And seven days were fulfilled, after that the LORD had smitten the river.
Seven days were fulfilled, after the Lord had smitten the river. The natural impression conveyed by these words is, that the plague continued for the space of a week; and Osburn ('Mon. Hist.,' 2:, p. 578) tries to explain it by saying, that in the flat plains of Lower Egypt, where the current in the various Nile branches is slow and sluggish, this is about the time the contents of the river would require to flow from the crown of the Delta to the sea. Others, as Hengstenberg, connect these words with the following section, as intimating that in seven days after the beginning of the first plague, without any reference to its close, the second plague was threatened. The words stand in this connection in our Hebrew Bibles, which continue until the close of Exodus 7:4 of the next chapter in our version. The first view is preferable, not only because the length of the interval between the plagues is nowhere specified, and the formula with which each successive plague is introduced is not connected in any other instance with the preceding.