PLAGUES OF EGYPT
that they were small insects which not only pierced the skin, but set up intolerable itching and pene- trated the eyes and nose. Origen describes them as little flying insects (Hom. in Ez. iv. 6). That they were not lice in the ordinary sense of the word is shown by their attacking beasts as well as men, for none of the three species of human pedi- culi will live and multiply freely on animals. It has been argued in favour of the ordinary interpre- tation that they came out of the dust, but while lice are not generated naturally in dust, the eggs of some species of the common small stinging flies are found in dried pools. Most travellers in Egypt speak of these gnats as one of the most troublesome of Firs (see Troilo, 774; Prosper Alpinus, Hist. Nat. Zgypti, i. 4. 3; Wittman, ii. 1385 ; Scholz, 93 ; Lepsius, 93 ; Russegger, iii. 13 ; Lane, i. 4, and others). Such flies are always worst after the recession of the inundation in Octo- ber (Hartmann, i. 250), the larve living in pools and the perfect insects emerging as these dry up. Fhe magicians were unable to cope with these insects or to produce them, as eat themselves were attacked by them, so they called them the ‘finger of God.’ In Egyptian dd ntru=the phrase in the text, is found in several papyri (see Papyrus 438 Boulaq), and is used of anything sent by the divinity. The magicians meant thereby that the plague was sent by their own gods, not by Moses,
The account of the plague is imperfect, as there is no mention of Pharaoh’s entreaty for its removal, or of Moses’ intervention for this purpose ; but in the case of the Fourth Plague, that of the ‘arébh or ‘swarms’ (8308... P), these lacunz are supplied. There Moses is recorded to have threatened the infliction, and the LorD is said to have brought up the swarms, and at Pharaoh’s entreaty they were afterwards removed. The nature of these pests is not mentioned, nor is there any reference to the magicians. These insects are called by LXX and Symmachus κυνόμυια, ‘dog-flies,’ interpreted by Jerome in the last paragraph of his epistle to Sunnia and Fretela ‘omne genus muscarum,’ as if it were κοινόμυια. Aquila in Ps 78 calls them πάμ- μικτος, ‘a mixed multitude,’ a word used of crowds of men by Aischylus, Perse, 53, ‘a motley host.’ Josephus (Ant. Il. xiv. 3), Jerus. Targums, Saadya, and other Hebrew authorities call them different kinds of pestilent animals, but, as Knobel remarks, some particular creature must be meant.
Flies of many kinds abound in Egypt and are common pests, as testified by Sonnini (ii. 320), Carne (i. 77), Riippell (73), ete. Such swarms are often brought up by the south wind, filling the houses and appearing in clouds. Comparison of the descriptions of these two plagues given in the passage renders it probable that 3 and 4 are both accounts of the one plague given by different writers. Ps 105 groups them together, while Ps 78 makes no mention of the kinnim. With this plsgne began the sundering of the land of Goshen
rom the rest of Egypt.
(5) (6) In like manner there is a probable con- nexion between the Fifth Plague (Ex 9'*-, J), the murrain, and the Sixth (98, P), the boils. Neither of these is explicitly mentioned in Ps 78 or 106, unless they are the ‘evil angels’ mentioned be- tween the hail and the tenth plague in the former; and, considering the connexion between disease and demonology in the Jewish mind, this is probable. Plague 5 was heralded by an announce- ment to Pharaoh, while there was no such for 6. The Fifth was sent directly from the hand of the LorD, while Moses and Aaron are the instruments in the Sixth. Itisalso explicitly stated that 6 was upon beast as well as man (v.!’). All these con- siderations strengthen the probability that these
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are respectively the Jahwistic and Priestly records of the one plague.
The nature of the murrain is not given; it was πὸ 137 133 ‘a very grievous pestilence’ (see PESTILENCE and PLAGUE, pp. 755, 865), but the word deber is too general to give a definite idea of its species. Leyrer has conjectured that it might be
anthrax or milzbrand (Herzog, RE, viii. p. 251). It was a disease affecting flocks, herds, camels, horses, and asses, evidently very fatal (though v.*° shows that ‘all’ is not literally intended). Severe cattie plagues have been recorded in Egypt by many writers. Pruner says that splenic fever, anthrax, and rinderpest occasionally prevail, and speaks of an epidemic of the last in March 1842, which lasted nine months, and was very destruc- tive, but it did not affect camels or horses. Camels are not very liable to epizootic diseases, but suffer sometimes from tuberculosis, and often from itch (102ff.). They were, however, at the time of Moses not plentiful in Egypt, if they were found there at all (see Chabas, Htudes sur PAntiquité Historique, 1873, p. 398 ff.; and Dillm. on Gn er Lepsius mentions the same outbreak of cattle-plague in 1842, which had been fatal to 40,000 oxen i 14); and it is also graphically described by Mrs. Poole (The Englishwoman in Egypt, i. 69, 114; ii. 82).