The Ten Plagues

But when the king despised Moses’ words and paid no attention to them at all, terrible plagues fell on the Egyptians. I will describe each of them: because no such plagues ever happened to any other nation as the Egyptians now felt; because I want to show that Moses did not fail in a single thing he foretold them; and because it is for the good of mankind that they learn this caution — not to do anything that may displease God, lest he be provoked to anger and punish them for their wickedness.

At God’s command the river of Egypt ran with bloody water, so that it could not be drunk; and they had no other source of water either. The water was not only the color of blood, but brought great pains and bitter torment on those who dared to drink it. So it was for the Egyptians; but for the Hebrews the river was sweet and fit to drink, and no different from what it naturally used to be. The king, not knowing what to do in these astonishing circumstances, and afraid for the Egyptians, gave the Hebrews leave to go; but when the plague stopped, he changed his mind again and would not let them go. When God saw that he was ungrateful, and that after this calamity ended he would not grow wiser, he sent another plague on the Egyptians. A countless multitude of frogs devoured the produce of the ground. The river was full of them too, so that those who drew water found it fouled by the putrid fluid of these creatures as they died in the water and rotted along with it. The country was full of filthy slime from them as they were born and as they died. They ruined the people’s life at home: they turned up in what they ate and what they drank, and swarmed in great numbers over their beds. There was a foul smell too, and a stench rose from the frogs, living, dying and rotting. When the Egyptians were under the pressure of these miseries, the king ordered Moses to take the Hebrews with him and be gone. At that, the whole multitude of frogs vanished, and both the land and the river returned to their natural state. But as soon as Pharaoh saw the land freed from this plague, he forgot its cause and kept the Hebrews back; and as though he wanted to test the nature of more such judgments, he would not yet let Moses and his people go, having granted that freedom out of fear rather than out of any good judgment. [a]

So God punished his falseness with another plague added to the former one. Out of the bodies of the Egyptians there came an innumerable quantity of lice, by which, wicked as they were, they perished miserably, since they could not destroy this kind of vermin with either washes or ointments. At this terrible judgment the king of Egypt was thrown into confusion. He reasoned himself into fear that his people would be destroyed, and that the manner of this death was disgraceful besides, so that he was forced partly to recover from his wicked temper to a sounder mind, and gave the Hebrews themselves leave to depart. But when the plague then stopped, he thought it right to require them to leave their children and wives behind as pledges of their return. By this he provoked God to still fiercer anger, as if he thought he could deceive his providence, and as if it were only Moses, and not God, who was punishing the Egyptians for the Hebrews’ sake. For God filled that country with wild creatures of every kind and shape, such as had never been seen by men before; by them the people themselves perished, and the land was left without farmers to work it. And if anything escaped destruction by them, it was killed by a disease which the people suffered too. [b] But when Pharaoh would not yield to the will of God even then, but, while he gave the husbands leave to take their wives with them, still insisted that the children be left behind, God was not at a loss for ways to punish his wickedness with calamities of many kinds, worse than the earlier ones that had already afflicted them so widely. Their bodies broke out in terrible boils and blisters, while they were already being consumed inwardly; and a great part of the Egyptians perished in this way. When the king was not brought to reason by this plague either, hail was sent down from heaven — such hail as the climate of Egypt had never suffered before, and not like what falls in other climates in wintertime, but larger than the hail of those who live in the north and the far north. It fell at the height of spring and broke down their crops. After this a swarm of locusts devoured the seed the hail had not harmed, so that the Egyptians lost all hope of any future crops from the ground. [c]

One would think the calamities already described would have been enough to make a man wise who was only foolish and not wicked, and to make him see what was to his advantage. But Pharaoh, led not so much by folly as by wickedness, still contended with God even when he saw the cause of his miseries, and willfully deserted the cause of virtue. So he told Moses to take the Hebrews away with their wives and children, but to leave their livestock behind, since the Egyptians’ own had been destroyed. Moses said that what he asked was unjust, since they were obliged to offer sacrifices to God from those animals; and as time was drawn out over this, a thick darkness, without the least light, spread over the Egyptians. Their sight was blocked and their breathing choked by the thickness of the air, so that they died miserably, and in terror of being swallowed up by the dark cloud. Besides this, when the darkness cleared after three days and as many nights, and Pharaoh still did not repent and let the Hebrews go, Moses came to him and said, “How long will you disobey the command of God? For he commands you to let the Hebrews go, and there is no other way for you to be freed from the calamities you are under unless you do so.” But the king was angry at what he said, and threatened to cut off his head if he ever came to trouble him about these matters again. At this Moses said he would not speak to him about them any more, for the king himself, together with the leading men of the Egyptians, would beg the Hebrews to go away. Having said this, he went his way.

When God had made known that with one more plague he would compel the Egyptians to let the Hebrews go, he commanded Moses to tell the people to have a sacrifice ready, and to prepare themselves on the tenth day of the month Xanthicus for the fourteenth (the Egyptians call this month Pharmuthi and the Hebrews Nisan, but the Macedonians call it Xanthicus), and to bring the Hebrews out with everything they had. So Moses got the Hebrews ready to depart, sorted the people into clans, and kept them together in one place. When the fourteenth day came and all were ready to go, they offered the sacrifice and purified their houses with the blood, using bunches of hyssop for it; and when they had eaten supper, they burned the rest of the meat, as people just about to depart. That is why we still offer this sacrifice in the same way to this day, and call this festival Pascha, which means the feast of the passover, because on that day God passed us over and sent the plague on the Egyptians. For that night the destruction of the firstborn came on the Egyptians, so that many of the Egyptians who lived near the king’s palace persuaded Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go. So he called for Moses and told them to be gone, supposing that once the Hebrews were out of the country, Egypt would be freed from its miseries. The Egyptians also honored the Hebrews with gifts — some to get them to leave quickly, and others because they were neighbors and friends of theirs. [d]