The frogs came up.
The procession of frogs
I. The creatures that were to come. The frogs of Egypt distinguished for five things. Their ash colour dotted with green spots; changed their colour when alarmed; small; crawled like toads; made a singular, some say an “abominable” noise, both under the water and on the land.
II. The places to which the creatures did come.
III. The power which caused the creatures to come. As the changing of the Nile showed that all the elements of nature were under the control of God, so the coming of the frogs to the land of Egypt proved that the animal parts of creation were under His control.
IV. The purposes for which the creatures came.
1. On account of pride (Exodus 8:2). God still abhors pride, and ever will. Can chastise the proud in a similar way. Can send disease to the pretty face; take away the idols, money, dress, friends; weakness to either body or mind; death to the unbroken circle. “Walk humbly with thy God.”
2. On account of superstition. Because the rising of the sun made wild beasts retire, the Egyptians looked on them as emblems of the sun’s power. Because the croaking of frogs helped travellers in a desert to discover waters, the Egyptians held them in some reverence. Regarded the frog also as sacred to the Nymphs and Muses. Called attendants upon the deities of streams and fountains. To correct this wrong and extravagant notion about frogs, the Lord sent them over all the land. We should be careful about the objects we love and hate, esteem and disesteem, revere and abhor.
V. The king’s request to have the creatures removed granted. (A. McAuslane, D. D.)
Lessons
1. Where the first judgment moveth not, the second may make sinners yield.
2. Vengeance makes wicked men call for God’s messengers who have despised them.
3. God’s judgments may work scornful oppressors to intreat the despised ministers of God.
4. Jehovah’s judgments may and will make proudest potentates to acknowledge Him.
5. In the confession of the wicked God only can take away their judgments.
6. Wicked oppressors themselves do acknowledge that mercy from Jehovah cometh by the prayer of His.
7. Under sense of judgment persecutors may promise liberty of persons and consciences to the Church.
8. Such forced promises are seldom made good by such oppressors (Exodus 8:8). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
The plague of frogs; or, the socially great smitten with the supremely contemptible
I. That the socially great sometimes provoke the judgments of God.
1. That the socially great provoke the judgments of God by rejecting His claims.
2. By slighting His servants.
3. By rejecting His credentials of truth and duty.
II. That the socially great have no means whereby to resist the judgments of God.
1. This judgment was afflictive, loathsome, extensive, irresistible.
2. This judgment yields not to social position, wealth, authority, force.
III. That the socially great often involve others less guilty in the retribution they invite.
IV. That the socially great are always surrounded by those who are willing to strengthen them in opposition to the Divine claims. Lessons:
1. That the socially great ought to be in sympathy with the requirements of God.
2. That the socially great ought to know better than provoke the wrath of the Great King.
3. That social position will not avert the retributions of God. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Superstitions respecting frogs
There is no doubt that frogs were in Egypt the objects of some kind of superstitious regard. It is difficult to say whether they were most reverenced or feared, but, either as good agents or evil, they were numbered among the sacred animals of the Egyptians. The magicians used them in their divinations, and pretended to foretell future events by the changes and swellings which these creatures undergo. Frogs were supposed to be generated from the mud of the river. A frog sitting upon the sacred lotus was symbolical of the return of the Nile to its bed after the inundations. The name Chrur, which seems to have been derived from the sound of its croaking, was also used, with only a slight variation, Hhrur, to denote the Nile descending. Seated upon a date-stone, with a young palm-leaf rising from its back, it was a type of man in embryo. The importance attached to the frog in some parts of Egypt is further apparent from its having been embalmed and honoured with burial in the tombs of Thebes; and from its frequent appearance upon the monuments and inscriptions. Among the former is the god Pthah, having the head of a frog, and representing the creative power of the deity; there is also a frog headed goddess named Heka, who was worshipped in the district of Sah, as the wife of Chnum, the god of the cataracts, and to whose favour the annual overflow of the Nile, with all the benefits which followed, was ascribed. Plutarch says the frog was an emblem of the sun, and that the brazen palm tree at Delphi, sacred to Apollo or Osiris, had a great number of frogs engraved upon its base. In hieroglyphics the frog is an emblem of fecundity, an idea which arose naturally from its connection with the river. As the wealth and prosperity of Egypt depended upon the annual overflowing of the Nile, it is not surprising that the people of that land, who seem in every possible instance to have worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, should have ascribed peculiar honour to the frogs, which abounded most in the time of the inundations; they may have regarded them as in some sense the authors of their benefits, or rather as beneficent agents sent forth by their sacred river to assist and direct its fertilizing process. But it is probable that the sacred character of these animals was attributable, in some parts of Egypt at least, to the fears entertained for them by the Egyptians, as spirits of evil. There are even now in Africa tribes of ignorant heathen, worshippers of devils, who bow down before the most hideous images they can invent or fashion, and call upon them with abject supplications, in order to propitiate their fetish, and to turn aside the evils he might bring upon them. St. John, in the book of Revelation, represents the frog as an evil spirit; and his emblems were generally derived from symbolical ideas which prevailed of old (Revelation 16:13). Such probably were the frogs which the magicians of Egypt brought forth in opposition to Moses, spirits of devils. Satan, who had greater license and a wider range in those dark times and places than he has now, sent out his demons in this form, at the call of his false prophets, to confirm the Egyptians in their rebellion against God; and “the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt” (Exodus 8:7). Whether the Egyptians looked upon these reptiles as benefactors, or dreaded them as ministers of evil, the wonderful plague with which they were now afflicted was a judgment against them for their miserable superstition, and a sign which they could scarcely fail to understand. Fond as they were of a multitude of deities, here were more than they could wish for or endure. David says: “He sent frogs among them, which destroyed them” (Psalms 78:45): it was not a mere inconvenience, therefore, but a real punishment; yet we may suppose the Egyptians would not venture to kill or even to resist their sacred tormentors. So terrible and wide-spread was the evil, that we find traces of it in the oldest historians, whose accounts, being derived only from tradition, are inaccurate as to place and people, but founded, we may suppose, upon the realities which are here recorded. Diodorus tells us of “a people called Autariats, who were forced by frogs bred in the clouds, which poured down upon them instead of rain, to forsake their country” (1. iii. c. 30); Pliny tells a similar story of the inhabitants of a district in Gaul. The fact that the frogs of Egypt were sent upon the people by God’s command would naturally lead to the idea of their descent from the clouds; while the exodus, both of Israelites and Egyptians, which followed soon afterwards, might give occasion to the story that the people were driven out of their country by the plague. (T. S. Millington.)
To-morrow.
To-morrow (for close of year)
We have arrived at another milestone on the journey of life. How many more we have to pass before we reach our journey’s end we cannot say; for, unlike the milestones by the roadside, which not only tell the traveller how far he has travelled but how much farther off his destination is; our passing years are milestones which only point backwards. In the face of this terrible uncertainty, then, how foolish it is to echo the word of Pharaoh and say, “To-morrow.”
1. In postponing the day of salvation, we are postponing our own happiness. Think of the madness of Pharaoh, enduring another night of the frogs when he could obtain instant release from them. And yet he was no more mad than the sinner is who postpones his salvation from day to day. His sins are more numerous and nauseous than the frogs of Egypt. They swarm everywhere; they leave their slime upon everything; they spawn in the dark corners of his heart; he is plagued with them, and can get no peace.
2. In this procrastination we are flying in the face of God’s clearest warnings. Ten times over God’s warnings were repeated to Pharaoh before the final destruction came; but even this is not the limit of His longsuffering to usward. His warnings are often uttered a hundred times over to us before the final crash. Yet many pay no heed to them. They are startled for a while, and give a passing thought to their souls, only to sweep away such thoughts in worldliness again, and cry “To-morrow! I will think of this to-morrow.” A traveller from India thus relates some of the experiences of his voyage:--“Flocks of greedy albatrosses and cape-pigeons crowded around the ship’s stern. A hook was baited with fat, and upwards of a dozen albatrosses rushed at it instantly; and as one after another was being hauled on deck, the remainder, regardless alike of the struggles of the captured anti the vociferations of the crew, kept swimming about the stern. Not even the birds which were indifferently hooked, and made their escape, desisted from seizing the bait a second time.” Poor, foolish birds, to disregard the death-struggles of so many of their companions and their own experience of the sharpness of the hook! Poor, foolish men, to disregard more terrible warnings still, to procrastinate in spite of the sudden destruction of so many of their companions in the ways of sin and the sharp trials that God has sent to urge them to escape the like destruction:
3. In putting off the great question of salvation till to-morrow, we forget that tomorrow will in all probability see us harder-hearted than to-day. Pharaoh was softened while he was plague-stricken. He seemed even near becoming a worshipper of the true God, for he said to Moses, “Intreat the Lord for me.” But when the warning was past, and the morrow came, he relapsed into his old hardhearted enmity towards God; all the harder for his temporary softening. Transient impressions are terribly dangerous. If you take the red-hot metal and plunge it into cold water, you make it harder than it was before. So it was with the heart of Pharaoh; so it is with our hearts too. (G. A. Sowter, M. A.)
The folly of delaying till tomorrow
“To-morrow!” has been the cry for years. Serious intentions enough have been formed; but serious intentions, formed only to be forgotten, are but paving a religious way to hell. A sea captain tells how he fell in with the Central America on the very evening when she went down. He relates how that, having hailed her, Captain Hernden replied, “I am sinking!” “Had you not better send your passengers on board of us?” said the captain. “Will you stand by me till morning?” was Captain Hernden’s reply. “I’ll try,” said the captain; “but had you not better send your passengers on board at once?” “Stand by me till morning!” was the only answer. The captain did his utmost to stand by the ill-fated ship, but ‘mid the darkness of the night and the force of the tempest he saw the Central America no more, and subsequently received information apprised him that within an hour of that time she went down in the wild Atlantic. What a pity that poor Captain Hernden would put off till the next day that which might have been done that night. But though he doubtless had, to him, some sufficient reason for the course he pursued, that cannot be said of those who neglect the great salvation.