And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.
They took ashes of the furnace, х piyach (H6368) hakibshaan (H3536); Septuagint, teen aithaleen tees kaminaias]. It is supposed by others, that there is here a reference to an old Egyptian usage of sacrificing human victims to Typhon, the demon of evil, as a mode of expiating offences, and that, by scattering the debris of the immolated victims into the air, every person and place on which a flake alighted would have an immunity from all danger (Plutarch, quoting Manetho, 'de Is. et Osir.,' p. 380). No occasion, it is alleged, would be more likely to induce a resort to these horrid rites, as the appalling visitations under which Egypt was then suffering; and it was while the Egyptian court and hierarchy were engaged in this extraordinary ceremony for purifying the kingdom, that Moses took of the ashes "in the sight of Pharaoh," and, imitating the customary act of dispersing them, made them an occasion of bringing, not the anticipated exemption from evil, but a new and more formidable calamity than any of the preceding plagues. This explanation of the plague, however, is equally inadmissible as the former; for, not to dwell on the incredibility of a civilized people, as the Egyptians were, sacrificing human victims (see Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' b. 2:, ch. 45; note 3, by Wilkinson), nor to urge the philological objections that the word rendered "furnace" never signifies an altar for consuming sacrifices [and that the sacrificial ashes used in purifying are called 'eeper (H665), not piyach (H6368) (Numbers 19:10)], there is no evidence that the government of Egypt had been driven to desperation. On the contrary, Pharaoh remained unmoved.
Osburn has suggested a new view ('Mon. Hist.,' 2:, p. 585), that, as the close of the agrarian operations in Egypt is now, as it has been from the remotest antiquity, signalized immediately before the overflow by a burning of the stubble and weeds, which are collected upon heights and set on fire, so that the country far and near exhibits one immense conflagration; and as the calendars of the earliest tombs of Ghizeh record festivals on such occasions, 'Pharaoh and the priests were, doubtless, engaged in some ceremony connected with those feasts, when Aaron threw over them handfuls of the ashes of the consumed stubble, which covered them with ulcers, so that they could not proceed with the rite. The ashes, at the same time, drifted in clouds before the Etesian wind over the land, and inflicted a grievous plague upon the entire population. The king did not himself suffer from them. The fans of his attendants kept off the royal person the white feathery particles which at this time cover everything in Egypt.' [This view, being founded on a common occurrence at the season, might have been received with more favour than the two previously mentioned theories of interpretation, were it not that kibshaan (H3536) does not signify, as Osburn supposes, 'a country on fire,' but a furnace (Exodus 19:18; Genesis 19:28) - i:e., a brick or lime-kiln, a furnace for smelting metals.] At both of these the Israelites had been made to toil in the preparations necessary for the erection of those splendid temples, tombs, and other public works from which the Pharaohs derived so much of their glory; and now they were made to see that the God of the Hebrews made the ashes of the kiln, at which his people were forced to labour as slaves, the means not of honour, but of annoyance and distress on their tyrannical masters.
It became a boil, х shªchiyn (H7822), an inflamed ulcer, a botch; Septuagint, fluktides anazeousai, pustules boiling up] - probably the disease now called Hamm el Nil, the heat or rash of the innudation, similar to scarlet fever, (Scetzen's 'Trav.') It was endemic in ancient Egypt (Deuteronomy 28:27; Deuteronomy 28:35). But from the change of people and social habits in modern Egypt, its particular form cannot be ascertained. The magicians, being sufferers in their own persons, could do nothing though they had been called; and as the brick-kiln was one of the principal instruments of oppression to the Israelites, it was now converted into a means of chastisement to the Egyptians, who were made to read their sin in their punishment.