de of the frogs
vanished away; and both the land and the river returned to their former
natures. But as soon as Pharaoh saw the land freed from this plague, he
forgot the cause of it, and retained the Hebrews; and, as though he had
a mind to try the nature of more such judgments, he would not yet suffer
Moses and his people to depart, having granted that liberty rather out
of fear than out of any good consideration. [35]

3. Accordingly, God punished his falseness with another plague, added
to the former; for there arose out of the bodies of the Egyptians
an innumerable quantity of lice, by which, wicked as they were, they
miserably perished, as not able to destroy this sort of vermin either
with washes or with ointments. At which terrible judgment the king of
Egypt was in disorder, upon the fear into which he reasoned himself,
lest his people should be destroyed, and that the manner of this death
was also reproachful, so that he was forced in part to recover himself
from his wicked temper to a sounder mind, for he gave leave for the
Hebrews themselves to depart. But when the plague thereupon ceased, he
thought it proper to require that they should leave their children and
wives behind them, as pledges of their return; whereby he provoked God
to be more vehemently angry at him, as if he thought to impose on his
providence, and as if it were only Moses, and not God, who punished the
Egyptians for the sake of the Hebrews: for he filled that country
full of various sorts of pestilential creatures, with their various
properties, such indeed as had never come into the sight of men before,
by whose means the men perished themselves, and the land was destitute
of husbandmen for its cultivation; but if any thing escaped destruction
from them, it was killed by a distemper which the men underwent also.

4. But when Pharaoh did not even then yield to the will of God, but,
while he gave leave to the husbands to take their wives with them, yet
insisted that the children should be left behind, God presently resolved
to punish his wickedness with several sorts of calamities, and those
worse than the foregoing, which yet had so generally afflicted them; for
their bodies had terrible boils, breaking forth with blains, while
they were already inwardly consumed; and a great part of the Egyptians
perished in this manner. But when the king was not brought to reason by
this plague, hail was sent down from heaven; and such hail it was, as
th