And Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.
Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land. Between impatient anxiety to be freed from this scourge, and a reluctance to part with the Hebrew bondsmen, the king followed the course of expediency: he proposed to let them free to engage in their religious rites within any part of the kingdom. But, true to his instructions, Moses would accede to no such arrangement; he stated a most valid reason to show the danger of it.
Verse 26. We shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes ... The meaning is, not that the animals offered in sacrifice by the Israelites, being held sacred by the Egyptians, would naturally give offence to the latter; but it was the disregard of certain preparatory and accompanying rites, such as the minute examination of a bull or ox-first in a standing posture, then lying on its back, to ascertain whether there be a black hair upon it, whether the hairs upon its tail grow naturally, whether its tongue be clean, etc.; and then, when declared to possess the requisite marks, some moistened sealing clay was put upon its horn by the examining priest, who stamped it with his signet ring. The certainty of rousing the fierce fanaticism of the Egyptians by their inattention to these superstitious minutiae was assigned by Moses as a prudential reason for refusing to comply with the king's offer to let the Israelites hold their festival within his kingdom; and this reason was rendered irresistible by a renewed mention of the divine command to go into the desert (Rawlinson's 'Herod.,' b. 2:, ch. 38; 'note' by Wilkinson).
Verse 27. We will go three days' journey into the wilderness - (see the notes at Exodus 8:3: cf. Genesis 31:22-23.) The king having yielded so far as to allow them a brief holiday across the border, annexed to this concession a request that Moses would entreat with Yahweh for the removal of the plague. Moses promised to do so; and it was removed the following day.
In the Septuagint the insect that plagued the Egyptians is called [kunomuia] dog-fly; and this circumstance is deserving of some consideration, as the translators of that version were in the very country which was the scene of the judgment. 'Moreover, the Egyptians held the dog in the greatest veneration, worshipping that animal under the name of Anubis; and consequently the punishment of the dog-fly must have been felt by that people as particularly severe.
The dog-fly is now unknown. It may not be uninteresting to subjoin a new and ingenious conjecture that has been thrown out by an eminent entomologist on this subject: 'It has been suggested to me,' says Dr. Kirby ('Bridgewater Treatise,' 2:, p. 357), 'that the Egyptian plague of flies was a cockroach (Blatta AEgyptiaca, Orthoptera), a very voracious insect, which not only bites animals, but many tender herbs and fruits. The Hebrew name of the animal, which, by a slight change of punctuation, is the same by which the raven is distinguished, furnishes no slight argument in favour of it. The same word also, by a similar alteration of the points signifies the evening. Now the cockroach at this time is black, with the interior margin of the thorax white, and it never emerges from its hiding-place until the evening; both of which circumstances would furnish a reason for the name given to it; and it might be called the evening insect, both, from its colour and the time of its appearance. But no sooner was the pressure over than the spirit of Pharaoh, like a bent bow, sprang back to its customary obduracy, and, regardless of his promise, he refused to let the people depart.