Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Lessons
1. Threatening from God may touch hearts of servants and not of rulers.
2. God useth king’s own servants to move them, when His ministers can avail nothing.
3. Fear of plagues may move wicked ones to yield, where the fear of God is not.
4. It is usual for wicked men to charge God’s servants to be snares, when their sins make them.
5. When God makes His servants ministers of wrath, the wicked are willing to be rid of them.
6. Idolatrous persecutors may tolerate God’s Church to serve Him, when vengeance forces them.
7. Experience of destruction past, and fear of more to come, may cause enemies to move for the Church’s liberty.
8. Persecuting powers are apt to be stupid and willingly ignorant of such destructions. (G. Hughes, D. D.)
A remonstrance against sin
I. Addressed by inferiors to their superiors.
1. Bold.
2. Wise.
3. Needed.
II. Inspired by a deep feeling of terror. It is well for men under any circumstances to cry out against moral evil.
III. Influential for temporary good. Some men are apparently more accessible to the advice of their comrades than they are to the commands of heaven. The wicked servant may preach the gospel to his despotic master.
IV. Ultimately disregarded. Lessons:--
1. Remonstrate with the sinner.
2. Show him the folly and woe of sin.
3. You are not responsible for the result of such a remonstrance. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Pharaoh’s mad ignorance
“Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?” was the plea of Pharaoh’s servants before the locusts came. No; he knew it not; he would not know it. Even now, with the scene of utter desolation everywhere around him, with the fields scorched and barren, and the naked trees stretching out their white and shattered boughs like ghastly skeletons, with even the walls of his houses and the furniture of his chambers marked by the gnawings of those “very grievous locusts,” with all these terrible witnesses before his eyes, Pharaoh knew it not. (T. S. Millington.)