Ver. 1. And the Lord said unto Moses.] In answer to his last exception, which yet he had answered before. (Exodus 4:16) God bears with our infirmities. A god to Pharaoh.] Armed with mine authority; a vice-god. Shall be thy prophet,] i.e., Thy spokesman, and interpreter. Aben-Ezra saith that Aaron, as he was Moses’s eldest brother, so he prophesied to the people before Moses showed himself; and hence he is sometimes set before Moses.
Ver. 2. Thou shalt speak.] God’s word must be spoken, however it be taken.
Ver. 3. And I will harden.] [See Trapp on “Ex 4:21”] The Dutch have a proverb, Quem Deus excaecaturus est, huic primum oculos claudit. When God will blind a man, he first closeth up his eyes.
Ver. 4. And Pharaoh shall not hearken.] This judgment God layeth upon many of our hearers at this day of whom, after much painstaking, we may well complain, as the herdsman did in the poet:— “Heu mihi! quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo.”
Ver. 5. And the Egyptians shall know.] To their cost, when the Lord’s hand, that is lifted up in threatening, shall fall down in punishing. “Lord,” saith the prophet, “when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see, but they shall see,” &c. (Isaiah 26:11) God will unseal their heavy eyes with scorching plagues, and rouse them with horror enough.
Ver. 6. Did as the Lord commanded them.] Mallem obedire, quam miracula facere, saith Luther. Their obedience yielded them more comfort than their working of wonders.
Ver. 7. Fourscore years old.] And so might say to his countrymen and others, as old Augustus did to his mutinous soldiers, Audite senem iuvenes, quem iuvenem senes audierunt.
Ver. 9. Show a miracle for you.] A persuading wonder, an admirable work, above the power of nature, as being a kind of creation, and such as requires omnipotency. But Pharaoh’s heart was such a nether millstone, as neither miracle, nor ministry, nor misery, nor mercy could possibly mollify. At the burning of Bainham the martyr, when his arms and legs were half consumed, he cried out to the bystanders and said, O ye Papists, behold you look for miracles! here now you may see a miracle: for in this fire I feel no more pain than if I were in a bed of down, or of roses. Thus he: sed surdis fabulam. Act. and Mon., fol. 940.
Ver. 10. And it became a serpent.] Or a dragon, in token of desolation, if they disobeyed; and that their country should become a den of dragons. (Isaiah 13:22)
Ver. 11. The wise men and the sorcerers.] Magic is either pure and natural, or impure and diabolical, which implieth a compact with the devil; either overt or covert. The chief of these jugglers here were Jannes and Jambres, (2 Timothy 3:8) whose names are also mentioned in the Talmud; Tract. de Oblat., cap. 9. Numenius also, the Pythagorean philosopher, speaketh of them.
Ver. 12. And they became serpents.] Not really such, but in appearance only. The devil’s miracles are mere impostures, phantasms, delusions. And this was the first plague that God inflicted upon Pharaoh. Swallowed up their rods.] That is, their dragons. So hath Christ, who is life essential, swallowed up death in victory. (1 Corinthians 15:55)
Ver. 13. And he hardened Pharaoh’s heart.] Not by bare prescience, or permission only, but by withdrawing his grace, directing the tyrant’s actions to his own glory, irritating his corruptions by oracles and miracles, and delivering him up to Satan to be further hardened.
Ver. 14. Pharaoh’s heart is hardened.] Heb., Heavy; clogged with corruption, and held down by the devil: as, on the contrary, Jehoshaphat’s “heart was light, and lifted up in the ways of the Lord.” (2 Chronicles 17:6) So were Dr Taylor’s and George Roper’s, the martyrs: the former fetched a frisk, the latter a great leap, when they came to the stake. Ibid., fol. 1386, 1629.
Ver. 15. In the morning.] It was in the night then that God appeared to Moses. But afterwards “mouth to mouth,” “apparently,” by special privilege, (Numbers 12:6,8 Exodus 33:11) “as a man speaketh with his friend.”
Ver. 16. Hitherto thou wouldest not hear.] Indeed, he could not hear; as little as those Jews could believe Christ’s miracles, John 12:37. “Therefore they could not believe,” saith the text, “because that Isaiah had said, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts,” &c.
Ver. 17. In this thou shalt know,] q.d., I shall really answer thee to that stomachful question of thine. (Exodus 5:2) [See Trapp on “Ex 5:2”]
Ver. 18. Shall loathe to drink of the river.] Nile. God will confute them in their confidences. The Egyptians used to brag of their river, and in mockery to tell the Grecians that if God should forget to rain, they might chance to perish for it. The rain, they thought, was of God, but not the river. He therefore threateneth to dry it up, and here to bereave them of all comfortable use of it. (Ezekiel 29:3,9 Isaiah 19:5,6)
Ver. 19. , Upon their ponds.] Fish ponds are in Hebrew called Berechoth, Blessings. But how soon can God “curse our blessings,” (Malachi 2:2) and destroy us, “after that he hath done us good!” (Joshua 24:20)
Ver. 20. Were turned into blood.] To show them, as in a mirror, their blood guiltiness. These bloody and deceitful men had “blood to drink, for they were worthy.” (Revelation 16:6) [See Trapp on “Re 16:6”]
Ver. 21. And the fish.] That was their common food. (Numbers 11:5) The flesh of many beasts, they, through superstition, would not eat of, as one well noteth from Exodus 8:26.
Ver. 22. Did so with their enchantments.] With their secret sleights and jugglings, they seemed to do so. See Exodus 7:12, for Pharaoh’s hardening.
Ver. 23. Neither did he set his heart.] But to his “iron sinews” he added “brows of brass.” (Isaiah 48:4) To his natural and hereditary hardness, adventitious and habitual.
Ver. 24. Digged round about.] If by drawing the waters they might purify them. But “they looked not to the Maker thereof”; they “returned not to him that smote them.” (Isaiah 22:11,9:13)
Ver. 25. And seven days were fulfilled.] So long the plague continued; that they might be sensible of it; and not do as the dog, who getting out of the water, shakes his ears, and there is an end. Surely if these Egyptians had believed the prediction of this plague, they would have done as Pliny saith camels do— Implentur cameli, cum bibendi est occasio et in praeteritum et in futurum. They would have drunk for hereafter also. Plin., lib. viii. cap. 18.