than his hardened heart was again steeled against it, and he refused to allow any but the men to depart, whilst he retained their wives and children and all their cattle, as a guarantee for their return. The messengers of Jehovah could not consent to this; and the plague immediately commenced. A continuous east wind brought such a dense swarm of locusts into the land, that the sun was obscured; and when they settled, the whole country was covered. The devastation, which they caused, was so great, that not a leaf remained upon the trees, nor a blade of grass in the fields. The pride of Pharaoh seemed broken now; he confessed that he had sinned against Jehovah, and sued for mercy. But the west wind, which carried off the locusts, took away his hypocritical repentance also. The locusts perished in the Red Sea; they were the precursors of Pharaoh with his horses and riders. Every one of the plagues had hitherto been announced to the king beforehand. This rendered it impossible, on the one hand, that he should regard them as anything but divine judgments; and on the other hand it gave him the opportunity of escaping the evil, by changing his mind. But henceforth this double precaution ceased. Without any announcement, however, the king knew whence the plague had come; and his hardness had increased to such an extent, that the rest could only be regarded as judgments from which he could not escape. Thus the ninth plague broke upon him without preparation, viz, such dense darkness (3) for three days, both out of doors and in the houses, that they could not see one another. But in the houses of the Israelites, it remained perfectly light and clear. Pharaoh capitulated again. He said he would allow the men to go with their wives and children, but the cattle and sheep must be left behind. Moses rejected these conditions, and the two parted from each other in great excitement and anger.

(1). A thunderstorm accompanied by hail is by no means a

rare occurrence in Egypt, at least in the Delta; though in the usual way it is almost unknown in the more elevated districts. Cf. Laborde p. 42. It is important to observe the emphatic and elaborate manner, in which this plague was announced. There must certainly have been some other reason for this, than the fact that the present plague fell much more heavily, than any that had preceded it. To our mind, a stronger reason is to be found in the increasing hardness of Pharaoh's heart. It is in connexion with the previous plague (chap. ix. 12), that this hardening is first spoken of as an effect produced in Pharaoh by God himself (except in the objective announcement which was made to Moses at the first). This evidently implies, that a turning-point had been reached; and it also explains the reason, that the king was now for the first time made aware of the manner, in which his hardness and hostility to the will of God were to be made to subserve the glory of His name. Although Jehovah might have displayed his supremacy over the gods of Egypt, by the plagues that had already been inflicted; Pharaoh could still proudly boast, that with all his power and with all his efforts, Jehovah had not conquered him. Hitherto it had not been the will of Pharaoh, but that of Jehovah, which eventually succumbed. This miserable pride and defiance on his part were now put before him in their proper light; and he was made to learn, that with all his proud selfwill, he was only serving the purpose and plans of God: "for this have I raised thee up, to show in thee my power, and that my name be declared in all the earth” (ver. 16); cf. chap. xi. 9, "Pharaoh shall not hearken to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt."

The warning advice (ver. 19), to collect the men and cattle out of the fields, and shelter them in their houses from the threatened hail, was intended for the benefit of as many of Pharaoh's servants and subjects, as had learned to fear the word of Jehovah ; and they profited by it (ver. 20). But it was also intended for Pharaoh, to whom it was first addressed. And, though it is not expressly stated, we may gather with certainty from the general tenor of the narrative, that he paid no attention to the warning,-another proof that the most marked provisions of mercy only increase the hardness of the hardened man. From his past experience, the king could not possibly doubt that the threatened punishment would be inflicted; but his proud and defiant

spirit would not let him reap the benefit, which the warning put within his reach.

רוּחַ קָדִים,east wind

קרים

(2). There has been an incalculable amount of writing on the natural history of the locusts in general, and the scriptural references to them in particular. Laborde mentions the titles of a hundred and seventy-five different works, which he says that he consulted and used, in his complete and careful investigation of the subject (p. 44 sqq.); and yet the catalogue is far from being complete. The fact that the direction taken by a swarm of locusts is dependent upon the wind, has been confirmed by the observations of travellers a thousand times. And the thorough devastation which they are here said to have caused, as well as their eventual destruction in the sea, have been frequently witnessed. According to the biblical narrative, they were brought by the Even the Septuagint stumbled at this, and rendered the words aveμos vóτos (Vulg. ventus urens). This rendering has been adopted by Bochart, who is of opinion that must here mean the south wind, as the east wind could only have brought the locusts from Arabia, whereas the south wind would bring them from Ethiopia, where they are much more numerous. Hasselquist endeavours to prove that the locusts always take the same direction, viz. from south to north. Eichhorn (p. 26) thinks that, as the locusts are invariably driven by a blind impulse from south to north, and never turn towards the east or west, the swarms must always have come to Egypt from Ethiopia, and never from Arabia. And Bohlen (Gen. p. 56) makes use of this, as a proof that our author was not acquainted with the natural history of Egypt. But Credner (Joel p. 286) has brought many witnesses to prove that locusts follow every wind, and (p. 288) has also shown that they not only cross over narrow straits, such as those of Gibraltar, &c., but that when their flight is favoured by the wind, they will pass over seas as broad as the Mediterranean itself. But when the wind does not favour their flight-when, for example, it rises to a tempest, or suddenly drops-the whole swarm will fall immediately into the sea. Niebuhr (Beschreib. p. 169) also attests the fact that the wind sometimes carries swarms of locusts across the, Arabian Gulf, even at its broadest part. Cf. Hengstenberg, Egypt and Moses, p. 11 sqq., and Laborde, p. 50 sqq.

קרים

is never used in the Scriptures to denote the south wind,

but always means the east wind. It is the more important that we should maintain this firmly, since it is probable that in the present instance, there was some significance in the direction in which they came. They came from the same quarter as the Israelites, and they appeared as their champions and allies. But if this explanation should be given up as too far-fetched, we think that Baumgarten (p. 454) is certainly right in laying stress upon the fact, that they were not produced in Egypt itself, but came from a distant, foreign land, as a proof that "the power of Jehovah reached beyond the bounds of Egypt, i.e., was everywhere present."

(3). The THREE DAYS' DARKNESS is now generally traced to the Egyptian Sirocco or Chamsin (cf. Hengstenberg, Hävernick, and others). The horrors of this phenomenon are described by nearly every traveller. Du Bois Aymé (p. 110) says: "When the Chamsin blows, the sun is of a pale yellow colour; its light is obscured, and the darkness sometimes increases to such an extent that one might fancy it was the depth of night." According to other accounts, the inhabitants of the towns and villages shut themselves up in their houses, sometimes in the lowest rooms, or even in the cellars, whilst dwellers in the desert take refuge in their tents, or in holes which they have dug in the ground. Robinson (i. 288) was in the desert during one Chamsin of short duration: "The wind," he says, "changed suddenly to the south, and came upon us with violence and intense heat, until it blew a perfect tempest. The atmosphere was filled with fine particles of sand, forming a blueish haze; the sun was scarcely visible, his disk exhibiting only a dim and sickly hue, and the glow of the wind came upon our faces as from a burning oven. Often we could not see ten rods around us, and our eyes, ears, mouths, and clothes were filled with sand." Rosenmüller, in his commentary, cites accounts from the middle ages, according to which the Chamsin covered Egypt with such dense darkness, that every one thought the last day was at hand. Laborde, however, will not admit that there is any resemblance between the Chamsin and the darkness referred to here: "Ce serait comparer la détonation d'un fusil au fracas du tonnerre que d'assimiler deux extrêmes de ce genre."—In the scriptural account of this plague, there is certainly no intimation of its being in any way connected with a scorching wind of this description. Still the phenomena,

which accompany the Chamsin, though very different in degree, are so similar in kind, that we are inclined to agree with those who regard the Chamsin as its natural basis. It must, however, at the same time be acknowledged, that none of the earlier plagues were raised so decidedly or to such an extent above their natural basis, through the peculiar character imparted by the miracle; and that none were so completely dissevered in some respects from that basis, as was the case here. In the present instance not only was the plague extended and intensified to a degree unheard of before, but in many respects it was entirely removed from the natural foundation, and passed over into the sphere of the pure miracle, in which no known power of nature is in any way employed. This is particularly seen in the fact, that it continued perfectly light in the houses of the Israelites, some of which immediately adjoined those of the Egyptians, whilst the Egyptians were unable to escape in any way from the darkness, by which they were surrounded. For when it is said in the biblical account, that the darkness was so great that they could not see one another, and therefore that no one could rise up from the place in which he was: the meaning undoubtedly is, that even in their houses the ordinary means of procuring artificial light were entirely useless. It may also be inferred from the express statement, to the effect that no one moved from his place during the three days' darkness, and from the nature of the interview which Pharaoh had with Moses, that the latter was not sent for till the plague was over. On the meaning of this plague Hengstenberg correctly observes, that the darkness which covered the Egyptians, and the light which the Israelites enjoyed, represented the wrath and the mercy of God.

THE PASSOVER.

§ 32. (Ex. xi. 1—10).—All possibility of further negotiation was now, apparently, for ever gone. For Pharaoh had threatened Moses with death, if he should dare to let him see him again, and Moses had replied with equal wrath, "so let it be, I will