Frogs in the Bedroom and Limits at the Palace

In Hebrew Bibles this verse and the next three belong to chapter 7, as 7:26–29, so Hebrew chapter 8 begins with the King James verse 5. The demand is now the short form it keeps for the rest of the plagues: “Let my people go, that they may serve me.”

“Smite” is nagaf, to strike with a blow, the root of the word for plague, negef. “Borders” means the whole territory. Frogs were a normal sight after the Nile’s flood, so the plague uses an ordinary creature in impossible numbers.

“Bring forth abundantly” is sharats, the same swarming verb used of Israel’s growth in 1:7. The list tightens from house to bedchamber to bed, then out to servants, then down to ovens and the troughs where dough was kneaded. Egyptian clay ovens were open pits, easy to climb into.

The order is reversed from verse 3: first “on thee”, then the people, then servants. Frogs climbing on a man’s body is the final indignity. The Egyptian goddess Heqet, a fertility goddess of childbirth, was depicted with a frog’s head; a plague of her sacred animal is a grim joke.

Three kinds of water are named: streams (the Nile’s branches), rivers (canals), ponds (marshes). The rod is once again held by Aaron, as in the first plague, and the instruction still passes through Moses.

“The frogs” in Hebrew is singular, tsefardea, “the frog came up”, a collective noun, and some Jewish readers imagined a single giant frog that multiplied when struck. The singular really means a mass acting as one body.

The magicians’ success is a comic own goal. They add frogs to a land already covered with frogs. Nothing is said of them removing any, and verse 8 shows Pharaoh knows who can.

“Intreat” is atar, to pray earnestly, and it is the first time Pharaoh asks for prayer to the LORD. He who said “I know not the LORD” in 5:2 now uses the name himself and makes a promise to let the people go.

“Glory over me” is an old courtesy: “have the honour over me”, meaning “you name the time”. Moses gives Pharaoh control of the timing so that no one could call the frogs’ departure a coincidence.

“To morrow” is two words in the King James, as it was often printed in 1611. Pharaoh chooses to suffer one more night rather than accept relief at once. “None like unto the LORD” is the theme the Song of Moses will sing in 15:11: “Who is like unto thee, O LORD?”

The frogs are to “remain in the river only”, back where frogs belong. The plague does not wipe out the creature; it returns it to its place. Moses’ answer repeats the whole list of verse 9 in reverse: houses, servants, people.

“Cried” is tsa’aq, the outcry of distress used of Israel in slavery. Moses cries out on behalf of the very king who enslaved them. The last clause could be read “which he had set for Pharaoh”, referring to the appointed time rather than the frogs.

“According to the word of Moses” gives the servant’s word the force of a command, as in Joshua 10:14, where the LORD hearkened to the voice of a man. The frogs die from houses, villages and fields, a progression outward from the home.

“Upon heaps” is chamarim chamarim, heaps and heaps, a doubled noun for piles beyond counting. The stench of rotting frogs follows the stench of rotting fish in 7:21. The land stank in both plagues, but this time relief caused it.

“Respite” is revachah, room to breathe, space. Pharaoh uses the relief to breathe again and harden. “Hardened” here is kaved, heavy, used with Pharaoh as the subject: he made his own heart heavy.

No warning is given for the third plague. “Lice” is kinnim, and scholars debate whether it means lice, gnats or mosquitoes; the Greek translators, who lived in Egypt, chose gnats. Dust becoming creatures echoes the dust from which Adam was formed.

“All the dust of the land” is hyperbole in Hebrew for so many insects that the dust seemed alive. Man and beast are both struck together, a pairing repeated in the plagues that follow.

The magicians fail for the first time. Some Jewish commentators suggested that Egyptian magic could not create things smaller than a grain of barley, but the text simply says “they could not”. The creatures stay on man and beast.

“Finger of God” is the admission, and they say Elohim, God, not the LORD, a general concession of divine power rather than a confession. The phrase returns twice more in Scripture: the tables of the law “written with the finger of God” (31:18), and Jesus casting out devils “with the finger of God” (Luke 11:20).

“Rise up early” and “stand before Pharaoh” use the same instructions as the first plague in 7:15. The plagues fall into three sets of three, and the first plague of each set (1, 4, 7) is announced to Pharaoh in the morning at the water or in his presence.

“Swarms of flies” is arov, a mixture, and Jewish tradition took it as a mixture of wild beasts. The Greek reads kynomuia, the dog fly, a biting fly. “Also the ground whereon they are” means the swarms covered even the floor.

“Sever” is palah, to set apart or treat as distinct. The first three plagues struck the whole land; this is the first time Israel is said to be spared. “In the midst of the earth” means within this land itself, so the God of the Hebrews is shown at work inside Egypt, not only in a wilderness three days away.

“Division” is pedut, which normally means redemption or ransom. The King James follows the Greek in reading “division”, but the Hebrew points to a ransom separating one people from another, anticipating the Passover lamb.

“Grievous” is kaved, heavy, the same word used for Pharaoh’s heart. “Corrupted” is the word used of the earth before the flood in Genesis 6:11–12. Unlike the earlier plagues, no rod and no Aaron are named: “the LORD did so”.

Pharaoh’s first compromise: sacrifice, but “in the land”, meaning inside Egypt. He has moved from “I know not the LORD” to “your God”, still keeping the deity at arm’s length.

“Abomination” is to’evah, something detestable. Sheep and cattle were sacred to some Egyptian gods, and Genesis 46:34 records that shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians. To sacrifice them in Egypt could provoke a riot, “will they not stone us?”

Moses returns to the terms of 3:18 without adjustment: three days’ journey. “As he shall command us” leaves the details of the worship open, since Israel does not yet know what God will ask of them, which also makes the terms impossible to negotiate.

“Only ye shall not go very far away” is Pharaoh’s condition, the leash. He adds, “intreat for me”, the same request as verse 8, having broken that promise once already.

Moses sets his own date this time, “to morrow”, and adds a pointed warning. “Deal deceitfully” is hatel, to mock or cheat, the verb Laban’s trickery was called in Genesis 31:7, “your father hath deceived me”.

A single short sentence. Moses keeps his word promptly, and the brevity makes the contrast with Pharaoh’s broken word in verse 32 all the sharper.

“There remained not one” matches the phrase used at the sea in 14:28, “there remained not so much as one of them”. God removes the flies as completely as he will remove Pharaoh’s army.

“At this time also” admits that Pharaoh has done this before, in verse 15. The verb is kaved again, with Pharaoh as subject. The pattern of pressure, promise, relief and reversal has now run twice.