Exodus 8:8, commentary and pictures

The cry belongs to the frog plague, when frogs from the Nile overspread the land in swarming numbers, coming up from the river into houses and bed-chambers and into ovens and kneading-troughs until they became intolerable. Though frogs were regarded as sacred in Egypt, their very sacredness gave no relief when they became an intolerable nuisance. The Nile itself, revered by the Egyptians as an object of worship, could not protect them, for by Jehovah's power its frogs became a nuisance and a source of pollution to the people.

The earlier miracles of the rod becoming a serpent and the river turning to blood had only hardened Pharaoh's heart and increased his hatred of Israel, because the work of the magicians led him to believe those miracles were performed by magic. Pharaoh's magicians by enchantment appeared to bring up similar frogs, but they could neither stay the plague nor remove the frogs. Seeing this failure, Pharaoh was somewhat humbled to ask Moses and Aaron to entreat the Lord in prayer to take away the frogs from him and from his people, promising to let Israel go to sacrifice and worship and serve the Lord.

Moses met the plea by reminding the haughty king of his former boasting and glorying over the works of his magicians, challenging where that glorying and vaunted power to remove the plague now were, and having Pharaoh appoint a time for prayer to the Lord to stay the plague. Pharaoh was only somewhat humbled, for he secretly hoped the frogs would disappear on their own before he had to submit to Israel's God, and the plague continued until the appointed time. The frogs did not come by magic or by any power Moses and Aaron possessed, but by the power of the living God, who alone could remove them. Moses wrought by no human power but by the power of God, while the magicians wrought by enchantment not by their own science alone but by the power of their god the Devil, and could imitate only a few miracles before God's superior work stopped them.

The appeal stands as part of God's display of power through Moses to convince Pharaoh that the great I AM sent him to command release that Israel might serve Him, where Satan was on the ground opposing Moses. Moses' work to break Israel's bondage prefigured Christ's first advent to break Satan's power over the human family and deliver those made captives by him. Satan consulted his angels to destroy the influence of God's work through Moses by counterfeiting it through his agents the magicians, in order to harden Pharaoh against God's miraculous power, to stagger the faith of Moses and Aaron, to keep Israel in servitude from serving God, and to destroy faith in Christ's miracles in all later ages.

At the hour specified God removed the living cause but left the effect: He did not cause the frogs to disappear in a moment and return to dust, lest the king and the Egyptians say the removal was the result of magic like the work of the magicians, but caused them to die where they were so that perishing they polluted the atmosphere and were gathered together in heaps with their bodies seen before the Egyptians. Their removal in this way gave Pharaoh and all Egypt abundant evidence their vain philosophy could not dispose of, showing that the work was not magic but a judgment from the God of heaven, and leaving them without excuse for unbelief. The verse thus marks the beginning of Pharaoh knowing something about the God whom he had professed to be wholly ignorant of, leaving him sufficient evidence to believe if he would.

Pharaoh's cry for the plagues to be removed was selfish sorrow that is not unto repentance and has no virtue in itself and no merit to remove a single stain of sin. He regretted his stubborn defiance of God and grieved only because guilt was discovered and his evil course had brought him into disagreeable circumstances, while his heart was unchanged and he was ready to repeat his crime when tempted, which is not godly sorrow for sin that works repentance unto eternal life. The widespread overspreading of the frogs pictures the present multiplication and spread of periodicals and books overspreading the land, many commonplace, idle and enervating, and many unclean and degrading, whose effect is to intoxicate and ruin the mind and to corrupt and destroy the soul.