il the
sun himself is darkened, the great god RA, to whom their sacred city was
dedicated, and whose name is incorporated in the title of his earthly
representative, the Pharaoh or PH-RA. Then at last, after all these
premonitions, the deadly blow struck home.

Or we may think of the plagues as retributive, and then we shall
discover a wonderful suitability in them all. It was a direful omen that
the first should afflict the nation through the river, into which,
eighty years before, the Hebrew babes had been cast to die, which now
rolled bloody, and seemed to disclose its dead. It was fit that the
luxurious homes of the oppressors should become squalid as the huts of
the slaves they trampled; that their flesh should suffer torture worse
than that of the whips they used so unmercifully; that the loss of crops
and cattle should bring home to them the hardships of the poor who
toiled for their magnificence; that physical darkness should appal them
with vague terrors and undefined apprehensions, such as ever haunt the
bosom of the oppressed, whose life is the sport of a caprice; and at
last that the aged should learn by the deathbed of the prop and pride of
their declining feebleness, and the younger feel beside the cradle of
the first blossom and fruit of love, all the agony of such bereavement
as they had wantonly inflicted on the innocent.

And since the fear of disadvantage in war had prompted the murder of the
Hebrew children, it was right that the retributive blow should destroy
first their children and then their men of war.

When we come to examine the plagues in detail, we discover that it is no
arbitrary fancy which divides them into three triplets, leading up to
the appalling tenth. Thus the first, fourth, and seventh, each of which
begins a triplet, are introduced by a command to Moses to warn Pharaoh
"in the morning" (vii. 15), or "early in the morning" (viii. 20, ix.
13). The third, sixth and ninth, on the contrary, are inflicted without
any warning whatever. The story of the third plague closes with the
defeat of the magicians, the sixth with their inability to stand before
the king, and the ninth with the final rupture, when Moses declares,
"Thou shalt see my face no more" (viii. 19, ix. 11, x. 29).

The first three are plagues of loathsomeness--blood-stained waters,
frogs and lice; the next three bring actual pain and loss with
them--stinging flies, murrain which afflicts the beasts, and boils upon
all