculous signs sent to convince the Hebrew people, we have (Ex.4: 1–8) the rod of Moses turned to a serpent and then turned back again to a rod; then his hand withdrawn from his bosom leprous, white as snow; then again withdrawn, perfectly restored.

The narrative gives the reader a strong sense of the reluctance of Moses to enter upon this new mission. Over and over again, in varying forms, he pleads his want of adaptation; that he is slow of speech, not eloquent; that he sees no improvement in this regard since the Lord first spake to him; and finally he begs the Lord to send by any body else he pleases, only (he implies) excuse me. Plainly he pushed this plea for excuse not merely to the verge of modest propriety but beyond it, for we read—“The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.” Yet he did so far regard the plea of Moses as to give him Aaron his elder brother to speak in his behalf. “Thou shalt speak to him and put words into his mouth; he shall be thy spokesman to the people,” and to Pharaoh.

The way is now prepared for Moses and his family to return from Midian to Egypt. He took his wife and his two sons and proceeded on his journey. The scenes of the first night at the inn are recorded in these words: “And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that theLORDmet him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and castitat his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husbandartthou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husbandthou art, because of the circumcision.” This account is very brief, leaving various points unexplained.Probably the facts were substantially these. Of their two sons, one had been circumcised; the other had not—the prescribed rite having been disobeyed or at least neglected out of the deference of Moses to the opposition or reluctance of his wife. But as Moses is now about to assume the highest responsibilities between God and the Hebrew people, it is vital that his example in this respect should be spotless. The Lord therefore called him suddenly to account in this manner, threatening his very life. The cause is instantly understood; the wife of Moses yields and herself performs the rite, though perhaps not in the most submissive and amiable spirit. After this transaction and the developments attending it, we must suppose that Moses (prudently) sent back his wife and the two children to remain with her father until the redeemed Israelites should reach the home of Jethro. We hear no more of her and her children till the narrative inEx.18 brings them to view thus: “When Jethro had heard all that the Lord had done for Moses and Israel, he took Zipporah, Moses’ wife,after he had sent her back, and her two sons and brought them to Moses”etc.——Shortly after this scene at the inn, Aaron, sent of God for this purpose, meets Moses yet in the wilderness and is introduced to his responsibilities in the issues then pending before Pharaoh and the people. Their first introduction to Pharaoh and the reception he gave to their message (Ex.5) revealed his character and gave pre-intimations of the conflict. They put their case before him:—“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” “And Pharaoh said—Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.” Am not I king over all Egypt? Do you tell me there is some higher king than I and bid me obey his command? I know nothing of your Jehovah: I will never submit to his authority! And as if to show how fearlessly he could resist their summons he at once puts heavier tasks upon the people, in proud defiance, daring the vengeance of their Great Defender! Verily the issues hasten to their crisis!

The suffering people are entirely disheartened and evince a painful lack of faith in the God of their fathers. When Moses rehearsed to them the inspiring words recordedEx.6: 1–8, “They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage.” Ah, how frail is poor human nature! How weak is the faith of this long-oppressed people! But God’s compassions are a great deep and he does not frown severely upon them, broken down though they were in their manhood and in their religious trust.——Moses too seems to falter before this stern reception from Pharaoh and this disheartening attitude of Israel (6: 12); but the loving kindness of the Lord endures, despite of these sad imperfections in his servants. For the glory of his own name and not for the worthiness or virtue of his people, he has entered upon this redeeming work and he will carry it through.

The narrative pauses a moment more (Ex.6: 16–27) to give us the genealogy of Levi, for the obvious purpose of showing the place of Moses and of Aaron in this record; and then proceeds (Ex.7 and onward) with the impressive scenes ofthe ten plagues on Pharaoh and on Egypt.

A brief preliminary explanation of some of these plagues will be in place, after which the following points will have special attention:

1. That these ten plagues on Egypt were really supernatural, miraculous.

2. That several of them were very specially adapted to Egypt.

3. The case of the magicians.

4. The divine purpose and policy in shaping the demand made upon Pharaoh to let the people go.

5. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.

6. The final result as shown in the last of the ten plagues.

The ten plagues in their historical order stand thus:

1. Water turned to blood (Ex.7: 14–25);

2. Frogs (8: 1–15);

3. Lice (8: 16–19);

4. Flies (8: 20–32);

5. Murrain upon cattle (9: 1–7);

6. Boils (9: 8–12);

7. Hail (9: 18–35);

8. Locusts (10: 4–20);

9. Darkness (10: 21–27);

10. Death of all first-born (11: 4–8, and 12: 12, 29–33).

References to these plagues by name may be seen inPs.78: 43–51, and 105: 27–38.

By way of preliminary explanation it should be said—that the turning of water into blood should not be toned down to a mere discoloration of the waters of Egypt—a reddening of such sort as customarily attends the annual rise of the Nile, only carried in the present case somewhat beyond the ordinary degree. For, be it noticed, the record is that the waters wereturned to blood; that fish could no longer live in it but died (were the fish deceived by the mere appearance, the color?); that the river became offensive to the smell; its waters could not be drank; “there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.” If this language does not mean far more than a merediscoloration—something totally different from a visual deception; in short, if it does not mean “turned to blood,” then no language can be found to express it.

In the third plague, the Hebrew word for“lice”29were better renderedgnats, yet an insect unknown to our country. Herodotus (B. C. 400) speaks of the great trouble which they cause and of the precautions used against them. Hartmann testifies:“All travelers speak of these gnats as an ordinary plague of thecountry.”30“So small as to be scarcely visible to the eye, their sting notwithstanding causes a most painful irritation. They even creep into the eyes and nose, and after harvest rise in great swarms from the inundated rice fields.” (Keil.)

In the fourth plague, the word translated “swarms offlies”31does not mean a mixed mass or swarm of various insects as our translators assumed, but “a stinging, scorpion-like insect” [Fuerst], “so called from its sucking the blood” [Gesenius]. Sonnini (in Hengstenberg’s Moses,p.117) says—“Men and animals are grievously tormented by them. It is impossible to form an adequate conception of their fury when theywish to fix themselves upon any part of the body. If they are driven away they light again the same instant, and their pertinacity wearies the most patient. They especially love to light in the corners of the eyes or on the edge of the eyelids, sensitive parts to which they are attracted by a slight moisture.” “They are much more numerous and annoying than the gnats; and when enraged, they fasten themselves upon the human body, especially upon the edge of the eyelids and become a dreadful plague” [Keil].——Obviously the American house-fly gives us no adequate idea of this fourth plague on Egypt.

Of the sixth plague, “boils with blains,” it need only be said that they were inflamed ulcers breaking forth into pustules, intensely painful. The word for “boils” is the same which describes the plague brought by Satan upon Job.

The seventh plague,hail with lightning, was not unknown in Egypt, yet was by no means common, and was specially rare in Upper Egypt—more frequent in Lower.——The other plagues will be readily understood.

1. It is now in place to show that these plagues were reallysupernatural—miraculous inflictions from the hand of the Almighty.

(1.) Note, they were wrought in response to Pharaoh’s challenge to Moses and Aaron to “show a miracle for themselves” (Ex.7: 9). The Lord accepted this challenge. Of course the achievements wrought can be nothing less than miracles. Given on the side of the Lord honesty and power; then nothing less than miracles can follow.

His purpose in these terrible inflictions God announces to Pharaoh in these words: “By this shalt thou know that I am the Lord” (Ex.7: 19 and 9: 14). Events in the common course of nature do not suffice for this purpose upon such a heart as Pharaoh’s. The case demands real miracles—things done outside and apart from the ordinary laws of nature.

(2.) The plagues came and went at the behest of Moses acting under God; in some cases, at a definite time previously indicated. (9: 5, 18, 29, 33 and 10: 4); while some were removed at a time which Pharaoh himselffor his more full satisfaction was allowed to fix (8: 9, 10). So I construe the somewhat disputed words (v.8); “Moses said to Pharaoh—Glory over me: When shall I entreat for thee,”etc.Moses would say—I yield to you the honor of fixing the time: say when; and I meet your time.——Some critics translate simply—Explain; declare yourself (Gesenius); or utter plainly, definitely (Fuerst); but the usual sense of the verb, coupled with the preposition (“over”) which follows, strongly favors the construction above given.

(3.) Most of these plagues if not all discriminated sharply between the Hebrews in Goshen, and the Egyptians elsewhere in Egypt—e. g.flies (8: 22, 23) and murrain (9: 4–7),etc.This discrimination assumes that the plagues followed no general law of nature, but were altogether special,i. e.were truly miraculous.

(4.) They surpassed and even totally eclipsed the achievements of the magicians; in fact, routed them utterly from the field and showed before all Egypt that the Almighty God was there!——The case of the magicians will be considered more fully below.

(5.) The conviction was forced upon Pharaoh and the confession extorted from his lips (utterly against his will), that God’s hand wrought these achievements; that these calamities came at his command, and could be removed by his power and not otherwise. Hence over and over he begs Moses to pray to his God for their removal. See this in the case of the frogs (8: 8); of the flies (8: 28, 29); of the hail (9: 27–29); and the locusts (10: 16–18). It is not easy to see how stronger testimony to the reality of miracles can ever exist.

(6.) That these plagues were real miracles, direct from the hand of God, it is unquestionably the intent of the whole narrative to set forth and affirm. So much, no candid reader of the account has ever questioned. Some may say, the narrator was himself deceived: none will deny that he saw God’s finger there and meant to make all his readers see it. None can deny that according to his account even proud Pharaoh saw and felt the very finger of God in them. In fact the narrative makes this itsmain purpose,viz.to show that these judgments were nothing less than immediate visitations from the hand of the Almighty. Take out this element and there is nothing left.

(7.) Or thus: If there is any truth in history, the children of Israel were for a long period bondmen in Egypt. Ultimately the day of their deliverance broke and they came forth free.How came this to pass?Was it by forcible insurrection—the uprising of slaves cutting their way out of bondage into freedom with brave hearts and strong arms of their own? Or was it achieved by diplomacy? Or did Pharaoh relax his grasp and let the people go, under the impulses of humanity, or as a measure of political economy? All suppositions of this sort are not only unhistorical but utterly chimerical. No solution of this great problem—the redemption of Israel from bondage in Egypt—can ever find rational support save the one given in this record,viz.that the Almighty wrenched them from the grasp of Egypt’s proud and hardened king by a series of terrible judgments launched upon him and his people in quick and hot succession, until they were only too glad to hasten and drive the people out lest they should all be dead men. They were made to feel that the battle was against Almighty God and that they could not succumb too soon.

The events of this wonderful conflict and victory were stamped into the national life of Israel; they reappear all along the course of future ages, interwoven into the very warp and woof of her national history and into the moral forces which developed the nation’s piety. It might as reasonably be maintained that there never was any Hebrew nation as that God did not bring them forth out of Egypt with a high hand, first loosing Pharaoh’s grasp by these ten plagues, and last, burying his pursuing hosts and himself in the waters of the Red Sea.

The supernatural character of these plagues will stand out yet more distinctly when we shall place them in contrast with the things done or attempted by the magicians.

2.Several of these plagues were very specially adapted to Egypt.

This does not mean that they were at all less miraculous than any other supposable inflictions would have been; but only that they had more or less special fitness to the ends God had in view and were made to touchthe sensibilities of Egypt and her king in tender points. Thus, the Nile was Egypt’s pride and glory, indeed her very life, and not improbably (as some maintain) was worshiped by the Egyptians as one of their gods. How terrible then to wake in the morning to find it one vast sea of blood!—to have only blood for themselves and their cattle to drink; blood every-where for the eye to rest upon in place of the glory of the Nile! How terribly suggestive of their national sin—of the male infants of the Hebrews murdered there, and of the resources of Israel’s God to punish the guilty!

So we must suppose that frogs were often inconveniently plenty in Egyptian waters. This visitation of such masses of them brought an evil by no means foreign to their experience. The miracle lay in their numbers and was none the less a miracle because there had been frogs there before. It must have been excessively annoying and humiliating,—if the frog as a near neighbor is as unamiable in that country as in this.

Essentially the same must be said of the lice [gnats]; of the flies; and of boils. All these were forms of evil not unknown in Egyptian life; but yet in the present case were truly miraculous and fearfully afflictive.

Their cattle were so useful and so highly esteemed that some of them were made objects of idolatrous worship. The golden calf of Hebrew history was an Egyptian idea. There was special pertinence therefore in this fearful slaughter among Egypt’s gods!

The hail, with most terrific lightning, was by far the more appalling because rain rarely falls there; hail and lightning yet more rarely.

In the natural course of events, locusts are among the fearful visitations of Oriental countries—not unknown in Egypt. In this case the fearfulness of the plague lay in their numbers, and the miracle was none the less because they had had some experience before of this form of desolation.

3.The case of the magicians.

The entire account of them is in these words. After Aaron had cast down his rod before Pharaoh and it became a serpent, “Then Pharaoh called the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did so with their enchantments. For they cast downevery man his rod and they became serpents; but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods” (Ex.7: 11, 12). Again, after the miracle of turning the water to blood, “The magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments” (7: 22). After the miracle of the frogs, “the magicians did so with their enchantments and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt” (8: 7). Next, when all the dust became lice “the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice,but they could not: so there were lice upon man and upon beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh—This is the finger of God” (8: 18, 19). Finally, under the plague of boils, “The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians” (9: 11). We hear of them in this history no more.

The Hebrew word for “sorcerers” involves the practice of magic arts and incantations. The word for “magicians of Egypt” contemplates them originally aswriters, the learned class, but couples with that the idea of special skill in horoscopy—the interpretation of dreams and the doing, or at least pretending to do, things beyond the skill of the uninitiated. The word for “enchantments” originally suggests secret arts, things covered, veiled from the public gaze.——The passageDeut.18: 10–14, gives most if not all the nearly synonymous words by which this class of men and their arts were designated, showing also that they were regarded before the Lord with most intense abhorrence as an abomination. By the Mosaic law the practice of these arts was punishable with death (Ex.22: 12).

In regard to the case of the magicians as presented in this history, the point of chief interest will be this—Did they really perform miracles? Did they in fact turn rods into serpents, and water into blood, and produce some frogs in addition to what were there before?——I am not sure that we have data sufficient to determine with certainty whether these things ascribed to them were simply tricks of hand, arts of jugglery; or whether there was really some power exerted, more and other than human.——The cases were of a sort in which deception was at least supposable. All the waters it would seem were turned to blood before their effort was made. If so, they had to do with what wasalready blood and had only to make it appear to be water before they began operations.——So of the frogs. When frogs were every-where in such numbers, it would not be specially difficult to make it appear that they produced yet more. The turning of rods into serpents is not unknown in the tricks of jugglery the world over.

Of two facts we may be very sure. (1) They had no help from God. Their wonders were not wrought by God’s power. We may put this denial on two independent grounds:——​(a.) The moral purpose of their work utterly forbids the least participation on God’s part. God never fights against himself.——​(b.) Their power was infinitely less than divine. Compared with God’s, it was shown to be simple weakness. “Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.” Before the plague of lice they were compelled to succumb, and (utterly against their will and against their interest) they declare to Pharaoh—“This is the finger of God”! It utterly distances all our skill. We can not approach it. Before the boils, they writhed in agony. They could not even screen themselves from the terrible infliction. Moreover it is made plain throughout the whole transaction that they were powerless to remove even the slightest of these plagues. If they had possessed this power Pharaoh would have put them to this service. It is plain they shrank from even the attempt. The whole scene was a competition between God’s power as manifested through his servants, Moses and Aaron, and the power of Egypt’s magicians—resulting in most overwhelming proof that the latter had not the first element of God’s power in it.——It follows therefore that if the magicians had extra-human help—if they had any power beyond human skill,they obtained it from Satan. We may readily suppose they were in league with him, working according to his will. He may have sharpened their wits by his influence, helped their arts by his suggestions, and possibly may have given them superhuman aid in the line of physical power. It is not given to us to know the exact limits of his power to aid his servants. It is not essential that we should know precisely where these limits are. We know enough to impress the injunction—“Be sober, be vigilant, because of your adversary the devil” (1 Pet.5: 8).It may always be our consolation that whenever he matches his power or his skill against the Almighty, he will come off, as, in the case before us, utterly worsted in the fight, overwhelmed with defeat and shame.

4. Some attention should be given to the divine purpose and policy in shaping the demand made upon Pharaoh to let the people go.——The point of special importance here is one which has been thought to involve the question of strict moral honesty—it being claimed that the divine demand at first ran on this wise: “Let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God” (Ex.3: 18)—leaving Pharaoh to assume that, this being granted, they would return to his service.

The facts on this point are:

(1.) It was never promised or even intimated that they would return. If Pharaoh construed the words of God and of Moses to imply this, he did so on his own responsibility.

(2.) The demand made upon him that he should let the people go was based in part at least on the religious duty of sacrificing to God in the wilderness (Ex.5: 1, 3)—an entirely appropriate demand—one which Pharaoh ought to have appreciated, and one which would be more likely to have weight with him than any other. For he was himself a worshiper of his own gods; he knew the strength of the religious element in human nature; he was able to recognize the universal rights of conscience by which every man may claim to worship God according to his own convictions of duty. If Pharaoh would not yield to this request he would yield to none. The policy pursued was, therefore, the most hopeful and the least likely to arouse opposition.

(3.) Even the severest honesty did not require that the Lord should put this demand in its most revolting form in the outset. True, he might have said from the beginning: “My people shall never return”; but this would have at once foreclosed all hope of gaining Pharaoh’s consent.

(4.) If the question of the return of the people was thus left a very little open—or more correctly, was not peremptorily closed, it served the better to test theheart of Pharaoh. It left the way open to ply him with inducements most likely to be successful; and at the same time if he proved obstinate and self-willed, he might show it by bantering over the conditions, higgling as tradesmen and their customers sometimes do over the price, negotiating like diplomatists for the most favorable terms. But this was the fault of Pharaoh, not of God.

(5.) Most frequently the demand was made in these significant words: “Let my people go that they may serve me” (Ex.8: 1, 20, and 9: 1, 13). Israel is my son; his service is due to me and I claim it (Ex.4: 22, 23). You have no right to his services; I demand therefore that you let my son go that he may serve me.——This is at least sufficiently definite, and is by no means open to the slightest imputation of lacking in the point of honesty.

5.The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.

In this topic, as in the one next preceding, the point of chief interest is the moral one—that which locates the moral responsibility for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart—that which defines and places truthfully the really responsible agency in the case. Was this hardening the work of God, by his immediate hand? Was it wrought by his power so exclusively and in such modes as to overrule and throw out of account Pharaoh’s own responsible agency?

Or was the responsible agency that of Pharaoh only, altogether his and his alone? Did he harden his own heart, in the exercise of his own free will, in carrying out the purpose and desire of his own soul, essentially as other sinners and as all sinners do?

This question is one of immensely vital moment. Let us approach it with both care and candor.

We may reach the true answer by studying,

(1.) The history of the case;

(2.) What is said of God’s purpose in this matter;

(3.) What he has taught us of his character, and of his agencies in the existence of sin.

(1.) The history of the transaction will doubtless throw light on the question—How came Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened?How was it done?

The history of the transaction, developing the steps of the process, bears more vitally upon the question, Who is responsible?—than may at first view be realized. For, let it be carefully considered: God’s ways of working by his immediate, direct, exclusive agency will forever be mysterious and inscrutable to us. It is idle for us to ask—Howdoes God work a miracle? Of course it must be idle for us to inquire after the natural law of such working because the very idea of a miracle is that of a worknotwrought according to any known laws of nature. If now the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart were wrought by God’s miraculous, direct, immediate hand, we shall look in vain for the law of his operations. It would be simply preposterous to inquire after the laws of mind in accordance with which the thing was done—the supposition being that it was done according tonoknown laws of mind whatever.

On the other hand if Pharaoh hardened his own heart, there will be no mystery about it. It so happens that we all know but too well how sinners harden their own hearts. There is rarely the least difficulty in tracing the operations of the human mind and the influences of temptation which produce this result. Therefore, if the history of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart brings out the working of his mind, according to the common modes of human sinning—if we see that his mind worked as the minds of other proud sinners are wont to work under like circumstances, then the whole question is settled at once and forever. If we can actuallyseehow Pharaoh hardened his own heart and can identify the whole process as being the very same which occurs in the case of all proud sinners who resist God’s power and especially resist the appeals of his love and mercy, what more can we ask? It were worse than idle—it were impious to exonerate Pharaoh from the least portion of the moral responsibility for his hardened heart and to seek to cast it over upon God.

In entering upon thehistory of the case, it is well to note the attitude of Pharaoh’s mind toward the God of Israel in the outset. We have it brought out fully (Ex.5: 1, 2): “Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh: ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel; let mypeople go that they may serve me.’ And Pharaoh said—Whois the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.”——This is plain; he says he does not know this God; he does not recognize his authority or admit his claims. His soul is full of practical unbelief in God—a fact which commonly lies at the bottom of all the hardening of sinners’ hearts in every age.——Pharaoh did not at first contemplate crossing swords and measuring strong armswith the Almighty God. If he had taken this view of the case, he might have paused awhile to consider.——So it usually is with sinners. Unbelief in God conduces to launch them upon this terrible conflict. Once committed, they become more hardened; one sin leads on to more sinning till sin becomes incurable—shall we say it? an uncontrollable madness.

We may now fitly proceed to give attention to each particular case.

The first miracle (Ex.7: 10–13) that of changing Aaron’s rod to a serpent, was rather atestthan aplague. Pharaoh met it by calling in his magicians to try their hand—his thought being, My men can do that! They didseemto do it, and though Aaron’s rod-serpent swallowed up theirs, yet Pharaoh did not love to be convinced and therefore was not. Under this result, which perhaps seemed to him a partial victory, he braced himself against God this time.

Next, in the turning of water into blood we read (Ex.7: 22) “The magicians did so with their enchantments, and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.” This seemed to him a complete success for his side. Naturally, therefore, his heart is hardened to withstand God yet.

Under the plague of frogs—not by any means one of the most severe—Pharaoh seemed to yield; he at least begged the prayers of Moses and Aaron; and promised to let the people go (Ex.8: 8). To make God’s hand the more distinctly visible, Moses said—Set your own time, and I will pray that this plague may cease. Done: “but when Pharaoh saw that there wasrespite, he hardened his heart and hearkened not unto them” (8: 15). Alas, how he abused God’s mercy! God lifted the plague—and up springs the old rebellion of his soulagainst God. Perhaps he flatters himself that this is the last, or he hopes that Moses will pray the rest away as he has this; or, as often happens, the simple sense of respite without any particular reasoning in the case makes him feel strong again to withstand God. Not the least sense of gratitude for the favor—the mercy of removing the plague! O how many of the sinners of our world have done this very thing! Stricken down with sickness, have they not begged for life and besought the prayers of all the good, and promised the Lord that with restoring mercy they would give him their hearts and their lives? But when the respite came their vows were forgotten; their hearts were hardened.

The plague of lice brings out another element of depraved hearts. The magicians try, but make an utter failure, and (what is to Pharaoh more provoking still) they frankly declare to him, “This is the finger of God.” They retire from the contest, and leave Pharaoh to fight it out alone. They can help him no longer. He is apparently vexed and maddened, but not at all subdued. Rather, he rouses himself to greater desperation, for the record puts these points in the closest connection: the frank admission, “This is the finger of God”; and the stiffening of Pharaoh’s rebellious will—“AndPharaoh’s heart was hardened and he hearkened not unto them.”

The plague of flies brings out yet another element of human nature which not unfrequently comes into play in the hardening of men’s hearts against God—viz.the habit of bantering—shall we say dickering, driving a bargain and quibbling over the terms and conditions of God’s requirements. The flies are terribly annoying: Pharaoh sees that something must be done; in fact he concludes he must make some concessions: so he calls for Moses and Aaron and says—“Go ye, sacrifice to your Godin the land.” The last words were emphatic—inthisland: stay here, and you shall have time to offer your sacrifices. I can not let you go three days journey into the wilderness lest ye never come back.——Moses insists on the original terms; and then Pharaoh concedes yet a little more: “I will let you go that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only ye shall not go very far away. Entreat forme”—i. e.entreat the Lord to take away these flies—the same word being used here as inv.8. Moses entreated: the Lord removed the plague, and according to the record “Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the people go.” Allowing himself to make terms with God and to banter him upon the conditions, coupled with the respite—the temporary relief found in the removal of the plague—are manifestly the causes and modes in this case of his hardening his own heart.

Next is the plague of murrain—a terrible loss of their cattle. In the antecedent threatening of this plague, Moses said to Pharaoh, “The Lord willseverbetween the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt: there shall nothing die of all that belongs to Israel.” So it was; for we read—“Pharaoh sent [i. e.to inquire] and lo! not one of the cattle of the Israelites was dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go” (9: 1–7). This discrimination gave a keener edge to the plague; it cut the deeper; but in the result it only maddened him the more. It showed most clearly that God’s hand was in these plagues and that he was on the side of Israel; but Pharaoh was committed to the contest and seemed to have but the one ruling purpose—to fight it out to the bitter end.

The plague of boils was a visitation of physical suffering, perhaps somewhat adapted to make a fretful man irritable. The narrative notes the circumstance that the magicians were completely broken down by this plague: “They could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians” [not upon the Israelites]. As to Pharaoh, all human help fails him; every man among his people seems to quail and give up the contest; yet his proud heart is only the more maddened and the more determined! It is said, “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he hearkened not unto them;” but such mad infatuation is wont to appear in depraved human souls without any miraculous infliction of hardness from the hand of God. There is not the least occasion to assume any other influences than those of a proud, maddened human heart, working out its own obstinate will against God.

The hail with attendant thunder and lightning(next in order) were fearfully appalling. All Egyptian hearts seemed to quiver with terror under this infliction. Pharaoh is brought (shall we say) to his knees: he sends hastily for Moses and Aaron and says to them: “I have sinned this time; the Lord is righteous and I and my people are wicked.” Truly this seems hopeful. For the first time he appears penitent. “Entreat the Lord (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go and ye shall stay no longer.”——This seems to be a final victory over the proud heart and the long time inflexible will of Pharaoh. He confesses sin; he begs again for prayer; he promises to yield to God’s entire demand and let the people go. Consequently the plague was removed. “And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder were ceased, he sinned yet more and hardened his heart, he and his servants.”——Alas for man’s perverse and false nature—his proud heart and his lying lips! How readily he relapses back into his old and much-loved sin and becomes more hardened than ever! The judgments of God extort confessions and tears and prayers; but God’s mercies let off this pressure and leave the guilty soul to fly back to its old sins again. So it was with Pharaoh. God’s mercies, abused, worked out his ruin. But it were simply monstrous to say that this showing of mercy is on God’s part a moral wrong and that it throws over upon him the moral responsibility of hardening the sinner’s heart. Yet it was precisely in this way—perhaps more really and potently than in any other—that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh.

The plague of locusts brings to view a new group of elements. Egypt had known something about locusts before: so when this scourge was announced, Pharaoh’s servants beg him to yield the contest. “How long shall this man” [Moses] “be a snare unto us? Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God. Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed”? (10: 7).——Pharaoh yields to their entreaty only so far as to send for Moses and Aaron, and again try his hand upon bantering with them and with God over the conditions. “Go serve the Lord, said he; butwho are they that shall go”? Moses answers, Every thing must go; we with our young and with our old; with sons andwith daughters; with flocks and with herds—all, absolutelyallmust go.——No indeed, replies Pharaoh—with what we must take as his royal oath—with the most fearful threat he could make and the most solemn asseveration—he says, “Not so; goye that are menand serve the Lord, for that ye did desire.” That was all ye asked at first: it is the utmost I shall give! “And they were driven out of his presence.” Pharaoh is thoroughly mad! This allowing himself to banter them as to the terms of the arrangement helped him to a stronger feeling of his own importance. He seemed to himself to be yet more a king on his throne, and why should not he dictate the conditions?——Soon the plague comes, and for the moment it quite changes the face of affairs. “Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste, and said” [again]—“I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. Now, therefore, forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat the Lord your God that he may take away from me this death only.” Apparently he remembers that once before he confessed, and more than once has begged their prayers, and more than once has promised to let the people go. So he labors to give a little more emphasis to his beseechings this time by confessing his sin against Moses, and especially by the limitation—“for this once”—once moredohear me—this time only. But he has been through this very process once before; most of its points, many times before; and it is much more easy for him to turn back upon every promise and break every most solemn vow than it ever has been before. It is safe to predict that any sinner who has broken so many solemn vows of amendment will never do any thing better than break vows when God’s mercy lifts off the plague. So Pharaoh’s heart is hardened yet again. The statement is—“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”—yet the way he did it, here as before (9: 34), was by removing the plague; by hearing his prayer for relief and apparently trusting his sacred promise to let the people go. This was the way and these the agencies by which the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

The plague of darkness is next in order. Again Pharaoh sets himself to negotiate as to the terms. He will consent that not only the men may go, but their wivesand their little ones;but their flocks must be left behind. He must have some hostages—something left in his hands that will bring his bondmen back. Moses saysNo!we need our flocks for sacrifice; not a hoof is to be left behind! Pharaoh is more mad than ever: he not only drives Moses out from his presence, but adds—“Take heed to thyself; see my face no more; for in the day thou seest my face thou shalt die.” In this case it is said—“The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”; but these terrible uprisings and outbursts of madness well up from the depths of a depraved sinner’s soul. No supernatural miracle of divine hardening is at all needful to create them. Pharaoh is too proud a king to bear such confrontings of his will. Shall he yield to such a man as Moses, or even to the God of Moses? Not he. It stirs up all the elements of his pride and madness to have his propositions of compromise so peremptorily rejected. It is this in special that works in this present case to the hardening of his heart.

There remains but one more plague—that awful night on Egypt when the wailing cry rang out over all the land, “for there was not a house where there was not one dead”! and that thefirst-born! Under this, Pharaoh for the time really broke down; he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said—“Go ye and all your people, and take your flocks and herds as ye have said and be gone, and bless me also.” This conceded everything, closing off with begging their blessing upon his consciously guilty soul! The Egyptians too were all astir; they were urgent upon the people to send them out of the land in haste; for they said—“We be all dead men.” And the people of Israel do really go.——But strange as it may seem, when “it was told the king of Egypt that the people had really gone, then the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people and they said—Why have we done this that we have let Israel go from serving us”?——Forthwith armed chariots are made ready and are off in hot pursuit;—till they find themselves battling the mighty waves of the Red Sea, quailing before the awful eye and under the uplifted arm of the Almighty!——This last instance of hardening the heart seems most like pure and simple infatuation. No doubt Pharaoh and his servants had a fresh sense of what they had lost inletting go such a host of hard working bondmen. No doubt they also felt the mortification of having been worsted in the long-fought struggle over this national question of letting the people go; but after all they had seen and felt of God’s power to curse and to plague and to crush them, nothing but the most senseless infatuation can rationally account for this last desperate dash upon Israel with the armed force of the nation. Yet no one will say that such infatuation does not often appear in the history of human sinning. In his own sphere many a poor sinner is just as madly infatuated as Pharaoh and his people were—is altogether as senseless, as void of wisdom, as reckless of the hot thunderbolts of the Almighty! It is an awfully sad fact, a most humiliating confession as to the manner of human sinning; but it is only too true! There is no need of assuming any direct supernatural divine interposition to produce it.

Nothing more seems necessary to complete the argument from the history of the case unless it be to suggest that when we have accounted for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart satisfactorily on the one principle—the well-known proclivities and activities of a proud, stubborn human heart, it is entirely unphilosophical to bring in another principle,viz.the miraculous, immediate, direct action of Almighty Power. When we have proved the former power adequate to produce all the results, we have virtually precluded the latter. There can be no reason whatever for assuming a joint, co-ordinate action of both the natural laws of the human mind and of the supernatural power of God. If the former suffices, the latter is uncalled for. Miracles are never to be assumed where non-miraculous agency is fully adequate.

If it be still argued that the very words declare, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” the answer is: God is said to do what he foresees will be done by others and done under such arrangements of his providence as make it possible and morally certain that they will do it. Joseph said to his brethren (Gen.45: 5, 7, 8), “Be not angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life. So now it was not you that sent me hither but God.” Yet it is simply impious to put the sin of selling Joseph into Egypt overupon God. God did it only in the same sense in which he hardened Pharaoh’s heart. He had a purpose to subserve by means of the sin of Joseph’s brethren; and he did no doubt permit such circumstances to occur in his providence as made that sin possible and as resulted in their sinning and in the remote consequences which God anticipated.

It is of no particular use for us to find fault with the way in which the Scriptures speak of God’s hand in the existence of sin. There is no special mystery about it. It certainly does not involve the least moral obliquity on God’s part; and it is therefore every way prudent and wise to interpret such language in harmony with the common sense of the case and with the well-known character of God.

2. We proceed to notice what is said ofGod’s purposein the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It is the more important to speak of this because an extreme view is sometimes taken of the central passage (Ex.9: 14–16); “And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up for to show in thee my power,”etc.The extreme view referred to is that God made Pharaoh a great king, put him on a high throne, for the avowed purpose of displaying his own great power in his sin and punishment.

By consent of Hebrew lexicographers, the verb translated “raised up” means in this casepreserved alive—havecaused thee to standor continue among the living. The previous context moreover seems not to be quite accurately put in our English version. It should rather be thus, beginning withv.14: “For at this very time I am sending [present tense] all my plagues to thine heart and upon thy servants and upon thy people that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For I might now have stretched out my hand and smitten thee and thy people with pestilence [i. e.might have smitten you all dead], and thou wouldest have been cut off from the earth. But truly for this very reason have I preserved thee alive to the end that thou mightest show forth [make others see] my power, and for the sake of proclaiming my name in all the earth.” To the same purport are the words (Ex.14: 17, 18) with reference to the final destruction of Pharaoh’shost; “And I will get me honor upon Pharaoh and upon all his host,etc.And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I shall have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh and upon his chariots and his horsemen.” The great thought is that God turns to account the sin and madness of Pharaoh for the purpose of making known his power to save his people and to crush their foes. He shapes his ways of providence to this end. He might have swept off Pharaoh and his people with the same pestilence which destroyed so many of their cattle; but he had a wiser purpose. He could make a better use of their sin and of their life; so he spared them till he had wrought all his wonders upon Egypt before all the nations of the earth; and then he let them plunge into the mighty waves of the Red Sea and make their grave there!——Now if wicked menwill sin, who shall object against God that he makes the best possible use of it? Why may he not reveal his power thereby and exalt his name as one “mighty to save” or to destroy?

3. It only remains to ask—What has God taught us of his character as bearing on the question before us, and of his agencies in the existence of sin?

Here few words ought to suffice. Nothing can be more plain than the revelations of scripture concerning God’s character as infinitely pure and holy—as a Being who not only can never sin himself but can never be pleased to have others sin, and above all can never put forth his power tomake them sin. God can not be tempted with evil, “neither tempteth he any man” (Jam.1: 13). When he declares so solemnly and so tenderly: “O do not that abominable thing which I hate”! shall it still be said—But he puts men to sinning; pushes them on in their sin; inclines their heart to sin and hardens them to more and guiltier sinning? Never!

Shall it be claimed that with one hand God gives his Spirit to impress the truth on human souls unto their salvation; and with the other sends his Spirit to augment the forces of temptation and to harden men’s hearts unto their damnation? Shall the same fountain send forth both sweet water and bitter? Shall the same God renew some human hearts unto holiness and harden other human hearts in sin—all by the same direct and similarly purposed agency, each work beingdone under the same impulses of infinite love?——Surely there must be some egregious misconception of God’s character involved in supposing him capable of acts so fundamentally opposite and incompatible—not to say, in supposing him capable of tempting men into more and greater sin!

The fact that He wisely and mightily over-rules sin to bring good forth from it should never be construed to imply that he abhors sin any the less because he can extort some good results from its existence.

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