nd
over the devoted realm. At the gesture, the spectators felt that a fiat
had gone forth. But the result was strangely different from that which
followed his invocation, both of the previous and the following plague,
when we may believe that as he raised his hand, the hail-storm burst in
thunder, and the curtain fell upon the sky. Now there only arose a
gentle east wind (unlike the "exceeding strong west wind" that
followed), but it blew steadily all that day and all the following
night. The forebodings of Egypt would understand it well: the prolonged
period during which the curse was being steadily wafted toward them was
an awful measure of the wide regions over which the power of Jehovah
reached; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts,
that dreadful curse which Joel has compared to a disciplined and
devastating invader, "the army of the Lord," and the first woe that
heralds the Day of the Lord in the Apocalypse (Joel ii. 1-11; Rev. ix.
1-11).

The completeness of the ruin brought a swift surrender, but it has been
well said that folly is the wisdom which is only wise too late, and, let
us add, too fitfully. If Pharaoh had only submitted before the plague
instead of after it![18] If he had only respected himself enough to be
faithful, instead of being too vain really to yield!

It is an interesting coincidence that, since he had this time defied the
remonstrances of his advisers, his confession of sin is entirely
personal: it is no longer, "I and my people are sinners," but "I have
sinned against the Lord your God, and against you." This last clause was
bitter to his lips, but the need for their intercession was urgent:
life and death were at stake upon the removal of this dense cloud of
creatures which penetrated everywhere, leaving everywhere an evil odour,
and of which a later sufferer complains, "We could not eat, but we bit a
locust; nor open our mouths, but locusts filled them."

Therefore he went on to entreat volubly, "Forgive, I pray thee, my sin
only this once, and intreat Jehovah your God that He may take away from
me this death only."

And at the prayer of Moses, the Lord caused the breeze to veer and rise
into a hurricane: "The Lord turned an exceeding strong west wind." Now,
the locust can float very well upon an easy breeze, and so it had been
wafted over the Red Sea; but it is at once beaten down by a storm, and
when it touches the water it is destroyed. Thus simply was the plag