10). But already Herodotus (ii. 65) reports about the severity and fanaticism with which the killing of those beasts was prosecuted: "If a person kills one of them designedly, the punishment is death; if it is done unintentionally, he pays the fine which the priests impose upon him. But he who kills an ibis or a hawk, be it designedly or not, must mercilessly die." This was, for instance, the fate of a Roman ambassador, who had unintentionally killed a cat. At conflagrations the first and most anxious care of the Egyptians was to save the cats and dogs from the flames. The Egyptian armies brought not seldom home, from their foreign expeditions, a great number of these animals, which they had found dead, and which they buried in their own country, at appointed places, with great pomp and under general lamentation, after having carefully embalmed them. If a cat died in a house, the inmates, as a sign of mourning, shaved the eyebrows; but, if a dog died, the whole body was shaved.Onkelos paraphrases correctly: because we take those animals, which the Egytians worship, as a sacrifice to the Lord our God. Others believe, that abomination of the Egyptians is simply identical with gods of the Egyptians, as Camosh, the god of the Moabites, is called the abomination of the Moabites (1 Kings xi. 7). But how can we suppose that Moses would, in addressing Pharaoh, call the Egyptian gods abominations; and this objection is but artificially removed by the opinion of some interpreters, that Moses really said to Pharaoh Egypt's gods, but that he wrote down later Egypt's abominations: which precedent would lead to questionable analogies. Not more tenable

appears to us the opinion of Hengstenberg, Gerlach, and others, that the Israelites feared to sacrifice animals, which were not worthy or pure enough in the eyes of the Egyptians, to be offered to the Deity, and which would thus be an abomination for them. It is true that the Egyptians were most particularly careful in selecting the most faultless animals for their sacrifices; that they had a great number of minute precepts to regulate this matter, and that capital punishment awaited any one who sacrificed an animal which had not been examined by the priests, and, by the impress of their official seal, declared fit for an offering to the gods. But was it to the deities of the Egyptians that the Israelites intended to sacrifice? Could it, then, revolt the religious feelings of the former, if they saw animals which, to their notions, were not perfectly clean, sacrificed to a deity which they did not acknowledge?-How Moses could expect that the shepherd-king, who was of Arabian descent, would admit the force of an argument based on truly Egyptian idolatry, has been explained in our note to i.8, p. 7. Besides, Moses had certainly to fear the Egyptians, who, although subjugated, formed still the majority of the population.

23. Moses demanded, therefore, permission for the Israelites to go a three days' journey into the desert (out of the sight of the Egyptians), and to perform there the sacrifices to the Lord-" as He will say to us," namely, which animals we shall sacrifice, and in what quantity. The Sept., Vulg. and Luther take, not inappropriately, the verb in the past tense: as He has commanded us, (see iii. 18).

24-28. Pharaoh, forced by the in

morasses, burning winds, and other injurious influences tending to infest the air, are particularly prevalent, pestilence and similar diseases must be frequent and endemic. It is confirmed by all modern travellers, that in the Delta of the Nile pestilence rages from time to time among the cattle with such violence, that the inhabitants are compelled to import oxen from Syria or the islands of the Archipelago. We must, therefore, find the miracle in circumstances similar to those of the preceding plague, namely: 1. In the aggravated character of the pestilence (ver. 3); 2. that it took place on the command of God, evidently at an unusual season; and 3. that the Israelites were again exempted from it (ver. 6).

3. Upon thy cattle, etc. In the enumeration of the domestic animals of Egypt, the horse occupies the first place, that country being particularly rich in horses of superior quality, which wore sought by foreign princes and monarchs. They were chiefly used for the war chariots, which formed one of the most famous arms of the Egyptians. See Deut. xvii, 16; Gen. xlviii. 17; and our note on xiv. 7.-Mules and asses also are frequently found on Egyptian monuments. Asses were commonly used for riding (see our note on iv. 20), and they are represented richly caparisoned. They were further employed for treading out corn, and for many, especially agricultural purposes, for which their hardiness and the small cost of their maintenance rendered them particularly appropriate. How great the number of asses was, is obvious from the fact, that a single individual possessed not less than seven hundred and sixty of them as beasts of burden, and there is at present scarcely any husbandman who does not possess some asses. Perfectly unfounded is,

therefore, the assertion of Bohlen, that the Egyptians kept no asses, which they abhorred on account of their colour. The usual sacrifices of Typhon consisted in asses, and they must, therefore, have existed in Egypt. And admitted even, that asses were considered unclean animals, they were, from this reason, as little excluded from the land as swine, which were regarded with particular abomination, and were yet repeatedly represented on the monuments.-Although the testimony of Minutoli, who is said to have found heads and necks of camels represented, two by two, upon the obelisks of Luxor, is still an isolated monumental evidence for the existence of camels in ancient Egypt; we are by no means justified in impugning the truth of the Scripture account, which mentions these useful animals not only in our passage, but already in the time of Abraham, who received some of them from the Egyptian king as a present. It is, a priori, improbable that the Egyptians should not, at a very early period, have been acquainted, through the medium of the Arabic tribes and the eastern merchants, with the valuable qualities of that patient animal. At present, it is one of the principal and of the most lucrative occupations of the Arabic tribes inhabiting the borders of the valley of Egypt, to rear camels and to sell them into the different provinces. They are extensively employed for the transport of goods, and especially for the ingathering of the crops, for which even those, who do not possess any, hire them according to their wants. Although they were not used in war as by the Indians and other ancient nations, they were found very valuable for the transport of baggage and provisions. Under these circumstances it is of little importance, that camels do not, except in very rare instances, occur on Egyptian

sculptures or paintings. Not every thing, which is not represented on the monuments, was therefore necessarily unknown to the Egyptians. The monuments are neither intended to furnish, nor can they furnish, a complete delineation of all the branches of public and private life, of all the products and phenomena, of the whole animal, vegetable and mineral creation of the country. They cannot be viewed as a complete cyclopædia of Egyptian customs and civilisation. Thus we find no representation of fowls and pigeons, although the country abounded in them; of the wild ass and wild boar, although frequently met with in Egypt; none of the process relating to the casting of statues and other objects in bronze, although many similar subjects connected with the arts are represented; none of the marriage-ceremony, and of numerous other subjects. Since, therefore, no conclusion can be drawn from the absence of monumental delineation to the actual existence of an animal in Egypt, it is unnecessary to recur, in this instance, to the supposition, that the Egyptians abstained from representing the camels on their holy monuments, because it was too much associated with the idea of the nomad shepherds, so detested by the priests. This explanation, scarcely tenable in itself, would not apply to any of the other instances enumerated.-Sheep are so far from not thriving in Egypt, as modern critics have asserted with a polemical view to the Biblical statements, that they are expressly reported by ancient and modern travellers to be found there in great abundance and of superior

2 Sever.

quality. In Thebes they were sacred; and in the Mendesian district they were sacrificed (Herod ii. 41,42); in Lykopolis they were eaten; they lambed and were shorn twice annually (Diod. i. 36, 87); on the monuments they occur most frequently, and in some districts very great numbers were kept. They are as abundant at present in Egypt; their wool is an important article of export; and their flesh forms the usual animal food of the inhabitants (see Wilkinson, ii. p. 368; Champollion, Letters, p. 51; Déscript. de l'Egypte xvii. p. 129).

5. And God fixed an appointed time for the occurrence of the plague (see on viii. 19).— Nachmanides explains more speciously than correctly: the cattle, which is in the fields will die, because the shepherds so despised among the Egyptians lived far from the towns.

6. And all the cattle of Egypt (i. e., of the Egyptians) died. It is not unusual, that the adjective all signifies in Hebrew only a great part; for instance, in Deut. xix. 3, it is said, that "all murderers" should fly to the refuge cities, which the next verse qualifies by stating the class of murderers entitled to that privilege. And so we must understand that word here, since we learn from vers. 10 and 19, that all the cattle of the Egyptians was destroyed. A similar interpretation we are compelled to adopt in ver. 25, where we cannot explain literally that "all the grass of the field" was destroyed by hail, on account of x. 15, where the locusts are described causing the devastation of the grass, "which the hail had left."-Rashi, following the Midrash, interprets: "all