In reviewing the narratives of these Divine judgments, we have seen not only that there are reasons to believe that they consisted of eight episodes, 1, 2, 3 (4), 5 (6), 7, 8, 9, 10, but that there is a certain thread of connexion running through the series. If the first took place towards the end of the period of high Nile in August, it is probable that the second occurred in September, which is still the month when frogs are most
abundant. The insect plagues may Sony esturelly be supposed to follow in October or November, The notes
and the disease ΕΞ in December. of time of the hail-plague give us surer ground to refer it to January. The ioeuas and the dark- ness intervened between this and the 14th of Abib (the date of the Exodus).
In some of the series, and possibly in all, it is to be noted that the Divine power used the ordinary seasonal phenomena in a miraculously intensified form as the instrument of judgment, If the narrative of J, which confines the blood- change to the Nile, be taken as the oldest account, it is Bosiule that it may have been due to some special detachment of a dam of vegetable matter like the Sudd above referred to. This, with the organisms which must exist in myriads in it, might well have caused the discoloration and foetor of the waters. Such a mass of organic matter with its concomitant animal Jife would be the condition under which frogs would multiply rapidly, and may have been the antecedent used to bring about the condition of the Second Plague. The decom- posing masses of frogs could not fail to have been the best possible breeding grounds of very many kinds of insects, a veritable ‘motley multitude’ fulfilling the name of the Fourth Plague. The results of recent bacteriological observations show how great a factor in the spread of disease these insects are, and so 5 and 6 would follow as the sequences of 3 and 4. The Seventh inaugurates a new series, and is followed by the two other plagues, depending on atmospheric conditions. The onset of the east wind brought the locusts, and the shift to the west removed them, while the drop- ping of the wind to the south-west brought up the
readed hamsin, carrying the plague in its train.
In the Apocalyptic visions of the trumpets and vials (Rev 8 ff.) much of the imagery is taken from the story of the Plagues in Egypt.
LITERATURE.—Abd-al-latif, History of Egypt, French tr.,
Paris, 1810; Antes, Manners and Customs of the Egyptians, London, 1800; Berggren, Reisen in Europa u. im Morgenlande,
PLAIN
Talprig, 1884; Brown, Eastern Travels, Lond. 1753; Bruce, Tra to discover the Sources of the Nile, Edinb. 1790; Carne, East, London; de Maillet, AY pd τε de 1735; Denon, Voyage dans 'Egypte, Paris,
Exodus und Leviticus, Leipzig, 1897; Déobel, Wanderungen durch Eur., Asien, etc., Eise 1» 1851 5 ti Anno Mirabili,’ in Comment. Soc. Regie . 85; Forskal, Descriptio Animalium
it., Havniw, 1775, also Flora Comment. de
Descript Empire Othoman, etc., Paris, 1801; Pococke, Description of the ba r ankheiten
n, 1847; Ruppell, Reise in Nubien, etc., Franktort-a.-M. 1829; ussegger, Retsen in Europa, etec., “Scholae ἢ 1841-48 ; Savary,
A. MACALISTER.
PLAIN.—This word (as a subst.) stands in AV, in some cases inaccurately, for several very different terms in the Heb., which it has been the aim of RV, though with only partial success, to express and distinguish correctly. The following are the words which are tr4 ‘ plain’ in AV :—
4. Say ‘meadow’ in Jg 11% (‘the plain of the vineyards,’ RV ‘ Abel-cheramim’).
2. fox ‘oak’ (in accordance with an old Jewish interpretation), in ‘plain(s) of Moreh,’ Gn 12%, Dt 11”, and ‘of Mamre,’ Gn 1318 1418 18!, RV in each ease ‘oak(s),’ marg. ‘terebinth(s)’; also in Jg 4} $* #7, 1S 10°(RV as before). See MOREH.
3. nypa (from yaz ‘to cleave’), a broad plain between hills (‘a surrounding of hills seems necessary to the name Bik'ah, as if land laid open in the midst of hills,’ HGHL 655, where mention is also made of a small upland plain, surrounded by mountains, on the E. of Jordan, called the Bek'a, or [dimin.] the Bukei‘a; see also Stanley, SP, App. καὶ 5). In AV bik'ah is rendered ‘plain’ in Gn 113, Neh 6? (‘the pan of Ono’), Ezk 3-3, Am 1° (RV ‘valley’), Dn 3) (Aram. xyp2,—‘ the
lain of Dura’). Elsewhere in AV and RV ‘valley,’ fe which, however, must then be understood not a ravine (x3), but a broad vale. The Bik'dhs mentioned by name in the OT are those of Jericho, Dt 343 (‘the Kikkar [see below], (even) the plain of Jericho’); of ag ee Jos 118 (prob. the Merj ‘Ayiin, N.W. of Dan, between the Litani and the Hasbini); of Lebanon, Jos 11" 127 (prob- ably the broad flat plain between Lebanon and Hermon, even now called in Arabic by a near corresponding word, el-Bekd'a) ; of Megiddo, 2C 35", Zec 12" (the plain of Esdraelon, girt by hills on all sides; see HGHL 385f.); of Ono, Neh 6? { m. S.E. of Joppa); of Aven, Am 15 (the broad plain between Lebanon and Hermon; see AVEN); and of Dura, Dn 3! (near Babylon). Bikdhs without names are referred to in Gn 114, Ezk 3% 8. 37}.3 (in the vision of the dry bones: prob. the same as the bif'Gh of 3” etc.) ; the word occurs also, without reference to specific localities, in Dt 87 11%, Ps 1048, Is 40* (see RVm), 41'5 63" (all). The retention of the two renderings ‘ plain’ and ‘valley’ in RV is to be regretted; but it is no doubt due, at least in part, to the fact that there is no exactly corresponding English term.