Exodus 9:6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

All the cattle of Egypt died All that were in the field, Exodus 9:3; or a great number of every kind, so that the Egyptians saw that even the animals which they worshipped as gods could not save themselves. Bishop Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, has given it as his opinion, that, in the early ages, the deities of Egypt were described by hieroglyphics or emblems, in which the pictures or images of beasts, birds, plants, reptiles, and every species of the animal or vegetable creation, were used as symbols or representations of their gods; and that, in process of time, the living animals, or real plants, thus represented, began to be deemed sacred, on account of this circumstance: and he thinks that the animals or plants themselves were not really worshipped till after the time of Moses. We know, however, that the Israelites learned in Egypt to make a god of a calf, from which it seems evident that that animal was worshipped there. But if the bishop's opinion be right, and animals were not worshipped so early as the time of Moses, they certainly were held in great veneration, as symbols of their gods, and the subjecting them to a pestilence was, in effect, opposing and warring against the deities whom they represented. Not one of the cattle of the Israelites died The gracious care of God is not only over the persons of those that fear him, but over all that belongs to them. Whatever the poorest Israelite possessed, the Lord was the protector of it, while all that belonged to the king and people of Egypt was exposed to the destructive ravages of those plagues with which divine justice saw fit to punish their idolatries and oppressions of his people. But doth God take care of oxen? Yes, he doth; his providence extends itself to the meanest of his creatures.