The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 260

no reason to suppose that, taken in the mass, the people of Egypt were characterised by a g~eater want of it than others. Even the tiger has a tigerish love of his cubs and, mc~ed m~n tho~gh he was, the pride of l'?ara~h in his first-born may have bee~ of no ordinary rntens1ty. Note then the followmg circumstances as indicative of the especial horror of this judgment. (1) It would be supernatural. Natural causes ~ver_e more or le_ss involved in the other plagues, but this judgment was to be mfhcted by the direct stroke of the Almighty. (2) It would be sudden. There would be no prelirnmary ~ymptoms, no warning of approaching death. (3) It would be at midnight. The darkest and" eeriest" hour of the whole twenty-four, the hour specially associated with the gasping out of the spirit in death. (4) lt would be universal. There would not be a house in which there was not one dead (eh. xii. 30). Not one le~t to comfort another. Al~ alike swallowed up in indescribable sorrow, in blackest gr1e.f and bitterest lamentation-the woe of each intensifying the woe of all the rest. What a horror was this ( Death in a house is always oppre~ive to the spirit. The muffled steps and woe-disfigured faces tell the melancholy tale to every visitor. When the death is of one high in rank, t,be mourning is proportionately deep and widely s~read. But _death in every city, in every street, in every house, among high and low alike, who will unfold the misery which this implied, or do justice to the ghast.ly sense of mortality with which it would fill the breasts of the survivors I 'l'he nearest image we can form of it is the state of a town or district where a pestilence is raging, and corpses are being hurried to the dead-house in hundreds. And even this falls i=ea.sw-ably short of the reality. (5) It would embrace all ranks and ages. Palace and hovel would have its dead son. The first-born of beasts would be added to the slain. But in the general mouning over dead men this would be but little reuarded. 2. It was a /udgment-stroke bearing reference to God's relation to Israel. The key to the form which it assumed is furnished in eh. iv. 22, 23. "'l'hus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my first-born ; and I say unto thee, Let my son go that he may scrvn me; and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy first- born." See Homily on eh. xii. 29-31. Israel was God's first-born in relation to the "many nations" of the redeemed world, which in its fulness was to embrace "all kindreds, peoples, and tongues" (Gen. xvii. 5; Rom. iv. 16-19; Hev. vii. 9). "As the first--born in God's elect is to be spared and rescued, so the first-born in the house of the enemy, the beginning of his increase and the heir of his subst~ce, must be destroyed-the one a proof that the whole family were appointed to life and blessing, the other, in like manner, a proof that all who were aliens from God's covenant of grace equally deserved, and shuuld certainly in due time inherit, the evils of perdition" (Fairbairn). We may connect the jud,,=ent more simply with that law of symmetry which appears in so many of God's jud,,=ents, the retribution being modelled after the pattern of the crime to which it is related. Examples : Haman hanged on his own gallows (Esther,.14); Adoni-bezek mutilated in his thumbs and great toes (Jud. i. 6, 7); David punished for adultery by dishonour done to his own concubines (2 Sam. xvi. 20-23), &c. So Pharaoh, the would-be destroyer of God's first-born, is punished in the destruction of his own first-born. The ;"us talionis has a startling field of operations in the Divine judgments. 3. It was ajudgment involving the whole of Egypt in su.ffer- ,,,,g for the sin of the ruler. This was the case in all the plagues ; but it is specially noticeable in this, where the judgment strikes a direct blow at every hearth. It may be said, doubtless with truth, that Egypt, in this severe jud,,=ent, was punished also for its oum wickedness, the people, in the matter of the oppression of the Israelites, having been active partners in the guilt of the monarch. It is obvious, however, that the i=ediate occasion of this terrible blow falling on the land was the continued hardness of heart of Pharaoh. Had he relented, the judgment would not have fallen ; it was because he did not relent that it actually fell. We come back here to that principle of solidarity which rules so widely in God's moral administration. The many rise or fall with the one; the rewards of righteousness and the penalties of transgression alike overflow ·upon those related to the i=ed.iate agent. The widest applications of this principle are those stated in Rom. v. 12-21-the ruin of the race in Adam; the redemption of the ro.ce in Christ. 4. It was a judgment in which a marlced distinction was to be put between the Egyptians and the Hebrews (ver. 7). Israel, however, was only exempted from like doom by resort to the blood of atonement-a lesson as to their natural state cu. xr. •1-10.) 'l'HE BOOK OF EXODUS. 253