Exit lice. Enter flies. That was a very horrid plague. Blue-bottles everywhere. They filled the cream-jugs, they covered the joints, they fell into the jam, they stuck in the treacle. Fly-papers went up 100 per cent, and several gentlemen in the profession made fortunes during the rush. “A greater than” these, however, came to the rescue: “the Lord” himself “removed the swarms of flies,” and joyful to relate, “there remained not one” (viii., 31). I should like to have spent the remainder of that summer in Egypt. As day after day went on, and not a solitary buzz was heard, how joyfully must the maids and matrons of Egypt have chanted in thankful chorus: “Fly not yet!”
Pharaoh’s heart remaining petrified, an attack was made on the flocks and herds. “A very grievous murrain” was sent “upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep” (Ex. ix., 3). And they _all_ died. Between the dead frogs and the dead cattle Egypt must have been.... well, let us say fragrant. While they were all lying there dead, god sent boils on them; the object of this is not clear, and it is a little difficult to understand how the boils flourished on cold corpses; still the Scriptures cannot lie, and thus it is written. With that appropriateness which shews real genius, Moses, at the Lord’s command, sprinkled “handfuls of ashes of the furnace,” and in “these ashes glowed their former fires,” and they caused “a boil.”
The next miracle is a very remarkable one. Forgetting that all the beasts were dead and boiled, the Lord said: “Send therefore now and gather thy cattle and all that thou hast in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them and they shall die” (ix., 19). Some made their dead “cattle flee into the houses,” thus showing a skill and a miracle-working power which must have made Moses very jealous; others left theirs in the field, probably thinking that the boil-covered carcases were not worth the trouble of carriage. Down came the hail, and smote “all that was in the field, both man and beast” (ix., 25). Here indeed was an exemplification, so far as the cattle were concerned, of the second death.