Exodus8chapter 8

Exodus 8:1-2

The second plague is announced in the palace, where the first was announced at the river in the morning at 7:15. The nine plagues before the last fall in three sets of three, and each set opens with a warning at the water, then a warning at the court, then a stroke delivered with no warning at all. The demand carries its purpose clause here as it does at 4:23, 7:16, 8:20, 9:1, 9:13 and 10:3, and the Hebrew word behind serve covers the labour of a slave and the worship of God alike.

Exodus 8:3-4

The Nile that Egypt lived on is made to breed the plague, as it was made to run blood at 7:20. The frogs are tracked from the water into the bedchamber, the bed, the ovens and the kneadingtroughs, so the reach of the thing is measured by naming the places where a household is private. Verse 4 puts Pharaoh himself first, ahead of his people and his servants, so the king is the first body the frogs climb.

Exodus 8:5-7

The rod is in Aaron's hand again, the same shepherd's staff that became a serpent at 4:2 and swallowed the magicians' rods at 7:12, and it will divide the sea at 14:16 and strike the rock at 17:6. The magicians match this sign as they matched the rod and the blood at 7:11 and 7:22, and it is the third and last time their enchantments keep pace. Their answer to a country full of frogs is to produce more frogs, since they can add to the plague and cannot lift it.

Exodus 8:8-9

Pharaoh asks for prayer from the men he had dismissed at 5:2 with the words who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice, and he offers to let the people go for the first time. Moses answers with Glory over me and hands the king the choosing of the hour, which the older commentators read as an invitation to name a time no trickery could arrange. The frogs are to go back into the river they came out of rather than to disappear.

Exodus 8:10-11

Given the choice of any hour, Pharaoh chooses one more night with the frogs. Moses grants the day and states the reason for the whole exchange, that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the LORD our God, which is the same purpose given at 7:17, 8:22 and 9:14. Each stroke in this contest is aimed at knowledge before it is aimed at damage.

Exodus 8:12-14

Moses prays for the man who is holding his people, and Henry takes it as praying for a persecutor. The frogs die where they stand, in the houses and the courts and the fields, and the people gather them into heaps until the land stinks. The relief leaves the evidence lying in the open, so Egypt has to handle what it asked to be rid of.

Exodus 8:15

The change of mind lasted exactly as long as the pressure. Exodus states the hardening nineteen times, and through the first five plagues it puts the act on Pharaoh or leaves the verb stative, at 7:13, 7:14, 7:22, here, 8:19, 8:32 and 9:7. The first place the text says the LORD hardened him is 9:12 at the sixth plague, and from there to the sea the subject never changes back. Sproul reads the whole sequence as one act with two true descriptions, and the free-will reading takes the order as God confirming a man in the direction he had already taken.

Exodus 8:16-17

The third plague comes with no warning and no audience at the palace, which closes the first set of three: warned at the water, warned at the court, then struck. The dust of the land becomes lice on man and on beast, and dust is what the Nile leaves behind when the water goes down. Aaron's rod has now been laid on the river and on the ground, and those two are what Egypt lived on.

Exodus 8:18

The magicians had matched the rod, the blood and the frogs at 7:11, 7:22 and 8:7, and here their enchantments stop. Clarke puts the difference down to the smallness of the creature, since an insect that fastens on man and beast is past the reach of sleight of hand. By 9:11 they cannot stand before Moses at all, because the boils are on them.

Exodus 8:19

This is the finger of God: Egypt's own experts say it rather than Israel, and this is the first occurrence of the phrase in Scripture. It returns at 31:18, where the two tables of stone are written with the finger of God, and Luke 11:20 puts it in the mouth of Jesus about casting out devils. The confession changes nothing at court, since Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he hearkened not unto them, and the men he refuses to hear at the end of the verse are his own magicians.

Exodus 8:20-21

The fourth plague opens the second set of three with the same staging as the first, at the water in the morning, where 7:15 sent Moses to meet Pharaoh going out to the river. The purpose clause returns word for word, let my people go, that they may serve me. Swarms fill the houses and the ground under them, and the King James italics show that the Hebrew names only swarms, with the word flies supplied by the translators.

Exodus 8:22-23

For the first time the text says outright that a plague will stop at a border, and the border is Goshen, where Genesis 47:6 settled Jacob's family. The stated reason is knowledge again, to the end thou mayest know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. Clarke observes that the word rendered division at verse 23 is peduth, which elsewhere carries the sense of a redemption, so the line drawn between the two peoples is described with a word for ransom.

Exodus 8:24

The swarm reaches Pharaoh's house first, then his servants' houses, then the whole country, which is the order the warning gave at verse 21. The land was corrupted, and Psalm 78:45 looks back at it and says the flies devoured them. Israel in Goshen sits inside the same country and outside the same plague.

Exodus 8:25-26

This is the first of Pharaoh's counteroffers, and every one that follows works the same way, by granting the worship and keeping the people. Sacrifice inside Egypt would leave Israel where it is and turn the service into a licensed local custom, which is the shape of the offers at 10:11 and 10:24 as well. Moses refuses on a practical ground, that what Israel offers is an abomination to the Egyptians, and Genesis 46:34 had already recorded that every shepherd is an abomination unto them.

Exodus 8:27-28

Moses holds to the distance first named at 3:18 and repeated at 5:3, and adds that the form of the sacrifice belongs to God to set rather than to Pharaoh. The king's second offer keeps the shape of a concession and hides a limit inside it, only ye shall not go very far away, which would leave the people within reach. He closes with intreat for me, the second time in one chapter that he asks for prayer from the men he is refusing.

Exodus 8:29-30

Moses names the pattern to the king's face before it repeats, having watched the same promise made at verse 8 and withdrawn at verse 15. He then goes out and prays for him anyway, which is what he did at verse 12. The chapter records no answer from Pharaoh to the charge.

Exodus 8:31-32

The removal is total, which makes the lifting as plain a sign as the plague was. Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, and the phrase at this time also is the text keeping count, since he had done the same at verse 15 when the frogs went. Two plagues have now been taken away at his own asking and neither taking away moved him.