John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: April 14

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: April 14

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The Storm and the Locusts

The next plague which the obduracy of the king brought upon the land of Egypt was a fearful storm of thunder, lightning, rain, and hail. Such a storm, terrible in any country, would be peculiarly awful in Egypt, where these natural phenomena are comparatively unknown. We say comparatively; for it is not correct to say, as some to magnify the miracle have said, that Egypt knows not rain nor hail. It was of the same essential character as the other plagues—an intense production, at an appointed time, of phenomena not unknown to the country; and there is no more reason for contending in this instance, that rain and hail are naturally unknown, than, in another, that frogs were unknown before that day in which swarms of them overspread the land. Indeed the scriptural statement that this storm was “such as hath not been in Egypt from the foundation thereof, even until now,” clearly intimates, that storms of inferior power had before been known, and that this was unexampled only in degree. The scene is in Lower Egypt. In that part, and especially towards the Mediterranean, rain is not uncommon in January, February, and March; hail is not unknown, though rare; and thunder is sometimes heard. Further south, towards Cairo and through Middle Egypt, these phenomena are still more rarely witnessed; and in Upper Egypt hail is unknown, and rain is a rare phenomenon. A storm in which these elements were combined with prodigious power—the rain in floods, hailstones of prodigious size and force, thunder in awful crashes, and lightning that ran like fire along the ground—must have been a most astonishing and dreadful spectacle to the Egyptians. Nor was the terror all. The actual calamity inflicted was most serious. Those who, despite the warning, left their cattle abroad in the fields, saw them stricken dead by the hailstones, and it also smote every bush, and broke every tree of the field. It is well worthy of notice, as one of the numerous incidents which evince the authenticity of the narrative, by facts which show the writer’s familiar knowledge of Egypt, and by circumstances impossible to a fabricator—that the time when this occurred is included within the period during which alone the cattle are turned out to graze in Egypt. This is in the months of January, February, March, and April. In these months only can green food be found, and during the rest of the year the animals are supplied with dry fodder. It was about the middle of this period that the recorded event occurred, and correspondingly the cattle are described as abroad in the fields. At any other period of the year this incident would have been inappropriate and untrue.

Again, we are told: “The flax and the barley were smitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled. But the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up.” This is one of those texts which have a bearing on the authenticity of the composition in which they appear, the more satisfactory on account of their unobtrusive character. The fact here mentioned is not of the sort which tradition would be at all likely to preserve, or an historian of any subsequent age to introduce. But in an eye-witness of the scene, excited as his mind was by its whole aspect, it was natural to record such particulars. It would have been unaccountable in a writer otherwise circumstanced, The peculiar nature of the climate and physical constitution of Egypt, produces particular conditions with respect to these products, which do not apply to the neighboring countries; and it is this fact which renders such indications peculiarly valuable and important. Flax and barley are there nearly ripe, when wheat and spelt are yet green. Barley is especially important in Egypt. It there comes to maturity about a month earlier than wheat, and its harvest is peculiarly abundant. Barley and flax are generally ripe in March, wheat and spelt in April, the two latter coming to maturity about the same time. In the land of Canaan the season for the ingathering of all these products is from a month to six weeks later.

Under the influence of this most serious calamity, and under the unusual terrors of “mighty thunderings and hail,” the king was strong in his expressions of contrition and of good resolutions for the future. “I have sinned,” he said, “and I and my people are wicked. Entreat the Lord (for it is enough), that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and ye shall stay no longer.” But Moses knew him better than he knew himself, and placed no faith in this transient manifestation of right feeling. Yet he complied with his wish. He went out beyond the city, and spread his arms abroad unto the Lord, and forthwith “the thunder and the rain ceased, and the rain was not poured upon the earth.”

Finding that the king was regardless of his promise, Moses was commissioned to go again before him, and threaten that an army of locusts should tomorrow invade the land, and consume all that had escaped the hail. Swarms of this devouring insect had often before scourged the land; but this was to be beyond all former precedent; and their number, size, and voracity would be such, that they should render the very ground invisible, and consume every green thing. The wheat and spelt which had escaped the ravages of the hail, would now be swept away by the locusts, and whatever trees retained their foliage, were now to be stripped bare. The idea of such a calamity appalled the minds of the Egyptian courtiers, whose property had greatly suffered, and who had by this time learned, that the threatenings of the Lord through Moses failed not in any one point of their accomplishment. They ventured to interfere. They said, “How long shall this man be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve Jehovah their God: knowest thou not that Egypt is destroyed?” These words were not without weight with the king. He could not but infer, that if his own courtiers and counsellors were of this opinion, he was no longer sustained by the concurrence of his people in the resistance which he was still disposed to offer to the demand of the Israelites. He could not but see, that they now lamented his obstinacy, and were disposed to consider that, as the least of many evils, and in order

“To gather breath in many miseries,”

it were better that the demand of the Israelites should be complied with. Perceiving this to be the feeling of his court and people, Pharaoh shrunk from the responsibility of opposing himself single-handed to it; he resolved so far to meet their wishes, as to show a disposition to let the Israelites depart, on what might appear to be reasonable terms—so as at least to exonerate himself from the odium of unreflecting resistance. He therefore sent to call Moses and Aaron back; and, although he must already well have understood their wishes, he asked who they were that intended to go? The answer was plainly, “All;”—not a living soul was to he left behind; all—young and old, sons and daughters, flocks and herds. This bold and uncompromising answer, was too much for the proud king. Highly exasperated, he commanded them to be driven from his presence, intimating that the men might go, but the women and children must be left behind as hostages. But a rod was held over him more terrible than the sword of kings. That rod was lifted up, and the locusts came. Has the reader ever seen a locust? They are common enough in entomological collections. If not, a grasshopper will very well represent it—a locust is, in fact, a grasshopper. Hard is it to think, that this not very formidable looking, and far from unpleasant creature, should be so terribly destructive. But it is the incredible immensity of their numbers, and the aggregate result of the intense and rapid voracity of every one of them, which renders even this small creature one of the most terrible of the plagues with which God scourges the earth. We, in our happy exemption from such an evil, can but imperfectly apprehend its force; for words cannot adequately represent it. We have ourselves seen the mid-day light darkened to evening shades as their myriads passed, layer above layer, overhead, for more than half an hour. We have seen the ground covered with them for miles around, without a visible interstice; and we have seen districts which were as the garden of Eden before them, left behind them as a desolate wilderness. Other travellers furnish points more illustrative of this plague than what has fallen within our own experience, as it is but rarely that they alight upon a house or on towns in the entire body; although a flock cannot pass without a number of stragglers alighting upon the house-tops and the trees, which would be thought considerable but for the presence of the immense host which passes on. To show the intensity of this visitation in countries bordering on Egypt, we give a few passages from a large statement on the subject, as regarding Abyssinia, which may be found in a valuable collection of travels, published in 1625. Note: Purchas, his Pilgrimes, pt. ii., pp. 1046-1048. It is translated from an account of the proceedings of the Portuguese missionaries in the dominions of Prester John or Prete Janni. “In this country, and in all the dominions of Prete Janni, is a very great and horrible plague; which is an innumerable company of locusts, which eat and consume all the corn and trees; and the number of them is so great, as it is incredible; and with their multitude they cover the earth, and fill the air in such wise, that it is a hard matter to be able to see the sun. And again, I say it is an incredible thing to him that hath not seen it. And if the damage which they do were general through all the provinces and realms of Prete Janni, they would perish with famine, and it would be impossible to inhabit the same. But one year they destroy one province, and in another some other. Sometimes in two or three of these provinces, and wherever they go, the country remaineth more ruinate and destroyed than if it had been set on fire…. Oftentimes we heard say, Such a country, or such a realm, is destroyed with locusts. While we abode in the town of Barua, we saw the sign of the sun and the shadow of the earth, Note: This is explained by what the writer had before said—that the approach of the locusts was known the day beforehand by the yellow tinge of the heavens, “and the ground becometh yellow through the light which reverberateth from their wings, whereupon the people became suddenly as dead men, saying, “We are undone, for the locusts come!” which was all yellow, whereat the people were half dead for sorrow. The next day the number of these vermin which came was incredible, which to our judgment covered four-and-twenty miles in compass, according to what we were informed afterwards.”

In a journey subsequently—“We travelled five days’ journey through places wholly waste and destroyed, wherein millet had been sown, which had stalks so great as those we set in our vineyards, and we saw them all broken and beaten down, as if a tempest had been there; and this the locusts did. The trees were without leaves, and the bark of them was all devoured; and no grass was there to be seen, for they had eaten up all things; and if we had not been warned and advised to carry victual with us, we and our cattle had perished. This country was all covered with locusts without wings; and they told us these were the seed of them which had eaten up all, and that as soon as their wings were grown, they would seek after the old ones. The number of them was so great, that I shall not speak of it, because I shall not be believed: but this I will say, that I saw men, women, and children sit as forlorn and dead among the locusts, and I said unto them, Why stand ye as dead men; and will not slay these vermin, to be avenged of the mischief which their fathers and mothers have done unto you, seeing that those which you shall kill will never more be able to do you harm? They answered, that they had not the heart to resist the plague, which God sent upon them for their sins. And all the people of this country departed. We found the ways full of men and women, travelling on foot, with their children in their arms and upon their heads, going into other countries where they might find food; which was a pitiful thing to behold.”

These incidents form an emphatic commentary upon the text before us: “They covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.”

The subject is well suited for poetry; but we remember no poet who has dealt with it except Southey, whose vivid and clear description of oriental matters, must excite the wonder of those who recollect that he never visited the East.

“Here Moath painted, where a cloud

Of locusts, from the desolated fields

Of Syria, wing’d their way

‘Lo, how created things

Obey the written doom!’

Onward they came, a dark continuous cloud

Of congregated myriads numberless;

The rushing of whose wings was as the sound

Of some broad river, headlong in its course,

Plunged from a mountain summit; or the roar

Of a wild ocean in the autumnal storm,

Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks.

Onward they came—the winds impelled them on;

Their work was done, their path of ruin past,

Their graves were ready in the wilderness.”