the hour when reason ought to be clearest and the passions
least agitating; and this circumstance is perhaps alluded to in the
favourite phrase of Jeremiah when he would speak of condescending
earnestness--"I sent my prophets, rising up early and sending them"
(Jer. xxv. 4, xxvi. 5, xxix. 19, and many more; cf. also vii. 13, and 2
Chron. xxxvi. 15). So far is the Scripture from regarding Pharaoh as
propelled by destiny, as by a machine, down iron grooves to ruin.

We have now come to the group of plagues which inflict actual bodily
damage, and not inconvenience and humiliation only: the dogfly (or
beetle); the murrain among beasts, which was a precursor of the crowning
evil that struck at human life; and the boils. Of the fourth plague the
precise nature is uncertain. There is a beetle which gnaws both man and
beast, destroys clothes, furniture, and plants, and even now they "are
often seen in millions" (Munk, _Palestine_, p. 120). "In a few minutes
they filled the whole house.... Only after the most laborious exertions,
and covering the floor of the house with hot coals, they succeeded in
mastering them. If they make such attacks during the night, the inmates
are compelled to give up the houses, and little children or sick
persons, who are unable to rise alone, are then exposed to the greatest
danger of life" (Pratte, _Abyssinia_, p. 143, in Kalisch).

Now, this explanation has one advantage over that of dogflies--that
special mention is made of their afflicting "the ground whereon they
are" (ver. 21), which is less suitable to a plague of flies. But it may
be that no one creature is meant. The Hebrew word means "a mixture."
Jewish interpreters have gone so far as to make it mean "all kinds of
noxious animals and serpents and scorpions mixed together," and although
it is palpably absurd to believe that Pharaoh should have survived if
these had been upon him and upon his servants, yet the expression "a
mixture," following after one kind of vermin had tormented the land,
need not be narrowed too exactly. With deliberate particularity the
king was warned that they should come "upon thee, and upon thy servants,
and upon thy people, and into thine houses, and the houses of the
Egyptians shall be full of [them[15]], and also the ground whereon they
are."

It has been supposed, from the special mention of the exemption of the
land of Goshen, that this was a new thing. We have seen reason, however,
to think otherwise, and t