EXPOSITION. one's doorstep but in possession of one's house, CHAPTEBVill. in one's bed-chamber, and upon one's bed, to Vers. l-7.-T!m SECOND PLAGUE. After a.n hear their dismal croak perpetually, to see interval which there axe no mea.ns of estimating, nothing but their loathsome forms whither- the second ple.gne followed the first. Aga.in, soever one looked, to be in perpetual contact while the main purpose of the pla.brne was to with them ud feel the repulsion of their cold, punish the nation by which Israel had been so rough, clammy skin, would be perhaps as long oppressed, the secondary object of throw- severe a punishment as can well be conceived. ing contempt upon their religion was main- Nations axe known to have deserted their tained. Frogs were among the Egyptian homes, a.nd fled to a foreign land to escape sacred animals. One of their deities, Heka, from it. "In Pmonia and Dardania," says was a frog-headed goddess; a.nd they seem to Pl.tcemas, a disciple of Aristotle, " there ap- have regarded the frog ns a sacred emblem of peared once suddenly such a 11-umber of frogs, creative power. The great multiplication of that they filled the houses and the street.-;. frogs, whereby they became a.n annoyance and Therefore-as killing them, or shutting the a curse, was a trial a.nd strain to the entire doors, was of no avail; as even the vessels were Egyptian religious system. The Egyptians full of them, the water infected, and all food un- might not kill them ; yet they destroyed all eatable; as they could scarcely set their foot their comfort, all their happiness. Their upon the ground without tree.ding on heaps of animal-worship was thus proved absurd and them, and as they were vexed by the smell of ridiculous. They were obliged to respect the the great numbera which died-they fled from creatures which they hated-to preserve the that region altogether " (Eustath. ad Hom. n. an.imaJs they would fain have swept from the i. p. 35). In Egypt, the young frogs come face of the earth. It is perhaps somewhat out of the waters in the month of September, d.iflicult for modern Europeans to imagine the when the inundation is beginning to subside. plague that frogs might be. The peculiar Even now they sometimes amount to a severe kind, which has the scientific name of Bana visitation. MoBaica, resembles our toad, a.nd is a disgust- Ver. 1.-Go unto Pharaoh. The seconci ing object, which crawls rather than leaps, and plague is given simply as a ylague, not as a croakB perpetually. To have the whole country sign. It is first threatened (ver. 2), and then accomplished (ver. 6), an interval being al- filled with these disgusting reptiles, to be un- lowed, that Pharaoh might crumge his mind, able to walk in the street.-; withont treading and escape the plague, if he chose. ou them, t.o find them not only occupying Ver. 2.-Frogs, The word used for" frog," ou. vm. 1-8.J TTIE BOOK OF EXODUS. 181
viz. tslparda, is thought to be Egyptian, nnd dough attached by pressure to the interior of to remuin (abbreviated) in the modern dofda, the vessels. Kneading-troughs were vessels which is in common use, and designates the in which the dough was prepared. Both these species known to naturalists as " Rana and ovens a.re represented in the Egyptian Mose.ice.." tombs. (See Rosellini, 'Mon. Civ.' pl. 84, 85.) Ver. 3.-The river shall bring forth frogs. Ver. 5.-0ver the streams . .. rivers . . The frogs do not often come directly out of ponds. See the comment on eh. vii. 19. the river. They are bred in the pools and Ver. 6.-The frogs oame up. Literaily, marshes which the Nile leaves as it is retiring. "The frog came up," the word being used to These, however, may be viewed as detached designate the class or species. fragments of the river. Thine house ... thy Ver. 7.-The magicians did so ... and bed-chamber . . . thy bed. The extreme brought up frogs. Here again, as in their clee.nliness of the Egyptians (Herod. ii. 37) imitation of the first plague ( eh. vii. 22), rendered this visitation peculiarly disagreeable sleight of hand may have been the means to them. The frogs under ordinary circum- e!Dployed by the magicians; or possibly they ste.nces do not think of entering houses. Ovens may have merely claimed that their enchant- in Egypt were probably baking-pans. These ments "brought up" frogs, which were in were heated from within by a. fire of wood, reality the consequence of Aaron's act (ver. 2) which was withdrawn after a. time and the
HOMILETICS. Vers. 1---8.-God can scourge men beyond endurance with a whip of straw. .A frog seems an innocent and harmless reptile enough, not pleasing nor attractive, but scarcely calculated to cause much suffering. When the Egyptians made frogs sacred, they had no notion of one day finding them an intolerable annoyance. But God can make, of the least of his creatures, a weapon to wound, a whip to scourge men. Minute microscopic fungi and entozoa destroy crops and wither up the human frame. Huge ships are utterly ruined by the working of the Teredo navalis. White ants bring down houses. And so, on this occasion, poor weak frogs made the lives of the Egyptians a burtben to them. Forced to tread on them as they walked, to feel them crawling upon their naked feet, to see them covering tbe floors of their chambers and the soft cushions of their beds, finding them in their ovens, their kneading-troughs, the culinary and other vessels, scarcely able to keep them out of their food, always hearing their melancholy croak, the unfortunate wretches had not a moment's comfort or peace. Constant dropping wears out a stone. A trivial annoyance becomes intolerable by repetition and persis- tence. 'l'hus, even the obdurate Pharaoh, who had borne the first pla,,,<TUe till God chose to remove it without a symptom of yielding, is cowed by the second plague, and " calls for Moses and .Aaron" (ver. 8).