miah, "that they had devised devices against me, saying, Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered," Jer. xi. 19. But the envious brethren of Joseph did not imbrue their hands in his blood, they did not destroy him as men destroy a tree when they cut it down, but they terribly distressed him; they sold him for a slave into Egypt: he had flourished in the favour of his father and of his GOD, like a tree by a reservoir of water; but they for a time dishonoured him, as a tree is disgraced by the breaking its boughs, and knocking off its leaves, by the wild Arabs, who want to derive some advantage from battering it after this manner, when they cannot come at it to destroy it.-HARMER.

Ver. 27. Benjamin shall raven as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.

The wolf is weaker than the lion or the bear, and less courageous than the leopard; but he scarcely yields to them in cruelty and rapaciousness. So Benjamin, although not destitute of courage and address, nor disinclined to war, possessed neither the strength, nor the manly spirit of Judah, whose symbol was the lion's whelp; but yet he was greedy of blood, and delighted in rapine; and in the early periods of Jewish history, he distinguished himself by an active and restless spirit, which commonly, like the wolf among lambs and kids, spent itself in petty or inglorious warfare, although it sometimes blazed forth in deeds of heroic valour, and general utility. He had the honour of giving the second judge to the nation of Israel, who delivered them from the oppressive yoke of Moab; and the first king who sat on the throne of that chosen people, whose valour saved them from the iron sceptre of Ammon, and more than once revenged the barbarities of the uncircumcised Philistines upon their discomfited hosts. In the decline of the Jewish commonwealth, Esther and Mordecai, who were both of this tribe, successfully interposed with the King of Persia, for the deliverance of their brethren, and took their station in the first rank of public benefactors. But the tribe of Benjamin ravened like wolves, that are so ferocious as to devour one another, when they desperately espoused the cause of Gibeah, and in the dishonourable

and bloody feud, reduced their own tribe to the very brink of ruin, and inflicted a deep wound on the other members of the state.-PAXTON.

CHAP. 50. ver. 10. And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan; and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.

See on chap. 45. 2.

Ver. 26. So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

The people of the East do not in general put their dead in a coffin; they simply fold up the corpse in a mat. When dying, the head is always placed towards the south, and in the grave also in the same direction. When a person is very ill, should another ask how he is, he will reply, "Ah! his head is towards the south;" meaning there is no hope. -ROBERTS.

When Joseph died, he was not only embalmed, but put in a coffin. This was an honour appropriated to persons of distinction, coffins not being universally used in Egypt. Maillet, speaking of the Egyptian repositories of the dead, having given an account of several niches that are found there, says, "it must not be imagined that the bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all enclosed in chests, and placed in niches; the greatest part were simply embalmed and swathed after that manner that every one hath some notion of; after which they laid them one by the side of another without any ceremony: some were even put into these tombs without any embalming at all, or such a slight one, that there remains nothing of them in the linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and those half rotten." Antique coffins of stone, and sycamore wood, are still to be seen in Egypt. It is said that some were formerly made of a kind of pasteboard, formed by folding and gluing cloth together a great number of times; these were curiously plastered and painted with hieroglyphics.THEVENOT.

CHAP. 1. ver. 14. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

Of a bad man it is said, in the East, "He makes the lives of his servants bitter." Also, "Ah! the fellow: the heart of his wife is made bitter." 'My soul is bitter." "My heart is like the bitter tree."-ROBERTS.

Ver. 16. And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. There have been great difficulties started in the nature and use of the instruments here rendered stools, (Heb. stones.) According to the rendering of the established version, it would seem that they were designed for procuring a more easy delivery for women in labour. But besides that stone seats were obviously very unfit for such a purpose, the Hebrew word plainly signifies a vessel of stone for holding water, (Ex. vii. 19.) A far more probable interpretation, we think, is made out by referring the pronoun them, not to the mothers, but to the children. The sense of the passage would then be this:-"When ye see the new-born children, for the purpose of being washed, laid in the troughs or vessels of stone for holding water, ye shall destroy the boys." A passage from Thevenot seems to confirm this construction. The kings of Persia are so afraid of being deprived of that power which they abuse, and are so apprehensive of being dethroned, that they destroy the children of their female relations, when they are brought to bed of boys, by pulling them into an earthen trough, where they suffer them to starve;" that is, probably, under pretence of preparing to wash them, they let them pine away or destroy them in the water.-B.

Ver. 19. And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Oriental women suffer little from parturition; for those of better condition are frequently on foot the day after delivery, and out of all confinement on the third day. They seldom call midwives, and when they do, they are sometimes delivered before they come to their assistance; the pooter sort, while they are labouring or planting, go aside, deliver themselves, wash the child, lay it in a cloth, and return to work again. The same facility attended the Hebrew women in Egypt; and the assertion of the midwives seems to have been literally true.-PAXTON.

CHAP. 2. ver. 5. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side. All this is very natural. Wherever there is a river, or a tank, which is known to be free from alligators, there females go in companies to some retired place to bathe. There are so many ceremonies, and so many causes for defilement, among the Hindoos, that the duty has often to be attended to. In the Scanda Purana, the beautiful daughter of Mongaly is described as going to the river with her maidens to bathe.--ROBERTS.

CHAP. 3. ver. 5. And he said, 'Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

See on Gen. 14. 23.

No heathen would presume to go un not givand, or enter a temple, or any other sacred place, without first taking off his sandals. Even native Christians, on entering a church or chapel, generally do the same thing. No respectable man would enter the house of another without having first taken off his sandals, which are generally left at the door, or taken inside by a servant.-ROBERTS.

CHAP. 7. ver. 1. And the LORD said unto Moses,
See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh; and
Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.

A man who is afraid to go into the presence of a king, or a governor, or a great man, will seek an interview with the minister, or some principal character; and should he be much alarmed, it will be said, "Fear not, friend; I will make you as a god to the king.' "What! are you afraid of the collector? fear not; you will be as a god to him." "Yes, yes, that upstart was once much afraid of the great ones; but now he is like a god among them."-ROBERTS.

Ver. 12. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods.

The rods of the magicians were hardly travelling staves, but doubtless such as they bore by virtue of their office as priests and servants of God. The Roman augurs were, in the like manner, accustomed to carry a staff called litures, which was crooked at the top, as described by Cicero (on Divination, b. i. chap. 17.) That these staves were a Roman invention, is improbable; they were derived, like others of their sacred customs, from the religion of older nations.-BURDER.

Ver. 18. And the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall stink; and the Egyptians shall loathe to drink of the water of the river.

There are few wells in Egypt, but their waters are not drank, being unpleasant and unwholesome; the water of the Nile is what they universally make use of in this corntry, which is looked upon to be extraordinarily wholesome, and at the same time, extremely delicious. "The water of Egypt," says the Abbè Mascrier, " is so delicious, that one would not wish the heat should be less, nor to be delivered from the sensation of thirst. The Turks find it so exquisitely charming, that they excite themselves to drink of it by eating salt. It is a common saying among them, that if Mohammed had drank of it, he would have begged of GoD not to have died, that he might always have done it. They add, that whoever has once drank of it, he ought to drink of it a second time. This is what the people of the country told me, when they saw me return from ten years' absence. When the Egyptians undertake the pilgrimage of Mecca, or go out of their country on any other account, they speak of nothing but the pleasure they shall find at their return in drinking the Nile water. There is nothing to be compared to this satisfaction; it surpasses in their esteem that of seeing their relations again, and their families. Agreeably to this, all those that have tasted of this water allow that they never met with the like in any other place. In truth, when one drinks of it the first time, it seems to be some water prepared by art. It has something in it inexpressibly agreeable and pleasing to the taste; and we ought to give it perhaps the same rank among waters, which champaigne has among wines. I must confess, however, it has, to my taste, too much sweetness. But its most valuable quality is, that it is infinitely salutary. Drink it in what quantities you will, it never in

the least incommodes you. This is so true, that it is no uncommon thing to see some persons drink three buckets of it in a day, without finding the least inconvenience. . When I give such encomiums to the water of Egypt, it is right to observe, that I speak only of that of the Nile, which indeed is the only water there which is drinkable. Wellwater is detestable and unwholesome; fountains are so rare, that they are a kind of prodigy in that country; and as for the rain-water, it would be in vain to attempt preserving that, singe scarce any falls in Egypt." The embellishments of a Frenchman may be seen here, but the fact, however, in general is indubitable. A person that never before heard of this delicacy of the water of the Nile, and the large quantities that on that account, are drank of it, will, I am very sure, find an energy in those words of Moses to Pharaoh, Exod. vii. 18, The Egyptian shall loathe to drink of the water of the river, which he never observed before. They will loathe to drink of that water which they used to prefer 1 all the waters of the universe, loathe to drink of that which they had been wont eagerly to long for; and will

her choose to drink of well-water, which is in their country so detestable. And as none of our commentators, that I know of, have observed this energy, my reader, I hope, will not be displeased that I have remarked it here. -HARMER.

Ver. 19. And that there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood, and in vessels of stone.

Perhaps these words do not signify, that the water that had been taken up into their vessels, was changed into blood. The water of the Nile is known to be very thick and muddy, and they purify it either by a paste made of almonds, or by filtrating it through certain pots of white earth, which is the preferable way, and therefore the possession of one of these pots is thought a great happiness. Now, may not the meaning of this passage be, that the water of the Nile should not only look red and nauseous, like blood in the river, but in their vessels too, when taken up in small quantities; and that no method whatever of purifying it should take place, but whether drank out of vessels of wood, or out of vessels of stone, by means of which they were wont to purge the Nile water, it should be the same, and should appear like blood? Some method must have been used in very early days to clarify the water of the Nile; the mere letting it stand to settle, hardly seems sufficient, especially if we consider the early elegance that obtained in Egypt. So simple an invention then as filtrating vessels may easily be supposed to be as ancient as the time of Moses; and to them therefore it seems natural to suppose the threatening refers.-HARMER.

The changing of the river into blood, in colour, I saw partially accomplished. For the first four or five days of the Nile's increase the waters are of a muddy red, owing to their being impregnated with a reddish coal in the upper country; as this is washed away, the river becomes of a greenish yellow for four or five days. When I first observed this, I perceived that the animalculæ in the water were more numerous than at any other period; even the Arabs would not drink the water without straining it through a rag: "And the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river."-MADDEN.

CHAP. 8. ver. 4. And the frogs shall come up, both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants.

This loathsome plague extended to every place, and to every class of men. The frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt; they entered into their houses, and into their bed-chambers; they crawled upon their persons, upon their beds, and into their kitchen utensils. The whole country, their palaces, their temples, their persons-all was polluted and hateful. Nor was it-in their power to wash away the nauseous filth with which they were tainted, for every stream and every lake was full of pollution. To a people who affected the most scrupulous purity in their persons, their habitations, and manner of living, nothing almost can be conceived more insufferable than this plague. The frog is, compared with many other reptiles, a harmless animal; it neither injures by its bite nor by its poison:

but it must have excited on that occasion, a disgust which rendered life an almost insupportable burden. The eye was tormented with beholding the march of their impure legions, and the ear with hearing the harsh tones of their voices: the Egyptians could recline upon no bed where they were not compelled to admit their cold and filthy embrace; they tasted no food which was not infected by their touch; and they smelled no perfume, but the foetid stench of their slime, or the putrid exhalations emitted from their dead carcasses. The insufferable annoyance of such insignificant creatures illustriously displayed the power of God, while it covered the haughty and unfeeling persecutors of his people with confusion, and filled them with utter dismay. How much the Egyptians endured from this visitation, is evident from the haste with which Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron, and begged the assistance of their prayers: "Entreat the Lord that he may take away the frogs from me and from my people; and I will let the people go that they may do sacrifice unto the Lord." Reduced to great extremity, and receiving no deliverance from the pretended miracles of his magicians, he had recourse to that God, concerning whom he had so proudly demanded, "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?" Subdued and instructed by adversity, he implores his compassion, and acknowledges the glory of his name; but, as the event proved, not with a sincere heart: "Then said Moses, Glory over me;" an obscure phrase, which is explained by the next clause," when shall I entreat for thee?" that is, according to some writers, although it belongs not to thee, Pharaoh, to prescribe to me the time of thy deliverance, which entirely depends on the will and pleasure of God alone; yet I, who am a prophet, and the interpreter of his will, grant thee, in his name, the choosing of the time when this plague shall be removed. But this interpretation is more ingenious than solid. Moses intends rather to suggest an antithesis between the perverse boasting of the proud monarch, and the pious gloriation of the humbled penitent, who was now reduced to cry for mercy. Thus far, said Moses, thou hast trusted in thine own power; then, fascinated with the deceitful miracle of the magicians, thou hast perversely exalted thyself against the God of heaven; now rather glory that thou hast in me an intercessor with God, whose prayers for thy deliverance he will not refuse to hear: and in proof that he is the only true God, and that I bear his commission, fix thou the time of deliverance.

"And he said, To-morrow. And he said, Be it according to thy word: that thou mayst know, that there is none like unto the Lord our God." To-morrow, said Pharaoh: but why not to-day? It was to be expected, that the vexed and humbled monarch would ask for instant relief. It is probable, the king had called Moses and Aaron in the evening, and that he durst not ask the promised deliverance on the same day, because he thought it was not to be obtained without many prayers. Whatever might be the true reason of Pharaoh's procrastination, the renowned Calvin seems to have no ground for his opinion, that his only reason was, after obtaining his desire, to depart as formerly from his engagement to let the people go; and that Moses, content with his promise, retired to intercede with Jehovah in his favour. That great man was persuaded, that the plague was immediately removed, not suffered to continue till next day. It is better, however, to abide by the obvious meaning of the clear and precise terms used on that occasion, both by the king and the prophet: "and he said, To-morrow. And he said, Be it according to thy word." Moses and Aaron, it is true, "went out from Pharaoh, and immediately cried unto the Lord, because of the frogs which he had brought against Pharaoh." But it is not said, the Lord immediately removed the plague; but only, that he "did according to the word of Moses." Now, Moses had promised relief next day, in the clearest terms, and we have every reason to suppose, that his intercession proceeded upon his promise; therefore, when the Lord did according to the word of Moses, he removed the frogs on the next day. They were not, however, swept away, like the locusts which succeeded them, but destroyed, and left on the face of the ground. They were not annihilated, nor resolved into mud, nor marched back into the river, from whence they had come; but left dead upon the ground, to prove the truth of the miracle,-that they had not died by the hands of men, but by the power of God; that the great deliverance

was not like the works of the magicians, a lying wonder, but a real interposition of almighty power, and an effect of divine goodness. The Egyptians were, therefore, reduced to the necessity of collecting them into heaps, which had the effect of more rapidly disengaging the putrid effluvia, and thus for a time, increasing the wretchedness of the country. Their destruction was probably followed by a pestilence, which cut off many of the people, in addition to those that died in consequence of the grievous vexations they endured from their loathsome adversaries; for, in one of the songs of Zion, it is said, "He sent frogs, which destroyed them;" laid waste their lands, and infected themselves with pestilential disorders. In another Psalm, the sweet singer of Israel brings the frogs which destroyed the Egyptians, from the land; whereas, Moses avers, they were produced by the river: "Their land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of their kings;" but the difference is only apparent, and may be easily reconciled; for the Psalmist may be understood as referring, not to any kind of land, but to the miry soil on the banks, or the mud in the bottom of the river. But the truth is, he uses a term, which signifies a region or country, comprehending both land and water. His true meaning then is, Their land or country, of which the Nile is a part, brought forth frogs: for the land of Egypt certainly produces whatever the Nile contains. Were it necessary to prove so clear a position, the words of Moses might be quoted, in which he reminds the people of Israel, that they came in the course of their journeyings to Jobath, a land of rivers; and the sublime ascription of Habakkuk: "Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers." The sea itself, belongs as it were to the neighbouring countries; for it is said, that Solomon constructed a fleet" in the land of Edom;" that is, in the sea which washed the shores of Edom.

It has been inquired, why David in the same passage says, the frogs penetrated into the chambers of their kings. The answer is easy: the plural is often used for the singular in Hebrew: thus the Psalmist himself: "We will go into his tabernacles;" although there was but one tabernacle where the people of Israel assembled for religious worship. The servants of Nebuchadnezzar accused the three children in these terms: "they do not worship thy gods," meaning only the golden image, which the king had set up in the plain of Dura. The language of David, therefore, in the text under consideration, meant no more than the king's palace. Some interpreters propose another solution: That the kingdom of Egypt was at that time divided into a number of small independent states, governed each by its own prince, and that all of them were equally subjected to the plague; but although it must be granted that this country was in succeeding ages, divided into a number of small principalities, no evidence has been adduced in support of such a state of things in the time of Moses; on the contrary, the whole tenor of his narrative leads to the opposite conclusion. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose, thit the principal grandees of Egypt, many of whom were persons of great power and influence in the state, received from the royal Psalmist the title of kings; it is certainly not more incongruous, than to give the title of princes to the merchants of Tyre; or the title of kings to the princes of Assyria. The meaning of the passage then, is briefly this; the potent monarch of Egypt, in the midst of his vassal princes, in the innermost recesses of his palace, could find no means of defence against the ceaseless intrusion of the impure vermin which covered the face of his dominions, and equally infested the palaces of the rich, and the cottages of the poor; the awful abode of the king, and the clay-built hovel of the mendicant.-PAXTON.

Ver. 9. And Moses said unto Pharaoh, Glory over me: when shall I entreat for thee, and for thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy the frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may remain in the river only?

The margin has, for "glory," "honour," and for " over me," "against me." Pharaoh had besought Moses to pray that the Lord might take away the frogs, and Moses wished the king to have the honour or glory (in preference to himself) of appointing a time when he should thus pray to the Lord to take them away. This was not only compli

mentary to Pharaoh, but it would have a strong tendency to convince him that the Lord had heard the prayer of Moses, because he himself had appointed the time. The Tamul translation has this, "Let the honour be to you (or over me) to appoint a time when I shall pray."-ROBERTS.

Ver. 16. And the LORD said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.

The learned have not been agreed in their opinion concerning the third of the plagues of Egypt: Exod. vii. 16, &c. Some of the ancients suppose that gnats, or some animals resembling them, were meant; whereas our translators, and many of the moderns, understand the original word kinneem, as signifying lice. Bishop Patrick, in his commentary, supposes that Bochart has sufficiently proved, out of the text itself, that our version is right, since gnats are bred in fenny places, he might have said with truth, and with much greater energy of argument, in water, whereas the animals Moses here speaks of, were brought out of the dust of the earth. A passage I lately met with, in Vinisaur's account of the expedition of our King Richard the First into the Holy Land, may, perhaps, give a truer representation of this Egyptian plague, than those that suppose they were gnats, or those that suppose they were lice, that God used on that occasion, as the instrument of that third correction. Speaking of the marching of that army of Croisaders, from Cayphas to where the ancient Cæsarea stood, that writer informs us, that cach night certain worms distressed them, commonly called tarrentes, which crept upon the ground, and occasioned a very burning heat by most painful punctures. They hurt nobody in the day time, but when night came on they extremely pestered them, being armed with stings, conveying a poison which quickly occasioned those that were wounded by them to swell, and was attended with the most acute pains.-HARMER.

CHAP. 9. ver. 8. And the LORD said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it towards the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh.

When the magicians pronounce an imprecation on an individual, a village, or a country, they take ashes of cow's dung, (or from a common fire,) and throw them in the air, saying to the objects of their displeasure, such a sickness, or such a curse, shall surely come upon you.-ROBERTS.

Ver. 25. And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.

I do not apprehend that it is at all necessary to suppose, that all the servants, and all the cattle of the Egyptians, that were abroad at the time the hail fell, which Moses threatened, and which was attended with thunder and lightning, died; it is sufficient to suppose they all felt the hailstones, and that several of them were killed. This was enough to justify the words of Moses, that it should be a "grievous hail, such as had not fallen before in Egypt from its foundation." For though it hails sometimes in Egypt as well as rains, as Dr. Pococke found it hailed at Fioume, when he was there in February; and thunders too, as Thevenot says it did one night in December, when he was at Cairo; yet fatal effects are not wont to follow in that country, as appears from what Thevenot says of this thunder, which, he tells us, killed a man in the castle there, though it had never been heard before that thunder had killed anybody at Cairo. For divers people then to have been killed by the lightning and the hail, besides cattle, was an event that Moses might well say had never happened there before, from the time it began to be inhabited. I will

⚫ Which is made from the original; and the genius of the language is every way more suited to the Hebrew, than ours. And nearly all the orientalisms in the marginal references of the English Bible are inserted in the text of the Tamul translation.

only add, that Moses, by representing this as an extraordinary hail, supposed that it did sometimes hail there, as it is found in fact to do, though not as in other countries: the not raining in Egypt, it is well known, is to be understood in the same manner.-HARMER.

CHAP. 10. ver. 11. Not so go now ye that are men, and serve the LORD; for that ye did desire. And they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence.

Among natives of rank, when a person is very importunate or troublesome, when he presses for something which the former are not willing to grant, he is told to begone. Should he still persist, the servants are called, and the order is given, "Drive that fellow out." He is then seized by the neck, or taken by the hands, and dragged from the premises; he all the time screaming and bawling as if they were taking his life. Thus to be driven out is the greatest indignity which can be offered, and nothing but the most violent rage will induce a superior to have recourse to it.-ROBERTS.

Ver. 19. And the LORD turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea; there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt.

It was not the purpose of God to complete every punishment at once, but to carry on these judgments in a series, and by degrees to cut off all hopes, and every resource upon which the Egyptians depended. By the hail and thunder and fire mingled with rain, both the flax and barley were entirely ruined, and their pastures must have been greatly injured. The wheat and rye were not yet in ear; and such was the fertility of the soil in Egypt, that a very short time would have sufficed for the leaves of the trees, and the grass of the field, to have been recruited. To complete, therefore, these evils, it pleased God to send a host of locusts, to devour every leaf and blade of grass, which had been left in the former devastation, and whatever was beginning to vegetate. It is hard to conceive how wide the mischief extends, when a cloud of these insects comes upon a country. They devour to the very root and bark, so that it is a long time before vegetation can be renewed. How dreadful their inroads at all times were, may be known from a variety of authors, both ancient and modern. They describe them as being brought by one wind, and carried off by another. They swarm greatly in Asia and Africa. In respect to Europe, Thevenot tells us, that the region upon the Boristhenes, and particularly that inhabited by the Cossacks, is greatly infested with locusts, especially in a dry season. They come in vast clouds, which exiend fifteen and sometimes eighteen miles, and are nine to twelve in breadth. The air, by their interposition, is rendered quite obscure, however bright the day may have been before. In two hours they devour all the corn, wherever they settle, and often a famine ensues. At night, when they repose upon the earth, the ground is covered with them four inches deep, or more and if a carriage goes over them, and they are mashed under foot, the smell of them is scarcely to be borne, especially when they are reduced to a state of putrefaction. They come from Circassia, Mingrelia, and Tartary, on which account the natives rejoice in a north or northeast wind, which carries them into the Black Sea, where they perish. The vast region of Asia, especially the southern part, is liable to their depredations. China is particularly infested with them; and the natives use various means to obviate the evil, which is generally too powerful to be evaded. But the most fearful accounts are from Africa, where the heat of the climate, and the nature of the soil in many places, contribute to the production of these animals in astonishing numbers.-BURDER.

Ver. 21. And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thy hand towards heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt.

When the magicians deliver their predictions, they

stretch forth the right hand towards heaven, to show that they have power, and that God favours them. The Tamul translation has this, "darkness which causeth to feel;" i. e. so dark that a man is obliged to feel for his way, and until he shall have so felt, he cannot proceed. Thus the darkness was so great, that their eyes were not of any use; they were obliged to grope for their way.-ROBERTS.

[This is probably a correct view of the passage, as a darkness consisting of thick clammy fogs, of vapours and exhalations so condensed as to be perceived by the organs of touch, would have extinguished animal life in a few moments.]-B.

Ver. 28. And Pharaoh said unto him, Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more: for in that day thou seest my face, thou shalt die.

Has a servant, an agent, or an officer, deeply offended his superior, he will say to him," Take care never to see my face again; for on the day you do that, evil shall come upon you." Begone, and in future never look in this face," pointing to his own.-ROBERTS.

CHAP. 11. ver. 2. Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold.

Dr. Boothroyd, instead of borrow, translates "ask." Dr. A. Clarke says, "request, demand, require." The Israelites wished to go three days' journey into the wilderness, that they might hold a feast unto the Lord. When the Orientals go to their sacred festivals, they always put on their best jewels. Not to appear before the gods in such a way, they consider would be disgraceful to themselves and displeasing to the deities. A person, whose clothes or jewels are indifferent, will BORROW of his richer neighbours; and nothing is more common than to see poor people standing before the temples, or engaged in sacred cercmonies, well adorned with jewels. The almost pauper

bride or bridegroom at a marriage may often be seen decked with gems of the most costly kind, which have been BORROWED for the occasion. It fully accords, therefore, with the idea of what is due at a sacred or social feast, to be thus adorned in their best attire. Under these circum

stances, it would be perfectly easy to BORROW of the Egyptians their jewels, as they themselves, in their festivals, would doubtless wear the same things. It is also recorded, the Lord gave them "favour in the sight of the Egyptians." It does not appear to have been fully known to the Hebrews, that they were going finally to leave Egypt: they might expect to return; and it is almost certain that, if their oppressors had known they were not to return, they would not have LENT them their jewels.

The Lord, however, did say to Moses, in chap. iii. 11., that He would "bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt," and that they should worship Him upon that mountain; but whether Moses fully understood Him is not certain. But the Lord knew!-certainly He did. And as a father, or a master, who saw his children, or slaves, deprive each other of their rightful pay, (as the Egyptians did the Israelites,) had a right to give to the injured what they had been unjustly deprived of: so the Lord, in whose hands are all things, who daily takes from one, and gives to another; and who builds up, or destroys, the families of the earth; would have an undoubted right to give to the Hebrews that property of which the Egyptians had so unjustly and cruelly deprived them.-ROBERTS.

. Ver. 5. And all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of beasts.

In the first ages, they parched or roasted their grain; a practice which the people of Israel, as we learn from the scriptures, long continued; afterward they pounded it in a mortar, to which Solomon thus alludes: "Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat, with a pes