neither
rose any from his place." We presume, therefore, that they all starved
for that time. Poor devils! What had they done to be treated thus? All
the children of Israel, however, had light in their dwellings. Why then
did they not avail themselves of such a fine opportunity to escape? It
was a splendid chance, yet they let it slip. Perhaps Moses did not give
the word, and they were like a flock of sheep without him. Perhaps
they wished to stay and see the rest of the fun. For more was coming,
although it was anything but fun to the poor Egyptians.

To them indeed it was an awful tragedy such as we lack words to
describe. Moses commanded the Jews to take a male lamb for each
household, to kill it, and to daub its blood over the two side-posts and
on the upper door-posts of their houses. The flesh they were to eat
in the night, roasted, with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, as the
inauguration of the Passover. The Lord meant to pass through the land in
the dark, and slay all the firstborn in Egypt; and lest he should make
some mistakes he required the Jews' houses to be marked with blood so
that he might distinguish them. We should expect God to dispense with
such "aids to memory." What followed must be told in the language of
Scripture: "At midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land
of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on the throne unto the
firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn
of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants,
and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was
not a house where there was not one dead." The reader's imagination will
picture the horror of this scene. That "great cry in Egypt" arose from
a people who were the first victims of God's hatred of all who stood
in the way of his chosen "set of leprous slaves." And in this case the
tragedy was the more awful, and the more inexcusably atrocious, because
God deliberately planned it. He could easily have softened Pharaoh's
heart, but he chose to harden it. He could have brought his people
out of Egypt in peace, but he preferred that they should start amidst
wailings of agony, and leave behind them a track of blood.

Yet in the tragedy there is a touch of comedy. Those beasts that were
first killed by the murrian and afterwards plagued by the boil, at last
lose their firstborn by the tenth plague. Besides, there is a touch of
the ludicrous in t