Biblion Bible Commentary
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Frogs and Lice
Exodus 8:1-19
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh, and tell him, ‘This is what Yahweh says, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. · WEB
A king who can set the hour of his own relief goes back on his word as soon as he gets it, and his advisers reach the end of their imitation.
If you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your borders with frogs Exodus 8:2.
The frog was sacred in Egypt, an emblem of fertility and of the river's abundance. The plague does not destroy it. It multiplies it, which is worse, and follows it indoors — into your house, and into your bedroom, and on your bed... and into your ovens, and into your kneading troughs Exodus 8:3. The bed and the bread. A god given free rein turns out to be intolerable, and the country is smothered in the thing it revered.
The magicians match this one too Exodus 8:7, with the same result as before: more frogs.
Then the first crack. Entreat Yahweh, that he take away the frogs from me and from my people; and I will let the people go Exodus 8:8. The man who asked who is Yahweh now asks for prayer to him by name. Moses answers with a courtesy that is also a trap: I give you the honor of setting the time Exodus 8:9. Pharaoh says tomorrow.
The choice is his own, and the reason for offering it is stated: that you may know that there is no one like Yahweh our God Exodus 8:10. A plague that lifts at a moment the king himself picked cannot be attributed to weather, and the answer arrives exactly on time. They gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank Exodus 8:14 — deliverance with a smell to it, and no one in Egypt could pretend afterward that nothing had happened.
But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart Exodus 8:15.
Respite is the word to notice. He does not harden under pressure but the moment the pressure comes off, and this is the pattern for the rest of the contest: every concession is made while the suffering lasts and withdrawn the hour it ends. Relief that produces no change of mind leaves a man worse than it found him, because he has now added a broken promise to his refusal. The verb here is his own, in the fifth plague as in the first.
Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and struck the dust of the earth Exodus 8:17.
The third plague comes without warning, and it is the first taken from the ground rather than the water. The English translations divide over what the swarm is, since the Hebrew word occurs seldom, and nothing in the account turns on the identification.
The magicians tried with their enchantments to produce lice, but they couldn't Exodus 8:18.
The limit arrives at the smallest thing yet attempted. Serpents and blood and frogs were within reach; dust was not, and the professionals stop trying and tell the king so. This is God's finger Exodus 8:19. It is a considerable admission from the men whose job was to say otherwise, and it is made by the only people in Egypt qualified to know the difference between their craft and what they were watching.
Pharaoh does not listen to them either. He has now lost the argument with his own experts and continues regardless, which marks the point where his refusal stops being a policy and becomes something closer to a condition.
held with reason What this mark means