Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river's brink against he come; and the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take in thine hand.
Get thee unto Pharaoh. Now therefore began those appalling miracles of judgment by which the God of Israel, through His ambassadors, proved His sole and unchallengeable supremacy over all the gods of Egypt, and which were the natural phenomena of Egypt in an unusual form, and in a miraculous degree of intensity. Rameses, Memphis, and Tanis (Isaiah 30:4) were three royal residences, connected with three principal cities; and it is probable that the court was at the time, when the next scene opens, held in the palace of the last mentioned place (Psalms 78:12). [Tanis, in Coptic, low; Septuagint, tanis.]
Zoan was one of the capitals in Lower Egypt, a very ancient city (Numbers 13:22), as its sculptured monuments also attest (Wilkinson's 'Ancient Egypt,' 1:, pp. 5, 6). Its exact situation was long a subject of dispute; but it is now generally allowed to have lain on the east of the Tanitic branch of the Nile, on the northwest of Tahpanhes, and not far from the Sea of Menzaleb. Extensive ruins indicate the spot. It was in a field in the neighbourhood of that city that the miracles were performed. 'The field of Zoan' is now a barren waste; a canal passes through it, without being able to fertilize it, owing to the quantity of nitre (Ezekiel 30:14). It is now inhabited by fishermen, is the resort of wild beasts, and is infested with reptiles and malignant fevers. But no one can look upon this field without a feeling of intense interest-the field where Moses performed those wonders that ended in the liberation of the Israelites from the oppression of the Egyptians.
Tanis, now Zan or San, stands at latitude 31 degrees 0' 10". Its mounds are very high, and of great extent, being upwards of a mile from north to south, and nearly three-fourths of a mile from east to west (Wilkinson's 'Egypt and Modern Thebes'). Moses must have resided in the immediate neighbourhood during that terrible period.
Lo, he goeth out unto the water - either for the purpose of ablutions or perhaps of devotions; because the Nile was an object of superstitious reverence-the patron deity of the country. It was most probably on occasion of a solemn religious ceremony; and assuming the harvest to have been past (see the notes at Exodus 5:11), this occasion would be on the commencement of the annual rise of the river called the Red Nile in June, when certain rites were performed, in presence of the king, to the river god, who was supposed to be Nu or Noah, and was hieroglyphically represented as a man with water issuing from his mouth, indicating the unknown source of the stream. It was called the Niloa, one of the principal festivals of Egypt: and Libanius pretends that the rites were thought of so much importance that, unless performed properly, the river would not rise to its proper height. It was celebrated by men and women in the capital of each nome, which seems to argue, like the statement of Herodotus, that the god Nilus had a temple in every large city; and a wooden statue of the river-god was carried in procession through the villages on that occasion (Wilkinson, in Rawlinson's 'Herod.,' b. 2:, ch. 90). This statement is verified by the monumental paintings, one of which at Jebel Selseleh, represents Rameses II. in the act of pouring out a libation to the Nile divinity, who, in the hieroglyphic inscription, is called Hapi Moon, the life-giving father of all existences (Champollion, quoted by Hengstenberg, 'Egypt and Books of Moses,' p. 110).
It might be that Moses had been denied admission into the palace; but be that as it may, the river was to be the subject of the first plague, and therefore he was ordered to repair to its banks with the miracle-working rod, now to be raised, not in demonstration, but in judgment, if the refractory spirit of the king should still refuse consent to Israel's departure for their sacred rites.