Exodus 9:25 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The hail smote—all that was in the field, both man and beast— I do not apprehend it at all necessary to suppose, that all the servants, and all the cattle of the Egyptians, which were abroad at the time the hail fell which Moses threatened, and which was attended with thunder and lightning, died; it must be supposed, they all felt the hailstones, and that very many of them were killed. This was enough to justify the words of Moses, that it should be a grievous hail, such as had not fallen before in Egypt from its foundation; for though it hails sometimes in Egypt as well as rains, (as Dr. Pococke found it hailed at Faiume when he was there in February,) and thunders too; as Thevenot says it did one night in December when he was at Cairo, yet fatal effects are not wont to follow in that country; as appears from what Thevenot says of this thunder, which, he tells us, killed a man in the castle there, though it had never been heard before that thunder had killed any body at Cairo. For a great many people, therefore, to have been killed by the lightning and the hail, besides cattle, was an event which Moses might well say had never happened there before from the time it began to be inhabited. I will only add, that Moses, by representing this as an extraordinary hail, supposed that it did sometimes hail there, as it is found, in fact, to do, though not as in other countries. The not raining in Egypt, it is well known, is to be understood in the same manner. See Observations. What is here said respecting man and beast may also be applied to the herbs and trees of the field; for it will be sufficient to the meaning of the text to suppose, that the greater part of them were shattered and injured or destroyed by the storm. See Psalms 78:47; Psalms 105:33. Terms of universality in Scripture are frequently to be understood in a limited sense.