25 And Moses said, Thou must give also sacrifices and burnt-offerings into our hands, that we may sacrifice to Jehovah our God.
And this is the thing which thou shalt do to them to hallow them, that they may serve me as priests: take one young bullock, and two rams without blemish, and unleavened bread, and unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil -- of wheaten flour shalt thou make them. And thou shalt put them into one basket, and present them in the basket, with the bullock and the two rams. And Aaron and his sons thou shalt bring near the entrance of the tent of meeting, and shalt bathe them with water. And thou shalt take the garments, and clothe Aaron with the vest, and the cloak of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastplate, and shalt gird him with the girdle of the ephod. And thou shalt put the turban upon his head, and fasten the holy diadem to the turban, and shalt take the anointing oil, and pour [it] on his head, and anoint him. And thou shalt bring his sons near, and clothe them with the vests. And thou shalt gird them with the girdle -- Aaron and his sons, and bind the high caps on them; and the priesthood shall be theirs for an everlasting statute; and thou shalt consecrate Aaron and his sons. And thou shalt present the bullock before the tent of meeting; and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock; and thou shalt slaughter the bullock before Jehovah, at the entrance of the tent of meeting; and thou shalt take of the blood of the bullock, and put it on the horns of the altar with thy finger, and shalt pour all the blood at the bottom of the altar. And thou shalt take all the fat that covereth the inwards, and the net of the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and burn them upon the altar. And the flesh of the bullock, and its skin, and its dung, shalt thou burn with fire outside the camp: it is a sin-offering. And thou shalt take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall put their hands upon the head of the ram; and thou shalt slaughter the ram, and shalt take its blood, and sprinkle [it] on the altar round about. And thou shalt cut up the ram into its pieces, and wash its inwards, and its legs, and put [them] upon its pieces, and upon its head; and thou shalt burn the whole ram upon the altar: it is a burnt-offering to Jehovah -- a sweet odour; it is an offering by fire to Jehovah. And thou shalt take the second ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands upon the head of the ram; and thou shalt slaughter the ram, and take of its blood, and put [it] on the tip of the [right] ear of Aaron, and on the tip of the right ear of his sons, and on the thumb of their right hand, and on the great toe of their right foot; and thou shalt sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about. And thou shalt take of the blood that is upon the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle [it] on Aaron, and on his garments, and on his sons, and on the garments of his sons with him; and he shall be hallowed, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments with him. Also of the ram shalt thou take the fat, and the fat-tail, and the fat that covereth the inwards, and the net of the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and the right shoulder -- for it is a ram of consecration -- and one loaf of bread, and one cake of oiled bread, and one wafer out of the basket of the unleavened [bread] that is before Jehovah; and thou shalt put all this in the hands of Aaron, and in the hands of his sons, and shalt wave them as a wave-offering before Jehovah. And thou shalt receive them of their hand and burn [them] upon the altar over the burnt-offering, for a sweet odour before Jehovah: it is an offering by fire to Jehovah. And thou shalt take the breast of the ram of consecration which is for Aaron, and wave it as a wave-offering before Jehovah; and it shall be thy part. And thou shalt hallow the breast of the wave-offering, and the shoulder of the heave-offering, that hath been waved and heaved up, of the ram of the consecration, of that which is for Aaron, and of [that] which is for his sons. And they shall be for Aaron and his sons, as an everlasting statute, on the part of the children of Israel; for it is a heave-offering; and it shall be a heave-offering on the part of the children of Israel of the sacrifices of their peace-offerings, [as] their heave-offering to Jehovah. And the holy garments of Aaron shall be his sons' after him, to be anointed therein, and to be consecrated in them. The son that is priest in his stead shall put them on seven days, when he cometh into the tent of meeting to serve in the sanctuary. And thou shalt take the ram of the consecration, and boil its flesh in a holy place. And Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, at the entrance of the tent of meeting. They shall eat the things with which the atonement was made, to consecrate [and] to hallow them; but a stranger shall not eat [of them], for they are holy. And if [any] of the flesh of the consecration, and of the bread, remain until the morning, then thou shalt burn the remainder with fire: it shall not be eaten, for it is holy. And thus shalt thou do to Aaron, and to his sons, according to all that I have commanded thee: seven days shalt thou consecrate them. And thou shalt offer every day a bullock as a sin-offering for atonement; and the altar shalt thou cleanse from sin, by making atonement for it, and shalt anoint it, to hallow it. Seven days shalt thou make atonement for the altar and hallow it; and the altar shall be most holy: whatever toucheth the altar shall be holy. And this is what thou shalt offer upon the altar -- two lambs of the first year, day by day continually. The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer between the two evenings. And with the one lamb a tenth part of wheaten flour mingled with beaten oil, a fourth part of a hin; and a drink-offering, a fourth part of a hin of wine. And the second lamb shalt thou offer between the two evenings; as the oblation in the morning, and as its drink-offering shalt thou offer with this, for a sweet odour, an offering by fire to Jehovah. It shall be a continual burnt-offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before Jehovah, where I will meet with you, to speak there with thee. And there will I meet with the children of Israel; and it shall be hallowed by my glory. And I will hallow the tent of meeting, and the altar; and I will hallow Aaron and his sons, that they may serve me as priests. And I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel, and will be their God. And they shall know that I am Jehovah their God, who have brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, to dwell in their midst: I am Jehovah their God.
Then wrought Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every man that was wise-hearted, in whom Jehovah had put wisdom and understanding to know how to work all manner of work of the service of the sanctuary -- according to all that Jehovah had commanded. And Moses called Bezaleel and Aholiab, and every man that was wise-hearted, in whose heart God had put wisdom, every one whose heart moved him to come to the work to do it. And they took from Moses every heave-offering that the children of Israel had brought for the work of the service of the sanctuary, to make it. And they still brought him voluntary offerings morning by morning. And all the wise men that wrought all the work of the sanctuary came, every man from his work which they wrought, and spoke to Moses, saying, The people bring much more than enough for the service of the work that Jehovah commanded to be done. Then Moses gave commandment, and they caused it to be proclaimed through the camp, saying, Let neither man nor woman make any more work for the heave-offering of the sanctuary! So the people were restrained from bringing; for the work they had was sufficient for all the work to do it, and it was too much. And every wise-hearted man among those that wrought the work of the tabernacle made ten curtains of twined byssus, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: [with] cherubim of artistic work did he make them. The length of one curtain was twenty-eight cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits -- one measure for all the curtains. And he coupled five of the curtains one to another, and [the other] five curtains coupled he one to another. And he made loops of blue on the edge of one curtain at the edge of the coupling; he did likewise in the edge of the outermost curtain in the other coupling. He made fifty loops in one curtain, and he made fifty loops at the end of the curtain that was in the other coupling: the loops were opposite to one another. And he made fifty clasps of gold, and coupled the curtains together with the clasps, so that the tabernacle became one. And he made curtains of goats' [hair] for the tent over the tabernacle: eleven curtains did he make them. The length of one curtain was thirty cubits, and four cubits the breadth of one curtain -- one measure for the eleven curtains. And he coupled five of the curtains by themselves, and six of the curtains by themselves. And he made fifty loops on the edge of the outermost curtain in the coupling, and fifty loops made he on the edge of the curtain in the other coupling. And he made fifty clasps of copper to couple the tent, that it might be one. And he made a covering for the tent [of] rams' skins dyed red, and a covering of badgers' skins above [that]. And he made the boards for the tabernacle of acacia-wood, standing up; ten cubits the length of the boards, and one cubit and a half the breadth of one board; two tenons in one board, connected one with the other: thus did he make for all the boards of the tabernacle. And he made the boards for the tabernacle: twenty boards for the south side southward; and he made forty bases of silver under the twenty boards, two bases under one board, for its two tenons, and two bases under another board for its two tenons. And for the other side of the tabernacle, on the side toward the north, he made twenty boards, and their forty bases of silver, two bases under one board, and two bases under another board. And at the rear of the tabernacle, westward, he made six boards; and he made two boards for the corners of the tabernacle at the rear; and they were joined beneath, and were coupled together at the top thereof into one ring: thus he did to both of them in both the corners; and there were eight boards, and their silver bases: sixteen bases, under every board two bases. -- And he made bars of acacia-wood: five for the boards of the one side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the boards of the tabernacle at the rear, westward. And he made the middle bar in the midst of the boards reach from one end to the other. And he overlaid the boards with gold; and made their rings of gold [as] receptacles for the bars; and overlaid the bars with gold. And he made the veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and twined byssus: of artistic work he made it [with] cherubim. And he made four pillars of acacia[-wood] for it, and overlaid them with gold; their hooks were of gold; and he cast for them four bases of silver. And he made a curtain for the entrance of the tent of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and twined byssus, of embroidery; and its five pillars with their hooks; and he overlaid their capitals and their connecting-rods with gold; and their five bases were of copper.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Exodus 10
Commentary on Exodus 10 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
The eighth plague; the Locusts. - Exodus 10:1-6. As Pharaoh's pride still refused to bend to the will of God, Moses was directed to announce another, and in some respects a more fearful, plague. At the same time God strengthened Moses' faith, by telling him that the hardening of Pharaoh and his servants was decreed by Him, that these signs might be done among them, and that Israel might perceive by this to all generations that He was Jehovah (cf. Exodus 7:3-5). We may learn from Ps 78 and 105 in what manner the Israelites narrated these signs to their children and children's children. אתת שׁית , to set or prepare signs (Exodus 10:1), is interchanged with שׂוּם (Exodus 10:2) in the same sense (vid., Exodus 8:12). The suffix in בּקרבּו (Exodus 10:1) refers to Egypt as a country; and that in בּם (Exodus 10:2) to the Egyptians. In the expression, “ thou mayest tell, ” Moses is addressed as the representative of the nation. התעלּל : to have to do with a person, generally in a bad sense, to do him harm (1 Samuel 31:4). “How I have put forth My might” ( De Wette ).
As Pharaoh had acknowledged, when the previous plague was sent, that Jehovah was righteous (Exodus 9:27), his crime was placed still more strongly before him: “ How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before Me? ” ( לענת for להענת , as in Exodus 34:24).
To punish this obstinate refusal, Jehovah would bring locusts in such dreadful swarms as Egypt had never known before, which would eat up all the plants left by the hail, and even fill the houses. “ They will cover the eye of the earth .” This expression, which is peculiar to the Pentateuch, and only occurs again in Exodus 10:15 and Numbers 22:5, Numbers 22:11, is based upon the ancient and truly poetic idea, that the earth, with its covering of plants, looks up to man. To substitute the rendering “surface” for the “eye,” is to destroy the real meaning of the figure; “face” is better. It was in the swarms that actually hid the ground that the fearful character of the plague consisted, as the swarms of locusts consume everything green. “The residue of the escape” is still further explained as “that which remaineth unto you from the hail,” viz., the spelt and wheat, and all the vegetables that were left (Exodus 10:12 and Exodus 10:15). For “all the trees that sprout” (Exodus 10:5), we find in Exodus 10:15, “all the tree-fruits and everything green upon the trees.”
The announcement of such a plague of locusts, as their forefathers had never seen before since their existence upon earth, i.e., since the creation of man (Exodus 10:6), put the servants of Pharaoh in such fear, that they tried to persuade the king to let the Israelites go. “ How long shall this (Moses) be a snare to us?...Seest thou not yet, that Egypt is destroyed? ” מוקשׁ , a snare or trap for catching animals, is a figurative expression for destruction. האנשׁים (Exodus 10:7) does not mean the men, but the people. The servants wished all the people to be allowed to go as Moses had desired; but Pharaoh would only consent to the departure of the men ( הגּברים , Exodus 10:11).
Exodus 10:8-11
As Moses had left Pharaoh after announcing the plague, he was fetched back again along with Aaron, in consequence of the appeal made to the king by his servants, and asked by the king, how many wanted to go to the feast. ומי מי , “ who and who still further are the going ones; ” i.e., those who wish to go? Moses required the whole nation to depart, without regard to age or sex, along with all their flocks and herds. He mentioned “ young and old, sons and daughters; ” the wives as belonging to the men being included in the “ we .” Although he assigned a reason for this demand, viz., that they were to hold a feast to Jehovah, Pharaoh was so indignant, that he answered scornfully at first: “ Be it so; Jehovah be with you when I let you and your little ones go; ” i.e., may Jehovah help you in the same way in which I let you and your little ones go. This indicated contempt not only for Moses and Aaron, but also for Jehovah, who had nevertheless proved Himself, by His manifestations of mighty power, to be a God who would not suffer Himself to be trifled with. After this utterance of his ill-will, Pharaoh told the messengers of God that he could see through their intention. “ Evil is before your face; ” i.e., you have evil in view. He called their purpose an evil one, because they wanted to withdraw the people from his service. “ Not so, ” i.e., let it not be as you desire. “ Go then, you men, and serve Jehovah .” But even this concession was not seriously meant. This is evident from the expression, “ Go then, ” in which the irony is unmistakeable; and still more so from the fact, that with these words he broke off all negotiation with Moses and Aaron, and drove them from his presence. ויגרשׁ : “ one drove them forth; ” the subject is not expressed, because it is clear enough that the royal servants who were present were the persons who drove them away. “ For this are ye seeking: ” אתהּ relates simply to the words “serve Jehovah,” by which the king understood the sacrificial festival, for which in his opinion only the men could be wanted; not that “he supposed the people for whom Moses had asked permission to go, to mean only the men” ( Knobel ). The restriction of the permission to depart to the men alone was pure caprice; for even the Egyptians, according to Herodotus (2, 60), held religious festivals at which the women were in the habit of accompanying the men.
After His messengers had been thus scornfully treated, Jehovah directed Moses to bring the threatened plague upon the land. “ Stretch out thy hand over the land of Egypt with locusts; ” i.e., so that the locusts may come. עלה , to go up: the word used for a hostile invasion. The locusts are represented as an army, as in Joel 1:6. Locusts were not an unknown scourge in Egypt; and in the case before us they were brought, as usual, by the wind. The marvellous character of the phenomenon was, that when Moses stretched out his hand over Egypt with the staff, Jehovah caused an east wind to blow over the land, which blew a day and a night, and the next morning brought the locusts (“ brought: ” inasmuch as the swarms of locusts are really brought by the wind).
Exodus 10:13-14
“ An east wind: not νότος (lxx), the south wind, as Bochart supposed. Although the swarms of locusts are generally brought into Egypt from Libya or Ethiopia, and therefore by a south or south-west wind, they are sometimes brought by the east wind from Arabia, as Denon and others have observed (Hgstb. p. 120). The fact that the wind blew a day and a night before bringing the locusts, showed that they came from a great distance, and therefore proved to the Egyptians that the omnipotence of Jehovah reached far beyond the borders of Egypt, and ruled over every land. Another miraculous feature in this plague was its unparalleled extent, viz., over the whole of the land of Egypt, whereas ordinary swarms are confined to particular districts. In this respect the judgment had no equal either before or afterwards (Exodus 10:14). The words, “ Before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such, ” must not be diluted into “a hyperbolical and proverbial saying, implying that there was no recollection of such noxious locusts,” as it is by Rosenmüller . This passage is not at variance with Joel 2:2, for the former relates to Egypt, the latter to the land of Israel; and Joel's description unquestionably refers to the account before us, the meaning being, that quite as terrible a judgment would fall upon Judah and Israel as had formerly been inflicted upon Egypt and the obdurate Pharaoh. In its dreadful character, this Egyptian plague is a type of the plagues which will precede the last judgment, and forms the groundwork for the description in Revelation 9:3-10; just as Joel discerned in the plagues which burst upon Judah in his own day a presage of the day of the Lord (Joel 1:15; Joel 2:1), i.e., of the great day of judgment, which is advancing step by step in all the great judgments of history or rather of the conflict between the kingdom of God and the powers of this world, and will be finally accomplished in the last general judgment.
Exodus 10:15
The darkening of the land, and the eating up of all the green plants by swarms of locusts, have been described by many eye-witnesses of such plagues. “ Locustarum plerumque tanta conspicitur in Africa frequentia, ut volantes instar nebulae solis radios operiant ” ( Leo Afric ). “ Solemque obumbrant ” ( Pliny , h. n. ii. 29).
This plague, which even Pliny calls Deorum irae pestis , so terrified Pharaoh, that he sent for Moses and Aaron in haste, confessed his sin against Jehovah and them, and entreated them but this once more to procure, through their intercession with Jehovah their God, the forgiveness of his sin and the removal of “ this death .” He called the locusts death , as bringing death and destruction, and ruining the country. Mors etiam agrorum est et herbarum atque arborum , as Bochart observes with references to Genesis 47:19; Job 14:8; Psalms 78:46.
To show the hardened king the greatness of the divine long-suffering, Moses prayed to the Lord, and the Lord cast the locusts into the Red Sea by a strong west wind. The expression “Jehovah turned a very strong west wind” is a concise form, for “Jehovah turned the wind into a very strong west wind.” The fact that locusts do perish in the sea is attested by many authorities. Gregatim sublatae vento in maria aut stagna decidunt ( Pliny ); many others are given by Bochart and Volney . ויּתקעהוּ : He thrust them, i.e., drove them with irresistible force, into the Red Sea. The Red Sea is called סוּף ים , according to the ordinary supposition, on account of the quantity of sea-weed which floats upon the water and lies upon the shore; but Knobel traces the name to a town which formerly stood at the head of the gulf, and derived its name from the weed, and supports his opinion by the omission of the article before Suph , though without being able to prove that any such town really existed in the earlier times of the Pharaohs.
Ninth plague: The Darkness. - As Pharaoh's defiant spirit was not broken yet, a continuous darkness came over all the land of Egypt, with the exception of Goshen, without any previous announcement, and came in such force that the darkness could be felt. חשׁך וימשׁ : “ and one shall feel, grasp darkness .” המשׁ : as in Psalms 115:7; Judges 16:26, ψηλαφητὸν σκότος (lxx); not “feel in the dark,” for משׁשׁ has this meaning only in the Piel with בּ (Deuteronomy 28:29). אפלה חשׁך : darkness of obscurity, i.e., the deepest darkness. The combination of two words or synonyms gives the greatest intensity to the thought. The darkness was so great that they could not see one another, and no one rose up from his place. The Israelites alone “ had light in their dwelling-places .” The reference here is not to the houses; so that we must not infer that the Egyptians were unable to kindle any lights even in their houses. The cause of this darkness is not given in the text; but the analogy of the other plagues, which had all of them a natural basis, warrants us in assuming, as most commentators have done, that there was the same here - that it was in fact the Chamsin, to which the lxx evidently allude in their rendering: σκότος καὶ γνόφος καὶ θύελλα . This wind, which generally blows in Egypt before and after the vernal equinox and lasts two or three days, usually rises very suddenly, and fills the air with such a quantity of fine dust and coarse sand, that the sun loses its brightness, the sky is covered with a dense veil, and it becomes so dark that “the obscurity cause by the thickest fog in our autumn and winter days is nothing in comparison” ( Schubert ). Both men and animals hide themselves from this storm; and the inhabitants of the towns and villages shut themselves up in the innermost rooms and cellars of their houses till it is over, for the dust penetrates even through well-closed windows. For fuller accounts taken from travels, see Hengstenberg (pp. 120ff.) and Robinson 's Palestine i. pp. 287-289. Seetzen attributes the rising of the dust to a quantity of electrical fluid contained in the air. - The fact that in this case the darkness alone is mentioned, may have arisen from its symbolical importance. “The darkness which covered the Egyptians, and the light which shone upon the Israelites, were types of the wrath and grace of God” (Hengstenberg). This occurrence, in which, according to Arabian chroniclers of the middle ages, the nations discerned a foreboding of the day of judgment or of the resurrection, filled the king with such alarm that he sent for Moses, and told him he would let the people and their children go, but the cattle must be left behind. יצּג : sistatur , let it be placed, deposited in certain places under the guard of Egyptians, as a pledge of your return. Maneat in pignus, quod reversuri sitis , as Chaskuni correctly paraphrases it. But Moses insisted upon the cattle being taken for the sake of their sacrifices and burnt-offerings. “ Not a hoof shall be left behind .” This was a proverbial expression for “not the smallest fraction.” Bochart gives instances of a similar introduction of the “hoof” into proverbial sayings by both Arabians and Romans (Hieroz. i. p. 490). This firmness on the part of Moses he defended by saying, “ We know not with what we shall serve the Lord, till we come thither; ” i.e., we know not yet what kind of animals or how many we shall require for the sacrifices; our God will not make this known to us till we arrive at the place of sacrifice. עבד with a double accusative as in Genesis 30:29; to serve any one with a thing.
At this demand, Pharaoh, with the hardness suspended over him by God, fell into such wrath, that he sent Moses away, and threatened him with death, if he ever appeared in his presence again. “ See my face, ” as in Genesis 43:3. Moses answered, “ Thou hast spoken rightly .” For as God had already told him that the last blow would be followed by the immediate release of the people, there was no further necessity for him to appear before Pharaoh.