Signs and Wonders: The Plagues
And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. Thou shalt speak all that I command thee; and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt, by gi-eat judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them. And Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded them, so did they.” — ExOD. vii, 1-6.
God’s contributions to the world’s stock of knowledge and goodness have been sent through the persons of our fellow-men; and of these Heaven-sent messengers, of these mediums for bringing the mind of God to earth, none is more remarkable than Moses. As the Tell or Washington of early Eastern story, he would have claims on our admiration; as the first assertor of national independence; as the leader of the first war of religious emancipation; as the liberator of his people; as the divinely-commissioned conductor of the Exodus. But on the world’s gratitude lie has claims still stronger. Through whose hand was it that God issued to mankind the Decalogue, and gave a rule of conduct at once so plain, so portable, so comprehensive, as the Ten Commandments? To whom are we indebted for the first promulgation of the unity, the spirituality, the selfexistence, and all-pervasive providence of the Most High? Who was it that took in “that little piece of holy ground,” — the Jewish nationality, — and at once fencing the enclosure and trenching the soil, prepared the plat or bed in which Christianity should fifteen centuries afterwards strike root and grow till large enough to be transplanted into the outside world? Who is the penman of the Pentateuch? To whom are we indebted for those foundation-truths, those fundamental oracles on which David and Isaiah, Paul and John, have built up the fabric of Divine Revelation?
In the person of Moses the Most High inaugurated a new era in His dealings with mankind. Noah hardly excepted, Moses was the first in that series of prophets who were at once seers and workers of signs. He was the first, as the apostles were the last, who wrought miracles in attestation of their Divine commission, and to show that God was with them. And as the first example of a Divine message accredited by miracles, as the commencement of that system in the Divine dealings where Heaven-imparted truth calls in as its seconder or sanction Heaven-imparted power, the narrative is at this point peculiarly instructive.
After men have climbed it is a common trick to spurn away the ladder. They push away the ladder, and then at the top of their airy pinnacle they shout to spectators and flap their sleeves, as if these were the wings by which they had mounted. So now-a-days there is a disposition to speak contemptuously of miracles. ‘’ Moral truth is as much more sublime than prodigies or portents as mind is greater than matter; and the Sermon on the Moimt is more full of God than the resurrection of Lazarus;” whilst some put it differently, and say, “The course of nature is much more stupendous than any possible interruption. The perpetual miracle which raises that fig-tree from an atom, and out of dirty mould and viewless vapour builds up its broad-leafed canopy, is greater than the casual miracle which in a moment blasts it.” Or to come to the actual case before us: —
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes: The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”^
But it won’t do to stand on the top of the obelisk
1 Aurora Leigh, 304.
and wave your cloak, pretending that your own wings took you thither. It won’t do, Master Poet or Philosopher, to perch on some top-truth of Revelation, and make-believe that you soared straight up there with a few easy flaps of your own intellectual pinions. Here is the ladder lying at the foot, with the marks on every round of miry shoes and hob-nails somewhat heavy.
You say, “Prodigies are for barbarians and babes; but the mature man, the philosopher, prefers great truths and high principles to vulgar signs and wonders.” And in this the Word of God so far agrees with you. “Tongues,” says the apostle, “are a sign to them that believe not.” As soon as men are believers, they don’t need this prodigy to arrest their heedlessness and convince their incredulity. And says Jesus himself, “It is an evil generation that seeketh after a sign.” If it were sufficiently sincere the truth would be its own witness. But unfortunately in its first coming into a world like this, God’s truth does not find men friendly but hostile: it finds them not eagerly awaiting its advent but rather looking the other way. It needs to catch their eye, and conquer their aversion. As babes or barbarians it has to appeal to their faculty of wonder; and as more or less besotted, more or less wedded to evil or error, it needs to appeal to their fears or their self-interest, and convince them that if it comes to a contest the truth is stronger than they.
Wheatstone or Faraday is not always sending paper kites up into the clouds or drawing sparks from a coated phial in order to convince himself that electricity exists. “Excuse me, my good friend,” he would be apt to say, “but I am far past that. I not only believe that the thing exists; but to my mind it is present everywhere. It is not the jar alone, but this room that is full of it; and you need not send up for it to the clouds, for at this moment you and I are under its powerful influence. Rather than be repeating evermore these elementary experiments, I love to trace still further its operation, and meditate upon its laws.” And yet he will be far from despising the day of small things. He knows that in the whole of this matter a hundred years ago men were as barbarians or as babes, and that if their feeling of wonder had not been roused, if their sense had not been dazzled, babes and barbarians they must have still remained. It was by working what may be called scientific signs and wonders,^it was by drawing a flash of fire from the human body, it was by drawing lightning from the clouds, that Dufaye and Franklin waked the wonder of the world, and founded a new science; and therefore he looks back with reverence to that paper kite or Ley den jar as the parent of the
13G SIGNS AXD WONDERS —
electric telegrapli and the transformer of modern metallurgy. Each of them was a disturber or interrupter of the course of nature; but without the interruption they produced the true course of nature would never have been known: without the spark or flash which these disturbers elicited, the perpetual presence and the wondrous working of the latent power would never have been surmised.
So with the signs and wonders which for a moment interrupting the usual course of Providence, made the existence of that Providence more palpable. So with the signs and wonders which from time to time breaking the majestic silence of the Eternal, like a tocsin from the firmament have startled the world’s apathy, and at once strengthened faith and confounded incredulity.
Standing as we do on the clear high vantage of a completed Christianity, it is difficult for us to get back into the times of ignorance. Even amongst the professed rejecters of Revelation there is a general admission of its sublimest truth, and few deny the existence of the one Supreme Creator, infinitely wise, irresistibly powerful. But once on a time it was very different. Egypt believed in its own gods, and left Ethiopia and Canaan free to believe in theirs, and although the children of Israel should hajR^e known that the God of Abraham was the one true God, they were not absolutely sure. It looked too like as if Abraham’s God was less kind or powerful than Egypt’s gods; and we have reached that most interesting and eventful period when Jehovah arose from His place and began to prove that He was not merely one God among the many, but that there was none besides the great I am supreme, self-existent, exclusive of every other.
The first mind which it was needful to satisfy was that of Moses himself. Possessing the knowledge which we find embodied in the Book of Genesis, we may assume that his theology was sound. Believing in that God who created heaven and earth, with whom Enoch walked, who had swept a crimeladen race away, who had received Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to their eternal homes, in the meditative seclusion of Horeb Moses could sing the 90th Psalm, and could look back with serene contempt on the bull-adorers and beetle-worshippers amongst whom he had passed his boyhood. But the faith which assures the heart in calm retreats is not always enough for energy and action; and if there ever was a man to whom it must have been a hardship to quit the solitary place, with its continual sabbath, that man was the fugitive from Pharaoh’s palace, — the meek, meditative, unambitious, world-weary Moses. And yet for God’s great design it was needful that the recluse should be aroused and hurried forth from his retirement; it was needful that the hermit should be quickened up into a hero; and so that God, in whom he had long believed, burst upon his view in a bright and startling manifestation. To Moses that burning bush was itself a sign, and one would have almost thought that a Divine commission given from the midst of the flaming miracle would have insured instant compliance. But even after other difficulties were dispelled, an obstacle seemingly insuperable occurred to Moses in the incredulity of his own countrymen. “To say nothing of persuading Pharaoh, how shall I gain the confidence of my own brethren? They will not believe me. They will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee.” And so, to furnish him with credentials to his own countrymen, just as the burning bush had been sign sufficient to himself, the Lord supplied him with three portable signs (so to speak), and gave him the power of performing three prodigies, which should be as well adapted to the crass and untutored minds of his brethren as the beautiful sign of the burning bush had been adapted to his own. ‘Turn that rod into a serpent, from a serpent back into a rod again; draw thy hand from thy bosom; it is leprous; do it again and it is sound. And change into blood the water of the Nile; for if they will not believe thee, they will believe the sign, and if one sign fail a second will succeed.’ And thus fortified, Moses set forth for Egypt. Along with Aaron his brother, who, divinely directed, came forth to meet him, he reached it at a moment when the people’s anguish was kindled afresh by the accession of the new despot and the infliction of further atrocities. The brothers delivered their message, and “did the signs in the sight of the people; and the people believed.” Their deliverers had come opportune as angels from heaven, and grateful to Abraham’s God, who at last had looked on their affliction, “they bowed their heads and worshipped” (Exod. iv. 29-31).
A harder task remained. Moses and Aaron needed no further sign. The burden of the Lord was upon them, and God’s hand thrust them forward. So to speak, they could not help themselves, and you would say it should not have been difficult to rouse the hopes of sighing, wretched bondmen. But to beard a tyrant on his throne — to persuade a proud and obstinate king to surrender two millions of subjects, including the most useful labourers in the land — was an undertaking sure to be followed by discomfiture and personal destruction, unless backed by Omnipotence and enforced by the outstretched arm of Jehovah. And therefore to stem and concuss into submission the oppressor of Israel and the champion of Egypt’s false gods — to avenge the wrongs of ages and signalize in its commencement Jehovah’s war with idolatry, Heaven opened its terrible artillery, and with plague upon plague crushed down the key-post of Paganism, the stronghold of Egypt.
On these plagues we have no intention to dilate, but we invite attention to one or two general remarks regarding them.
1. Pharaoh threw down the gauntlet. “Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice, to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.” Pharaoh cast himself on the protection of the idols of Egypt, and launched an insulting defiance at the God of Israel. And the first retort was on that idol which might well be considered the best friend and greatest benefactor of Egypt, the Mle, whose current was instantly converted into a fluid so blood-like that its delicious waters were no longer drinkable, and the fish in which it abounded died. In like manner, the magicians who mimicked the earlier miracles, who by sleight of hand (to say nothing of supernatural assistance) gave the impression as if they could do on a small scale what Moses’ rod did over all the land, these magicians were driven off the field when the infliction became a corporeal malady, and personal. “The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils;. for the boil was upon the magicians, and all the, Egyptians.”
2. A second remark which we venture to hazard is a certain congruity betwixt these supernatural visitations and the land on wliicli they were inflicted. Although the rapidity with which they succeeded one another, although the circumstance of their coming on and departing whensoever Moses gave the word, and no sooner, although the exemption of Goshen when the rest of Egypt was overwhelmed, all show the Hand Omnipotent from which they came, yet the visitations themselves were more or less characteristic of the country and congruous to it. The vials were inverted by an unseen Power, but the channels in which the vengeance flowed were the courses already cut by phenomena more or less familiar to the people. For instance, the Nile, which this time, in the beginning of the year, flowed with blood, is, apt every June to assume a reddish colour. Frogs, with gnats, flies, and other insect plagues, are to this day no small source of misery in Egypt; and boils are of common occurrence among the people, and murrain among the cattle; and it may help to vivify the sacred text if from the pages of the Prussian explorer Lepsius I give two extracts, detailing a hail-storm and a locust- shower, as he encountered them about the close of the year 1842.
Hail.
“Winter began with a scene that will ever remain impressed upon my memory. I had ridden out to the excavations, and as I observed a great black cloud coming up, I sent an attendant to the tents, to make them ready against it, but soon followed him myself, as it began to rain a little. Shortly after my arrival a storm began, and I therefore had the tent-ropes made fast; soon, however, there came a pouring rain that frightened all our Arabs, and sent them trooping to the rock-tomb, where our kitchen is situated. Of our party, Erbkam and Franke were only present. Suddenly the storm grew to a tremendous hurricane, such as I have never seen in Europe, and hail fell upon us in such masses as almost to turn day into night. I had the greatest difficulty in hunting our Arabs out from the cavern, to bring our thinss to the tombs under shelter, as we might expect the destruction of our tents at any moment; and it was no long time ere first our common tent broke down, and then, as I hurried from it into my own, to sustain it from the inside, that also broke down above my head. When I had crept out, I found that my things were tolerably well covered by the tents, so that I could leave them for the present, but only to run a greater risk. Our tents lie in a valley, whither the plateau of the Pyramids inclines, and are sheltered from the worst winds from the north and west. Presently I saw a dashing mountain flood hurrying down upon our prostrate and sand- covered tents, like a giant serpent upon its certain prey. The principal stream rolled on to the great tent; another arm threatened mine, without quite reaching it. But everything that had been washed from our tents by the shower was torn away by the two streams, which joined behind the tents, and carried into a pool behind the Sphinx, where a great lake immediately formed, which fortunately had no outlet.
“Just picture the scene! Our tents, dashed down by the storm and heavy rain, lying between two mountain torrents, thrusting themselves in several places to the depth of six feet into the sand, and depositing our books, drawings, sketches, clothes, and instruments, yes, even our levers and crowbars; in short, everything they could seize, in the dark, foaming, mud ocean. Besides this, ourselves wet to the skin, without hats, wading into the lake to the waist to fish out what the sand had not yet swallowed. And all this was the work of a quarter of an hour, at the end of which the sun shone radiantly again, and announced the end of this flood by a bright and glorious rainbow.
“For several days we fished and dug for our things. Some things were lost, many were spoilt; the greater part of all the things that were not locked up inside trunks or chests bore more or fewer marks of this flood.”
1 Lepsius’s Discoveries in Egypt, pp. 27-29.
Locust Storm.
“I had descended into a mummy-pit, to open some newly-discovered sarcophagi, and was not a little astonished to find myself in a regular snow-drift of locusts, which, almost darkening the heavens, flew over our heads from the south-west from the desert in hundreds of thousands to the valley. I took it for a single flight, and called my companions from the tombs, that they might see this Egyptian wonder ere it was over. But the flight continued; indeed, the work-people said it had begun an hour before. Then we first observed that the whole region, far and near, was covered with locusts. I sent an attendant into the desert, to discover the breadth of the swarm. He ran for the distance of a quarter of an hour, then returned and told us that, as far as he could see, there was no end to them. I rode home in the midst of the locust-showier. At the edge of the fruitful plain they fell down in showers, and so it went on the whole day till the evening, and so the next day from morning to evening, and the third; in short, to the sixth day, and in weaker flights much longer. The Arabs are now lighting great fires of smoke in the fields, and clattering and making loud noises all day long, to preserve their crops from the unexpected invasion.
It will, however, do little good. Like a new animated vegetation, these millions of winged spoilers cover even the neighbouring sandhills, so that scarcely anything is to be seen of the ground; and when they rise from one place, they immediately fall down somewhere in the neighbourhood; they are tired with their long journey, and seem to have lost all fear of their natural enemies — men, animals, smoke, and noise — in their furious wish to fill their stomachs, and in the feeling of their immense number. The most wonderful thing, in my estimation, is their flight over the naked wilderness, and the instinct which has guided them from some oasis over the inhospitable desert to the fat soil of the Nile vale.”
To this land of locusts and hail-storms, of epidemic boils and disastrous murrain, the warnings of Moses were abundantly intelligible. They were not threatened with an unknown visitation, but were in the predicament of a land like Britain, if, in the course of a short year or so, we were forewarned of nine such plagues as a frost in June, a potato-blight, the Hessian fly, the cholera. “When they were foretold, we could have no difficulty in understanding what was threatened, and when they came on the predicted day, and on the predicted day when such of them as could go away departed, we should have
Lepsius’s Discoveries, pp. 49, 50.
K
no difficulty in identifying them as God’s own
messengers.
3. Whilst, however, the plagues were of a kind to demonstrate conclusively the superiority of Jehovah and His commissioned messengers over the idols and their ministers, they were so conducted as to leave Pharaoh a free agent all throughout. He was not put on the actual rack or held over a slow fire till his cruel hand relaxed and let the Hebrew bondmen go. The appeal was loud, and each time that it was repeated he and his people were shaken more severely than before; but after every demand there was a respite, a pause, an opportunity to ponder, and either yield the point or recall a past concession. During that reprieve or lull, nine times repeated, the result was uniform: “The heart of Pharaoh was hardened;” he turned on his hapless serfs as savage, and scowled on their mysterious Protector as sullen and defiant as before. And whilst we are so far admitted into the painful secret, whilst “the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared through all the earth,” so that “God hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth,” we can so far understand how naturally, in a proud and imperious mind, the process went on, and how truly it may also be said, “Pharaoh hardened his own heart.”
For, first of all, there was always time for doing it. Except on the last occasion, when the Israelites stood marshalled and ready to move off amidst the amazement and anguish consequent on the death of the first-born, — except on that last occasion the Israelites were never ready to take Pharaoh at his word; but if he made some small concession overnight, he was able to recall it in the morning. And who will deny that he was strongly tempted? To let his own vassals go — to create a gap so instantaneous and so wide in his kingdom’s industry; to part with the best bone and sinew of the realm, was no small sacrifice. And then the humiliation: to have that son of a slave glorying over him, to receive the dictation of that runagate; to let Apir and Osiris bow before the Hebrews’ God, what would Mmrod and his Ethiopian neighbours say? Besides, what if all this time he was under some frightful spell, some horrible sorcery or glamour? Assuredly there was something very startling in the swift succession of so many plagues, and the God of Israel must have great power to send them, and to enable his servant to predict them. But perhaps the gods of Egypt would triumph yet. It seemed as if they too could turn water into blood and a walking-stick into a serpent; and they might yet enable their votary and champion to hold his own and avenge these insults. And so, for as often as he was reproved, Pharaoh still hardened his neck, until he was suddenly cut off, and that without remedy.
Such is still the method of God’s procedure. No force is laid on the human will, yet some are allowed to harden themselves, whilst others are mercifully constrained to have mercy on themselves and flee to the Saviour of souls.
The process is insidious, — the self-hardening one I mean. God often reproves. He gave Pharaoh ten times a place of repentance, but the hard man persisted, and was likely hoping still to escape when he was suddenly cut off, and that without remedy.
A man begins a course of dishonesty. Living beyond his income, he must accommodate himself with money passing through his hands; but the income of next year does not fill up the deficit, and as the discrepancy has been so dexterously concealed as to elicit no inquiry, he goes on and on peculating and appropriating and purloining. And God goes on reproving. He takes the man to church, where he hears a sermon on the text “Thou shalt not steal;” but the embezzling goes on. He takes him to a court of justice, and lets him listen to a dreadful case, the facsimile of his own where from respectability and seeming affluence the delinquent is hurled down to the shame and wretchedness of convicted felony, and under this painful homily on righteousness and judgment to come Felix trembles; but after a few days the work of appropriation is once more resumed. And then to remind him that an eye is on him, his merciful Eeprover elicits from some one’s lips a sentence which greatly startles him. The cold sweat breaks, his face is ashes, and from the ominous allusion he fancies himself found out. But by and bye he finds that he was wrong, and emboldened by impunity, as if it gave an actual sanction to his crime, he launches out more largely and with increasing confidence, till some evening from the heart of a ruined home, and the unavailing grasp of affection shrieking forth its agony, he is hurried off to the trial which ends in a felon’s doom and a convict’s infamy.
Or the social glass has grown into the cup which does inebriate, and the misfortune is none the less because the sin is great; and in great mercy God’s Word and Spirit and Providence for a long time reprove. If you don’t put in the pin, says the doctor, I won’t answer for the consequences. If you don’t reform, says his employer, next term we part company. If you don’t repent, says God, you shall perish. And there is not only remonstrance but reproof. One night he comes home and finds that he has been robbed in the tavern or on the road from it of his quarter’s salary. “Ah! that comes of my drinking.” Another day he wakes up in a public hospital, and sees his miry garments hanging by the bedside, whilst they are applying iced lotions to his temples. “How came I here?” And when he hears that he was picked off the pavement with a threatened fit, “Ah! that too comes of drinking. I must really take the pledge.” But for as often as he has been reproved, no sooner is he well than his spirit again is hardened, and reeling home in the moonlight beside the canal, the policeman hears a plunge, and he himself feels a momentary shock, and then opens his eyes, — not in the hospital, — not in his own home, — not even amongst the fumes of the tap-room, — but where there is no more place for repentance, and where for reproof habitually resisted there remains no remedy., Pharaoh ten times reproved, yet always persisting, — Pharaoh repeatedly subdued, yet once more rebelling, — Pharaoh humbling himself one day under the mighty hand of God, and another day cut off in fierce conflict with Jehovah, stands forth to all time a glaring example. It tells how resolute and resilient is the stout heart of the sinner, — how, like a deceitful bow, when the pressure is withdrawn, it will bound back again. And it tells how guilty is the war and how bootless will be the battle with
Omnipotence. Oh, brethren, may there be found amongst us no self-hardening Pharaoh, — none quitting the parental roof, or Sabbath after Sabbath retiring from the sanctuary with a heart still joined to his idols, and determined not yet to forsake his sins. What will you do in the day when God contends with you? It is a fearful thing to fall into His hands, and who ever hardened himself against Jehovah and prospered?