EXPOSITION
Necessity is the mother of invention. Finding the Nile water continue utterly undrinkable, the Egyptians bethought themselves of a means of obtaining water to which they never had recourse in ordinary times. This was to dig pits or wells at some distance from the river, and so obtain the moisture that lay in the ground, no doubt derived from the river originally, but already there before the change of the water into blood took place. This, it appears, remained water, and was drinkable, though probably not very agreeable, since, owing to the nitrous quality of the soil in Egypt, well-water has always a bitter and brackish taste. It sufficed, however, for drinking and culinary purposes during the "seven days" that the plague continued (Exodus 7:25).
All the Egyptians digged. Not the Hebrews. The water stored in the houses of the Hebrews in reservoirs, cisterns, and the like, was (it would seem) not vitiated; and this would suffice for the consumption of seven days. Water to drink. Blood would not become water by percolation through earth, as Canon Cook appears to think; but there might have been sufficient water in the ground before the plague began, to fill the wells dug, for seven days.
And seven days were fulfilled. This note of time has been regarded as merely fixing the interval between the first plague and the second. But it is more natural to regard it as marking the duration of the first plague. The intervals between one plague and another are nowhere estimated.
HOMILETICS
God allows men to seek and obtain alleviations of his judgments.
We are not intended to sit down under the judgments of God, and fold our hands, and do nothing. Whether it be war, or pestilence, or famine, or any other Heaven-sent calamity that comes upon us for our sins and those of our nation, we must beware of sinking into apathy under the infliction, and allowing it simply to run its course. God does not desire that we should show our submission in this way. He gives us thought, and ingenuity, and inventiveness, that, in every difficulty we may devise remedies, and so lessen our own and our neighbours' sufferings. Oriental nations view each calamity that comes upon them as Kismet, "fate," and make no exertions to meet it, stem it, minimise it. Christians should act otherwise. They should so far imitate the Egyptians as to set to work actively, to do what can be done in the way of relief and alleviation. God freely allows this. He did not punish the Egyptians for digging, or frustrate their efforts by preventing the water that was in the ground from filling the wells, or by rendering it undrinkable. And so he allows cholera or plague, or even ordinary sickness, which is his judgment on an individual, to be met by care, attention, cleanliness, remedial measures, and is so far from interfering against such exertions, that he blesses them, and for the most part renders them effectual.
HOMILIES BY H. T. ROBJOHNS
Chaps. 7-10
The great conflict.
"For I will at this time send all my plagues," etc.: Exodus 9:14. Keeping the last tremendous visitation apart, for it stands out in lone grandeur in the story, it is well to take the other nine plagues together in any homiletic, use we make of them; for—
1. They have many features in common.
2. And are closely connected with one another. A landscape should not be cut up, when we can see at a sweep the whole panorama. The subject, then, is Jehovah's conflict with this great idolatrous world-power.
I. THE AGENT. What was Moses? What was his Divine legation?
1. He was a patriot-deliverer, ranking with Tell, Bruce, etc. etc; as the saviour of his nation—but more!
2. A statesman—the creator (under God) of first a polity, and then a nation. He taught free men to govern themselves, under God. But Moses was more!
3. A prophet of the living God. Moses was intensely religious. He ranks with the greatest spiritual leaders of the world. His peer is Elijah, though Elijah was not quite equal. So great are they both that they appear on Tabor with the transfigured Lord. God, eternity, the soul, law, salvation, religion are the master motives of this great spirit. All that Moses was besides is to be traced to this deep root. The lesson is obvious: religion first—then the things that accompany salvation.
II. HIS DEEDS.
1. Their historic reality. Two facts certain—
(1) Israel in Egypt.
(2) Israel in Canaan.
he historic problem is: How was the transition made?
(1) Kings are not in the habit of emancipating races
(2) Israel never won its own freedom. Nor
(3) was Egypt overthrown by a foreign power, and so in the confusion Israel emerged to liberty.
(4) The Deliverer was God, and the mode, that described in the book.
2. Their exact nature. Exposition here of the miracles seriatim, with a careful note of the specialities of each. This as a foundation for the discussion of the question: Were the plagues natural or supernatural? They were either
(1) natural; or
(2) supernatural; or
(3) natural in kind,
but supernatural in degree, in circumstances and in concomitants. See Exodus 10:12, Exodus 10:19; Exodus 14:21. Our view is the last. But that the visitations were direct from the hand of God is clear from—
(1) Their colossal proportions.
(2) Their concentration upon one epoch.
(3) Their relation to the moral controversy.
(4) Their gradation.
(5) Dependence on the word of Moses.
[On the evidential value of the plagues, see 'Speaker's Commentary,' vol. 1:241.]
3. Their objective. This word here used in a military sense. What was the Divine object in these visitations? To hurl thunderbolts against the idolatries of Egypt: Exodus 12:12. For detail, see Dr. Alexander's Kitto's Cycle; p. 751, vol. 1.4. Their superiority to the acts of the magicians. Full discussion of the questions—What the magicians really did, and how they did it, will be found in the Congregational Lectures by Rev. Walter Scott, of Airedale College, on "The Existence of Evil Spirits," 145-156. The conclusion, sustained by argument, is that they were adepts in sleight of hand. But, for homiletic purposes, show the grandeur of the scale on which Moses acted, and the imposing character of his deeds as a moral demonstration to the idolaters of Egypt.
5. Their climacteric character. When God deals with sinners, he begins afar off, and only very gradually draws near and close to their deepest life and acutest feeling. So here he touches first the river—then comfort (frogs, Ice, flies)—then cattle—then the skin of the people—then food (hail and locusts)—then threatens life by the suffocating effects of the fifty days' sand-storm darkness—at last life itself. "I will sing of mercy" as well as "of judgment," etc.
III. HIS WORDS. Fine homiletic use may be made of the verbal controversy which went on between Moses and Pharaoh all the time of these visitations, and which increased in tragic vehemence as blow after blow descended. Note Pharaoh's waverings, relentings, and anon persistence; and also the occasional passionate entreaties of the hardened sinner on behalf of the awestruck and repentant people. But "whom the gods purpose to destroy they first of all madden."
IV. EFFECTS.
1. On the Egyptians. Leading some finally to attach themselves to the redeemed of the Lord.
2. On Moses. Called to a stupendous work. Timid. Trained to confidence in God, and obedience to his slightest word. Note!—So God is ever training his servants.
3. On Israel, through Moses.
V. LESSONS. The main ones of this great controversy.
1. The object of God in dealing with men. To beat down the idolatries of the human heart—to reveal himself—his law—his salvation—to reconcile men with himself.
2. The inevitable conflict, i.e. until God's purpose be accomplished. Show the reality of this conflict in the case of every sinner. Message after message, mercy after mercy, judgment after judgment. If men will not be reconciled, then there must be antagonism; to that antagonism there can be but one end. It is in this sense that Amos challenges Israel—"Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel." This is the word of the Lord as "a man of war."
3. The futility of the repentance of fear. Case of Pharaoh. Case of every sinner. Fear, however, has its mission—to awaken to concern. But no repentance is solid, lasting in its effect, but that which takes place in view of the love of our Father as seen in the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord.—R.
HOMILIES BY G. A. GOODHART
Chaps. 7-10
The Lord, he is the God.
Egypt was a pleasant land—"the garden of the Lord" (Genesis 13:10). The river, the source of its fertility, was fenced off from desert on either side by cliff ranges—canopied from morning to evening by the ever blue, bright sky. No wonder that the inhabitants should think much of such a land, that they should come to say of river, land, sky, "These be thy gods, O Egypt!" The veil of nature, which should reveal—as by shadow cast on sheet—may hide, the unseen God: cf. Romans 1:20. The struggle with Pharaoh shows us God asserting himself—proving himself "God of gods" as well as "Lord of lords." Regarding the river as the source of fertility; the land as the sphere for fertility; the sky as the guardian of fertility—see how God openly manifests the dependence of each and all on him.
I. THE RIVER. "The beneficent Nile, the very life of the state and of the people" (Stanley).
(1) Middle of June—season of annual overflow. To all appearance more than ever divine-Pharaoh (Exodus 7:15) probably openly acknowledging its divinity. Suddenly turned into blood—loathsome; no longer a source of fertility, but a source of corruption and death—at the command of Jehovah, the unrecognised invisible source whence the fertilising power had been derived.
(2) Later. Subsidence of the water. The river mud seems to breed frogs. Compelled at the Divine command to fructify not grain but reptiles.
(3) Later. Even the dust of the sun-dried mud turned by Jehovah into a tormenting pest. "The river is mine, and the soil which it deposits is mine; even the very dust which it leaves is mine. Have not I, the Lord, made all these things?"
II. THE LAND. So far the fiver has been made to plague the land; but Jehovah needs no intermediary. He has direct power over the land also.
(1) Exodus 8:21, Exodus 8:22. Swarms of flies (gnats) coming up as it were out of the ground. Yet land severed from land—Goshen spared, "so that thou mayest know that I am Jehovah in the midst of the land"
(2) Exodus 9:3. Murrain in the cattle—the creatures most nearly connected with the land; identified with its prosperity; deified as its representatives—at a set time, within appointed limits.
(3) Exodus 9:9. Pestilence on man and beast. The furnace-ash strewed heavenwards. The land as modified by human agency turned into a plague upon the men who used it. "The land is mine, and the cattle are mine, the very furnace-ash which ye might almost clam as self-made is mine. Have not I, the Lord, made all these things?"
III. THE SKY. The previous plague (Exodus 9:8) "toward the heaven," seems to challenge the sky divinities. Now they also are to be proved subject.
1.Exodus 9:22. At the word of Jehovah the protector becomes the devastator. Clouds gather and pour out water. Pharaoh and Egypt, too, shall know that the earth belongs to no sky divinity, but to Jehovah: Exodus 5:1-2.
2.Exodus 10:13. The winds, compelled into Jehovah's service, become charioteers for his locust armies.
3.Exodus 10:21. The sun, source of light, chief of the gods—even he is draped in darkness at the word of Jehovah. "The sky is mine with its clouds and winds, even the sun in all his glory. Have not I, the Lord, made all these things?"
Application:—People still forget God—still, practically, deify his gifts, and so plant them as to hide the Giver of them. The world, our respectable every-day world, not unlike Egypt. Health (life, ζωὴ), the river that fertilises it. Circumstances (life, βίος), the land fertilised. Thought, intelligence, wisdom, the sky which seems to canopy and protect both. Deify them and forget the God above them, and God will yet manifest himself by strange plagues on your divinities. Your river shall be turned into blood, and your sun into darkness [cf. Tennyson, "Palace of Art."] These things, too—health, happiness, intelligence—he will surely show that he and no other has maple them all.—G.