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The Plagues of Egypt

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 31, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 44.

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The Plagues of Egypt

By I. G. KNIGHT

I. G. KNIGHT
EGYPTIANS in the time of the Pharaohs were highly educated in science and art, second perhaps to no others. They seemed to have traditions of the principal events from the beginning of time; but they chose to express everything by allegories, described by symbols and hieroglyphic representations, to which they paid an idolatrous reverence. The judgments of God upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians in the time of Moses were particularly adapted to the people upon whom they were poured out. In every instance these judgments had strict reference to their idolatry. The Lord informed Moses, “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.” Ex. 12: 12; Num. 33: 4.
The river Nile was regarded with great reverence, and was consecrated to Deity as the chief national god. The Egyptians supposed it gave birth to all their gods. Imagine with what horror they looked upon the sacred river,—polluted, a stream of blood, from which was emitted the stench of dead fish. How fitting was this first plague, directed against their chief worship. And so also every plague bore a strict analogy to their beliefs. The frogs were held both as an object of reverence and as an abhorrence. It was very consistent with the divine wisdom to punish the Egyptians both with what they abominated and with what they reverenced. So the second plague was as pronounced against the “gods of Egypt” as was the first.
The people affected great external purity. The priests never wore woolen garments, but always linen, that they might not harbor vermin, and were therefore held in veneration for their purity. This third plague was so apparently against their idolatry that even the stubborn magicians said unto Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” Ex. 8: 19.
“In the days of Joseph Egypt had been an asylum for Israel; God had been honored in the kindness shown his people; but now the long-suffering One, slow to anger and full of compassion, gave each judgment time to do its work. The Egyptians cursed the very object they had worshiped. They had evidence of the power of God, and all who would might submit and escape his judgments.”
The fourth plague was the bringing of a particular species of flies whose bite and sting were intolerable. Having been warned by Moses beforehand so that the deities whose work it was to ward off these special evils might exercise their power, another evidence of the superiority of the God of the Hebrews was given the Egyptians.
The fifth plague was murrain. The scope and meaning of this calamity were greater as applied to the Egyptians than perhaps could have been the case with any other people. They held in such veneration the animals affected that for the Israelites to offer one for sacrifice was to endanger the lives of the people. Ex. 8: 26.
The sixth plague was that of boils and blains. The Egyptians reposed great confidence in their physicians, and maintained them at public expense. They supposed them able to ward off troublesome diseases, as well as to heal them, having connected astrology with physics. This plague would make it appear that the land was divested of its wise men as well as of its gods.
The seventh plague consisted of rain, hail, and fire. The fitness and propriety of the Egyptians being punished by fire and water can plainly be seen. They were guilty of gross idolatry toward these elements. The sun and moon, which they adored as deities, were able to control, as they thought, all the climatic elements. It pleased God to punish their blind credulity by bringing upon them this demonstration.
The eighth plague was that of locusts. The other plagues having destroyed the barley and the flax, the wheat and the rice, the land now suffered the ravages of the locust. Scarcely any calamity can so effectually damage a land as to destroy completely its vegetation. This the eighth plague did. Their deities, Isis and Serapis, who were the conservators of plenty, could not protect their crops.
The plague of darkness followed, a judgment extraordinary. Nothing like it had ever been witnessed by this or any other nation. They esteemed the sun as the soul of the earth, supposing that this luminary and the moon controlled all things by their influence. But this plague enveloped them in impenetrable darkness for three days, which Osiris could not remedy. Besides all this, they were conscious of the fact that the Israelites were immune from its influence, although living among them.
When the tenth plague fell, there occurred the death of the first-born. There was a meaning in this judgment of greater consequence than in any that had preceded it. The Israelites were as liable to be affected by it as were the Egyptians, if they failed to comply with the specific instructions. The prime reason, no doubt, for the plague was that after the Egyptian nation had been preserved by one of the Israelitish family, it had enslaved the people to whom it had been so much indebted, and, not content with this, had proceeded to kill their offspring. The Egyptians had been told the families of the Israelites were esteemed as God’s first-born. “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my first-born: and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy first-born.” Ex. 4: 22, 23.
As coming events cast their shadows before, so surely does this shadow point to substance, a real thing. The experience of Israel in Egypt was a type. “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” 1 Cor. 10: 11. God’s people will pass through a similar experience.
The prophet Isaiah gives us a graphic description of the second gathering of Israel: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. . . . And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.” Isa. 11: 11-16.
And Jeremiah says: “Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. But, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.”
With ancient Israel deliverance was but a local affair, only from Egyptian bondage to Canaan’s land; but the last movement embraces in its scope and magnitude the world delivered, and the victorious children of God settled in their eternal inheritance in the earth made new. “Wait on the Lord, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.” Ps. 37: 34.
Astoria, Oregon.