Judgment, Warning, and the Difference Between Hearing and Heeding

The fifth plague opens with the message of 8:1 almost unchanged, but “God of the Hebrews” is restored, as it was at the first plague of 7:16. Moses is sent to “go in”, into the palace, not out to the river.

“Hold them still” is machaziq, from chazaq, the verb of hardening. Pharaoh’s grip on the people and the hardening of his heart are expressed with the same Hebrew root: he holds fast and is held fast.

“Murrain” is an old English word for cattle plague, from the Latin mori, to die. The Hebrew is dever, pestilence. This is the first time a plague is called “the hand of the LORD”. The list runs from horses and camels, a king’s wealth and war machine, down to the ordinary flock.

The same verb “sever” as 8:22, but this time the distinction reaches down to animals. The Hebrew for “nothing” is lo davar, “not a thing”, a pun on dever, the pestilence of verse 3: no dever, not a davar.

“Appointed a set time” is mo’ed, the word later used for the sacred festivals and for the tent of meeting, the “appointed” place. Unlike the frogs, where Pharaoh chose, God sets this time himself.

“All the cattle” sits oddly beside the hail of verse 19, where Egyptians still have cattle to shelter. The “all” is limited by verse 3 to the cattle “in the field”, and Hebrew often uses “all” for the great mass rather than every single one.

Pharaoh sends men to check, the only time he investigates a plague. His heart is kaved, heavy, again. He has the proof that the separation happened exactly as warned, and he still does not let them go.

“Handfuls” is literally “the fill of your two cupped hands”, so each brother takes a double scoop. The furnace is kivshan, a kiln, and the word is rare: Genesis 19:28 used it for the smoke rising over Sodom, and Exodus 19:18 will use it for Sinai smoking “as the smoke of a furnace”.

“Small dust” is avaq, fine powder. “Blains” is an old English word for blisters or pustules, from the same root as “chilblains”. The Hebrew phrase is “boils breaking out into blisters”. This skin disease becomes one of the curses of Deuteronomy 28:27, “the botch of Egypt”.

They “stood before Pharaoh”, using the same verb the next verse denies the magicians. The ash is thrown upward, toward heaven, and comes down on Egypt, the direction of the sign mirrored in its effect.

“Could not stand before Moses” means they could not remain at court; they were too sick or too disgraced to hold their places. This is the last time the magicians appear in Exodus.

For the first time the text says plainly that “the LORD hardened” the heart, chazaq with God as subject. Five plagues have passed with Pharaoh hardening his own heart or it hardening of itself. Many readers take the order as the point: God confirms what Pharaoh has already chosen.

The seventh plague begins, like the first and fourth, with “rise up early in the morning”. The final set of three plagues opens with the longest speech of the whole sequence, running through verse 19.

“All my plagues upon thine heart” is unusual: the plagues are aimed at the heart itself, Pharaoh’s will. “There is none like me in all the earth” widens the theme of 8:10 from Egypt to the world.

The verb “stretch out” is in the past tense in Hebrew: “For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you.” God is saying that he could have wiped Pharaoh out already with the pestilence. That he has not is explained in the next verse.

“Raised thee up” is he’emadtikha, “I have made you stand”, kept you standing alive. Paul quotes the verse in Romans 9:17 with his own Greek wording, “raised thee up”, where the Greek Old Testament had “thou wast preserved”. The name was indeed declared: Rahab in Jericho knew of it forty years later (Joshua 2:10).

“Exaltest thou thyself” is mistolel, to raise oneself up like a siege ramp, from the word for a mound thrown up against a city wall. Pharaoh is pictured as a barrier piled up against God’s people.

“To morrow about this time” is precise to the hour. Hail is rare in Egypt, where rain itself is uncommon, which is why the book adds “since the foundation thereof”, since Egypt was founded. The warning of a storm in a rainless land would sound absurd until it came.

“Send therefore now” is a strange mercy: the same God who promises a destructive storm tells Pharaoh how to save his herds. The phrase “brought home” means brought into a house or shelter.

This is the first time any Egyptian is said to fear “the word of the LORD”. The phrase “made … flee” is from nus, to run for safety. A divided court appears, some believing, some not, without the king’s leave.

“Regarded not” is literally “did not set his heart to”, nearly the phrase used of Pharaoh walking away from the bloodied river in 7:23. The servants who ignore the word are described in their king’s terms, and his example is shown spreading down the court.

The target is spelled out as a trio: man, beast, and every herb of the field. Plant life is struck for the first time, which sets up the locusts that will finish off what is left.

“Thunder” is qolot, literally “voices”. The Hebrew idiom calls thunder the voice of God, as in Psalm 29. “The fire ran along upon the ground” is lightning striking and running across the land, and the verb suggests it moved like something alive.

“Fire mingled with the hail” uses a word, mitlaqqachat, that means fire flashing back and forth within the hail. Psalm 105:32 recalls it: “He gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land.”

Hail heavy enough to break trees is violence beyond ordinary weather. “Smote” comes twice, and the list runs downward from man and beast to herb and tree, so nothing left outdoors escapes. What the hail spares, the locusts of chapter 10 will be sent to finish.

One short Hebrew sentence of nine words: only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail. It carries no explanation because none is needed. The exception is stated as flatly as the storm.

“I have sinned this time” is the first time Pharaoh admits wrong. “The LORD is righteous” uses tsaddiq, the word for the party who is in the right in a lawsuit, so Pharaoh’s words are the language of a court verdict against himself.

“For it is enough” means “we have had enough”. “Mighty thunderings” is literally “voices of God”, qolot Elohim, the same idiom as verse 23. Pharaoh promises “ye shall stay no longer”, the most complete promise he has yet made.

“Spread abroad my hands” describes prayer with palms turned upward, the posture Solomon uses in 1 Kings 8:22. Moses will leave the city first, perhaps because Egyptian cities were full of shrines to other gods. “The earth is the LORD’s” is later sung in Psalm 24:1.

“I know that ye will not yet fear” is Moses’ blunt reading of Pharaoh. He says “the LORD God”, the full compound name YHWH Elohim, used here for the only time in Exodus. The combination is rare outside Genesis 2–3.

“Was in the ear” means the barley had formed its heads. “Bolled” means in seed-pod, from an old word for a rounded seed vessel. In Egypt flax and barley ripen in late winter to early spring, which dates the hail to about February or March, a few weeks before Passover.

“Rie” is the King James rendering of kussemet, probably emmer or spelt, since rye was not grown in ancient Egypt. Wheat and spelt ripen a month or so later. The detail preserves food for the locusts to destroy in chapter 10.

“The rain was not poured upon the earth” adds that rain came with the hail, the only mention of rain in the storm. Moses keeps his promise to go outside the city, and the storm stops with his prayer.

“Sinned yet more” is chata, the same verb as “I have sinned” in verse 27. Pharaoh repeats his confession by doing exactly what he confessed. “He and his servants” widens the hardening to his officials for the first time.

The chapter closes on a heart that “was hardened”, chazaq, and “as the LORD had spoken by Moses” is literally “by the hand of Moses”, the servant’s hand carrying the word. The forecast of 4:21, spoken before Moses had even reached Egypt, is now being fulfilled step by step.