restore communion with God, was pure; the bread, which was eaten with it, was not allowed to contain anything impure.

With reference to the command to eat the meal in travelling costume (ver. 11), Baumgarten observes that, after the Israelites had been redeemed from the death of Egypt by the blood of the lamb, they derived new energy from eating the lamb that had been slain, solely in order that they might immediately take their departure from the land of destruction to the Mount of God. The number of persons who formed one company at the Paschal meal is not stated. It was most natural that each household should form a separate party. But as it was desirable, as far as possible, to take care that none of the lamb should be left; it was ordered that, where a family was small, it should unite with another (ver. 4). At a later period the Jews looked upon ten as the normal number of a single company. The supplementary command (ver. 44 sqq.), that no foreign servant, or associate, or hireling, should take part in the meal, and that no foreigner, who might be dwelling among the Israelites, should keep the passover with his family, unless they had been incorporated into the community of Israel by circumcision, had its external ground in the fact, that a large number of the common people of Egypt left their country with the Israelites (ver. 38, see § 35. 7). But it is a very instructive fact, that just at this time, when everything tended to show how Jehovah distinguished between Israel and Egypt (chap. xi. 7), it was made a fundamental law that non-Israelites might enter without the least difficulty into religious and national fellowship with the Israelites, and thus participate in all the blessings of the house of Israel. We have here a proof that, even when the distinction was inost marked between the heathen and the chosen people, the fundamental idea of the Old Testament history was never lost sight of, that in Abraham's seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed.

THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT.

§ 35 (Ex. xii. 29-xiii. 16).—While the children of Israel were eating the passover in travelling costume, the tenth plague (1) fell upon the Egyptians. At midnight the destroying angel (2)

slew all the first-born of Egypt, both of men and cattle; and there was not a house to be found, in which there was not one dead. The terror of God came upon all the Egyptians. The same night, Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron, gave them permission to depart (3), and intreated their intercession on his behalf. The people of Egypt also urged the Israelites to depart as quickly as possible, for they said "we are all dead men." The Israelites then did what Jehovah had previously commanded them to do they asked the Egyptians for articles of gold and silver (trinkets and jewels) and for clothes (festal clothing). And Jehovah caused his people to find favour in the eyes of the Egyptians, so that they gave without hesitation whatever was desired (4). The instructions to repeat the Paschal meal every year were coupled with a command, to sanctify all the first-born of men and cattle to the Lord (5). Thus they departed in festal costume, as an army of Jehovah (6); for the Egyptians themselves had clothed them with festal apparel and costly ornaments. The bones of Joseph were also taken by Moses, according to the promise which had been made to him on oath. by the fathers of the people (§ 4), and for the fulfilment of which the people as a body were responsible. A large number of the Egyptians of the lower classes of society, who had endured the same oppression as the Israelites, from the proud spirit of caste which prevailed in Egypt, attached themselves to the latter, and served henceforth as hewers of wood and drawers of water (7). Four hundred and thirty years had been spent in Egypt by the descendants of Jacob (§ 14. 1). There were now among them 600,000 men capable of bearing arms (§ 14. 3). Raemses was the place from which the procession started; Succoth their first resting-place (§ 37).

(1). Hengstenberg (Egypt and the Books of Moses p. 125) pronounces the tenth plague, viz., the death of all the first-born both of men and cattle, to have been the result of a pestilence, a

thing of frequent occurrence in Egypt. But in this instance, where the natural side of the event completely disappeared, he goes so far, in his anxiety to introduce a natural element into the miracle, that we must decidedly decline accompanying him. With greater moderation Hävernick says (p. 182): "The last plague is the one, which brings us most decidedly into the sphere of the purely miraculous." The word pestilence, however, is so indefinite and general a term, that it conveys but little information after all. If by pestilence we are to understand any disease which carries men off in a sudden and unsparing way, we can offer no objection to the application of the word to the tenth plague; for if the hand of Jehovah smote a large number of the Egyptians in one night with sudden death, the stroke itself must undoubtedly have resembled a mortal disease. But if the word be used in a more restricted sense, as denoting a disease that causes sudden death and overspreads whole districts by contagion, we protest with all our might against the designation. It was not by contagion, striking here and there like the electric fluid without previous warning, that so many victims were struck down by this plague, nor was it by any physical predisposition to a disease produced by some mysterious pestilential vapour, that those who fell were predestinated to die; but the hand of Jehovah, or of the destroyer whom he sent, was the immediate cause, and not only the number of the victims, but the particular individuals, were determined beforehand by a rule, which had not the slightest connexion with the laws of contagion. We cannot but be surprised, that Hengstenberg should ever have gone so far, as to assert that "the expression all the first-born' is not to be taken literally, any more than the other statement that there was no house in which there was not one dead,' which could not be strictly correct, since there were not first-born in every house." In his opinion we cannot infer from this that there were none of the first-born left alive, or that none but first-born were killed. Again, with regard to the exemption of the Israelites, he says that natural analogies may be adduced, for at the present day the Bedouins have very little predisposition to pestilence, and seldom suffer in the same way from its devastations. Even if we admit that the expression "all the cattle" in chap. ix. 6 (like chap. ix. 25) is not to be taken too literally, it is very different with chap. xii. 29. In the former case the reference is to the destruction

of cattle by a general murrain, without any particular description of the individuals smitten, and therefore the historian might naturally express himself in general terms. But here, where he is speaking of particular, well-defined individuals, such a mode of expression would have been altogether out of place. The scriptural account says, "Jehovah smote all the first-born," and proceeds to give the greater emphasis to the word "all" by adding: "From the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on the throne, to the first-born of the maid-servant that was behind the mill, and unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon" (xi. 5, xii. 29). This was the last, decisive plague. Whereas all the previous plagues had been so arranged, that it was still possible for unbelief to resort to the subterfuge, that they had been the result of nature and chance alone; this last was of such a kind, that even hardness and unbelief could not refuse to admit the interposition of the personal, living, supreme, and Almighty God. But the design of Jehovah would have been entirely frustrated by such exceptions as Hengstenberg refers to. There is no force in his assertion, that there cannot have been first-born in every house. For if, here and there, a couple may possibly have been found, where the husband was not himself a first-born, without children, and living in a house by themselves, the cases must have been extremely rare, in which these three circumstances were all combined, and therefore the writer cannot be blamed for saying "every house." It was not the design of the plague, that corpses should be found in every house without exception; but it was intended that all the firstborn without exception should be slain, and if anything be pressed it must be this. Moreover the reference is to the male first-born on the mother's side (as chap. xiii. 2 clearly shows, cf. No. 5 below), so that there would sometimes be several first-born in the same family.

Again Hengstenberg is equally wrong, when he speaks of the supposed pestilence as being connected with the Chamsin (i.e., the three days' darkness). He brings forward the evidence of travellers to the effect that, "when the Chamsin lasts, pestilence prevails to a fearful extent, and those who are affected die very quickly," and states immediately afterwards that "for this reason the Arabs, as soon as the Chamsin ceases, congratulate each other on having survived." But according to the

biblical account, the pestilence did not go before the “Chamsin,” or even accompany it; on the contrary, it did not occur for several days, perhaps some weeks afterwards, and therefore long after the Egyptians had congratulated each other on having survived the dangerous period.

(2). The infliction of the tenth plague is sometimes ascribed to Jehovah himself; at other times to a destroyer en sent by Him and distinct from Him (chap. xii. 23). There are some, it is true, who regard as an abstract term, meaning destruction; but ver. 13, which is adduced in support of this, does not say: "the plague will not be among you for destruction," but "there shall be no plague among you for the destroyer" (ie., no plague to inflict, no occasion for bringing a plague). So far as we have hitherto traced the operations of God in Israel and on behalf of Israel, there is everything to lead to the conclusion, that the destroyer, who was sent by Jehovah, and in whom and through whom Jehovah personally appeared and worked, was no other than the angel, whom we have already met with in the patriarchal history as the representative of Jehovah (vol. i. § 50. 2); before whom Moses drew off his shoes and covered his face, when he appeared to him in the burning bush (chap. iii. 2, 5, 6); and who manifested himself to Moses in the inn, when Jehovah appeared to slay him (chap. iv. 24). So far as the judgment was one of wrath and brought destruction upon the sinner, the judge was also a destroyer. But as we read in Ps. lxxviii. 49, of an army of angels of evil (

who were actively engaged in the Egyptian ,(מַלְאֲכֵי רָעִים

plagues (for, like, life, is an abstract noun meaning evil, wickedness; and angels, that work evil, are not therefore wicked angels), the question may be asked whether does not indicate a plurality of angels engaged in the plagues. лn, as Hofmann correctly observes (Schriftbeweis i. 310), denotes an instrument of destruction, of which there may be either one or many; and even in the latter case the many may be conceived of and described as one, on account of the unity of the principle which sets them in motion. Thus, for example, in 1 Sam. xiii. 7, an entire division of the army, which set out to devastate the land, is called, and, on the other hand, in 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, the angel of the Lord, which smote Jerusa