Exodus 8:20,21; Exodus 8:24―Psalm 78:45
The LORD said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh; lo, he cometh forth to the water; and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me. Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are…
And the LORD did so; and there came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants’ houses, and into all the land of Egypt: the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies―He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): Pharaoh was early up at his superstitious devotions.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): At the river Nile, either to take his morning’s walk, and to refresh himself at the waterside; or to observe divinations upon the water, as a magician―in the Talmud, it is said, that the Pharaoh in the days of Moses was a magician. Or rather, as Aben Ezra thinks, which he says is a custom of the kings of Egypt, to go out in the months of June and July, when the river increases, to observe how many degrees it has ascended, by which the fruitfulness of the ensuing season was judged of. Or else he went to worship the rising sun, or the Nile, to pay his morning devotions to it―nothing was so much honoured with the Egyptians as the Nile.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): In ancient times, when offal of different kinds permitted to corrupt in the streets and breed vermin, flies multiplied exceedingly, so that we read in ancient authors of whole districts being laid waste by them; hence different people had deities whose office it was to defend them against flies. Among these we may reckon Beelzebub, the “fly-god” of Ekron; Hercules, the “expeller of flies,” of the Romans―and hence Jupiter, the supreme god of the heathens, was supposed to expel flies, and defend his worshippers against them.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Satan, the prince of the power of the air, has gloried in being Beelzebub―the god of flies, Matthew 12:24; but here it is proved that even in that he is a pretender and a usurper, for even with swarms of flies, God fights against his kingdom and prevails…Pharaoh must be made to know that God is “the Lord in the midst of the earth;” and by this it will be known beyond dispute: Swarms of flies, which seem to us to fly at random, shall be manifestly under the conduct of an intelligent mind.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): Insects of various annoying kinds came up in infinite hordes, a mixture of biting, stinging, buzzing gnats, mosquitos, flies, beetles, and other vermin.
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): “Divers sorts of flies.” A mixture of insects or flies―and doubtless larger and more venomous and pernicious than the common ones were.
JAMES G. MURPHY (1808-1896): “Flies” denote a kind of insect that alights on the skin, or the leaves of plants, by its bite inflicting pain in the one case, and causing destruction in the other. The swarms of flies in Egypt are usually numerous and excessively annoying. They alight on the moist part of the eyelids and nostrils, and inflict wounds that produce great pain, swelling and inflammation. They are also ruinous to the plants in which they lay their eggs. Gnats and mosquitoes are also abundant and virulent. A plague of such creatures would cause immense suffering and desolation.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): These displays of the Lord’s power were so many judgments directed against the false confidences and idolatrous objects of the Egyptians.
MATTHEW HENRY: God can make the weakest, most despicable animals instruments of His wrath when He pleases; what they want in strength may be made up in numbers.
C. H. SPURGEON: As an illustration of the power of flies, we give an extract from Charles Marshall’s Canadian Dominion:* “I have been told by men of unquestioned veracity, that at midday the clouds of mosquitoes on the plains would sometimes hide the leaders in a team of four horses from the sight of the driver. Cattle could only be recognised by their shape; all alike becoming black with an impenetrable crust of mosquitoes. The line of the route over the Red River plains would be marked by the carcasses of oxen stung to death by this insignificant foe.”
THOMAS CROSBY (1840-1914): In Canada’s Fraser Valley,* we were besieged by myriads of mosquitoes, that bred in the marshy places, particularly after high water. They literally swarmed, and some places rose in clouds as one passed―millions of them. I noticed in my preaching journeys on horseback that my little pony, otherwise gentle and manageable, would jump and run at times in an unaccountable fashion. At such times the mosquitoes would strike my face and forehead like a storm of hail. Then it occurred to me that the intelligent little beast only ran when passing through the spots where these insects mostly swarmed, and henceforth, I let him gallop. The settlers tell of dogs and calves being killed by the mosquitoes, and one reputable gentleman maintains that he had in his possession at one time a cow whose tail had been so bitten by these venomous pests that it dropped off.
ADAM CLARKE: In Egypt, “the land was corrupted.” Every thing was spoiled, and many of the inhabitants destroyed, being probably stung to death by these venomous insects.
THOMAS CROSBY: On the Fraser River, I met two Englishmen. It was the height of the mosquito season, and they started off in a canoe to “see the country.” Some days after, I met them in Chilliwack, and the sight they presented was, to say the least, ludicrous. They had evidently been in the water, for the legs of their pants had shrunken until there was quite four inches between the ends of their pants and the tops of their socks. The mosquitoes had been getting in their work, for their necks and legs and wrists were red and swollen.
C. H. SPURGEON: Small creatures become great tormentors―when they swarm they can sting a man till they threaten to eat him up.
THOMAS CROSBY: At one of my visits to Langley, the high water was just going down, and the mosquitoes were very bad. I was invited to stay overnight at the home of settler, who had built a little log house of two rooms on a ridge. They had no mosquito netting, but they had taken a crinoline dress, and hung it up over where my head and face were to be, tacked it to the clothes, and round the pillow. I was told to be careful in getting into bed, and to keep this thing tucked well around. I did as I was told―but, oh! the noise overhead, and all around, until finally the mosquitos found their way inside my shield. I stood the torture for a while, thinking it was but a few stragglers who, when they had had their fill, would leave. They, however, loaded up, and spread their wings with a whirring buzzing, as if to call others to the feast. It seemed as if hundreds accepted the invitation.
C. H. SPURGEON: The plague of flies in Egypt, was perhaps the most terrible that the Egyptians ever felt.
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*Editor’s Note: Charles Marshall’s The Canadian Dominion was published in 1871. In the 1870’s, Thomas Crosby was a itinerant Methodist missionary in British Columbia, Canada. One hundred years later, in the 1970’s, I stayed in a cabin in the Besnard Lake area in Canada’s Northern Saskatchewan. A short walk through the silent pine forest behind the cabin, there was a swampy low spot. As I walked towards that low spot, I began to hear a whining buzz ahead of me, growing louder and louder as I got closer; it was the sound of mosquito wings—millions of them.
