The history of the ten plagues strictly ends with the death of the first-born. The pursuit and the passage of the Bed Sea are discussed elsewhere. See Bed Sea, 1' i.ss \(.i: of. Here it is only necessary to notice that with the event last mentioned the recital of the won- ders wrought in Egypt concludes, and the history of Israel as a separate people begins. See Exode.
II. General Considerations. — Having examined the narrative of the ten plagues in detail, we can now speak of their character and relations as a whole.
1. Miraculous Nature of the Inflictions. — In the above account we have constantly kept in view the ar- guments of those who hold that the plagues were not miraculous, and, while fully admitting all the illustra- tion that the physical history of Egypt has afforded us, both in our own observation and the observation of others, we have found no reason for the naturalistic view in a single instance, while in many instances the illustrations from known phenomena have been so dif- ferent as to bring out. the miraculous element in the narrative with the greatest force, and in every case that element has been necessary, unless the narrative be de- prived of its rights as historical evidence. Yet more, we have found that the advocates of a naturalistic ex- planation have been forced by their bias into a distor- tion and exaggeration of natural phenomena in their endeavor to find in them an explanation of the wonders recorded in the Bible. As miraculous the historian ob- viously intends us to regard them, and they arc else- Avhere spoken of as the "wonders" (D^TSIE) which God wrought in the land of Ham (Psa. cv, 27), as his miracles (S^rilxbsS) in Egypt (cvi, 7), as his signs and prodigies (C^PS-I n'PN) which he sent into the midst of Egypt (exxxv, 0), etc. It is only under this aspect that we can accept the narrative as historical. It is true that many of them appear to have been of the same kind with phenomena natural to the country ; but this cannot be said of all of them; and in the case of those of which it can be said, the presence of the super- natural is seen not only in the unparalleled degree to which the infliction reached, but still more in the com- plete command which was exercised by Moses as the agent of Jehovah over the coming and going of the visitation. The exemption of the Israelites from the general calamity is also clearly assigned to the miracu- lous. The only alternative, therefore, allowed to us is to reject the whole narrative as mythic, or to accept it as miraculous. The attempts made by Eichhorn and the older rationalists to give natural explanations of these plagues, only exhibit the deplorable expedients to which an unsound hypothesis may compel able men
to resort. They were evidently nearly all miraculous in time of occurrence and degree rather than essentially, in accordance with the theory that God generally em- ploys natural means in producing miraculous effects. They seem to have been sent as a series of warnings, each being somewhat more severe than its predecessor, to which we see an analogy in the warnings which the providential government of the world often puts before- the sinner. The first plague corrupted the sweet water of the Nile and slew the fish. The second filled the land with frogs, which corrupted the whole country. The third covered man and beast with vermin or other annoying insects. The fourth was of the same kind, and probably a yet severer judgment. "With the tilth plague, the murrain of beasts, a loss of property began. The sixth, the plague of boils, was worse than the ear- lier plagues that had affected man and beast. The sev- enth plague, that of hail, exceeded those that went be- fore it, since it destroyed everything in the field, man and beast and herb. The eighth plague was evidently still more grievous, since the devastation by locusts must have been far more thorough than that by the hail, and since at that time no greater calamity of the kind could have happened than the destruction of all remaining vegetable food. The ninth plague we do not sufficiently understand to be sure that it exceeded this in actual injury, but it is clear from the narrative that it must have caused great terror. The last plague is the only one that was general in the destruction of human life, for the effects of the hail cannot have been comparable to those it produced, and it completes the climax, unless indeed it be held that the passage of the Bed Sea was the crowning point of the whole series of wonders, rather than a separate miracle. In this case its magnitude, as publicly destroying the king and his whole army, might even surpass that of the tenth plague.
2. Their Historical Character.— These events, though supernatural, all find a foundation in the natural phe- nomena of Egypt, and stand in close connection with ordinary occurrences. Hence the rationalist Bohlen says that "Moses, in order to avoid the suspicion of self-deception, was at least obliged to express himself in the mildest manner possible among his contempo- raries, who were so well acquainted with Egypt, if he wished to make the commonly observed natural phe- nomena avail as miracles." To this remark Hengsten- berg replies (Egypt and the Books of Moses, in English, Edinb. 1851):