9 And the LORD said unto Moses, 1 Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you; that mmy wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt. 10 And Moses and Aaron did all 1 ch. 3. 19. & 7. 4. & 10. 1. m ch. 7. 3.

mercenary and cruel disposition, and at the insolent manner in which he had himself been treated by him. But it was mainly in view of the indignity put upon the messages of God that his spirit was stirred. He saw in him a proud, obstinate, audacious opposer of the God of heaven, one who had resisted warnings and convictions, judgments and mercies; one who would not yield to the divine authority to save all the first-born of his kingdom, and who was now rushing headlong to his ruin. No wonder that he was provoked with a holy indignation at his enormous sin, and angered, as our Savior himself afterwards was, 'at the hardness of his heart.' But it was a being angry and sinning not. "To be angry at nothing but sin, is the way not to sin in anger.' Henry.

9, 10. And the Lord said unto Moses, &c. Rather, 'The Lord had said.' These two concluding verses appear to be designed as a kind of general recapitulation of the main incidents of the preceding narrative, of which the scope is to inform the reader that every thing took place just as God had predicted. In obedience to the divine command Moses and Aaron had performed all their wonders before the king and his court, and yet according to the previous intimation, Pharaoh had turned a deaf ear, and presented an obdurate heart, to all these exhibitions and appeals, most stubbornly refusing to let the people go from under his yoke. It was proper to make this statement to preclude any lurking impression that such an amazing demonstration of divine power had been put forth in vain, or that Omnipotence had been baffled in the contest. Far from

these wonders before Pharaoh ; and the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land.

n ch. 10. 20, 27. Rom. 2. 5. & 9. 22.

it. Every thing had resulted just as God had foretold. The incredulity and obstinacy of men is sometimes made known beforehand, that it may not be a surprise or a stumbling-block when it happens.

CHAPTER XII.

We have in the present chapter an account of the execution of the fearful judgment threatened in the preceding, and in that event of the removal of the last obstacle in the way of the exit of the Israelites from Egypt. The slaugh ter of the first-born ended for the present the controversy with Pharaoh, though his subsequent infatuation brought the final stroke of justice upon him in his overthrow in the Red Sea. Previously however to detailing the incidents of this awful providence, the historian pauses to give us an account of the institution of the Passover, which God himself ordained, not only as a present means of safety to his own people while the judgment went through the land, but also as a permanent memorial of the event of their deliverance. As such the ordinance is perhaps the most remarkable of all the festivals of the Jewish church, and that which is more frequently mentioned in the New Testament than any other. It consisted of three parts; (1) The killing and eating of the paschal lamb. (2) The sprinkling of the blood upon the door-posts, spoken of as a distinct thing, Heb. 11. 28, and peculiar to the first passover. (3) The feast of unleavened bread for seven days following. The details will come before us as we proceed, to which will be appended suitable moral reflec tions at the close.

7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two sideposts, and on the upper door-post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. 8 And they shall eat the flesh in

and a-half, (or half past two,) and offered it up at the ninth hour and a-half, (or half past three.) But on the eve of the Passover they slew it at the seventh hour and a half, (or half past one,) and offered it up at the eighth hour and a half, (or half past two.)' And Maimonides informs us that the paschal lamb was slain and offered up immediately after the usual time of killing and offering up the evening sacrifice. In like manner our blessed Lord, who is the 'true Passover slain for us,' was condemned soon after the sixth hour, John, 19. 14; i. e. after our twelve at noon, and he died soon after the ninth hour, Mat. 27. 46. 50; i. e. after our three in the afternoon.

7. Strike it on the two side-posts. Which was done by means of the hyssop-branch. This was to be done as a mark of safety, a token of deliverance, that the destroying angel, when passing through the land to slay the first-born of the Egyptians, might see and pass over the houses of the Israelites, and spare their families. They were sin ners as well as the Egyptians, and God might justly have punished them for their sins by taking away the lives of their first-born. But he was pleased to show them mercy, and accept the life of a lamb as a substitute. Its blood was the signal of this, and all who obeyed the command of God and relied on his protection, were secure from the stroke of the avenger. Nothing could be a more significant and striking emblem of the application of Christ's blood to the guilty conscience as the sole means of deliverance from the wrath to come. In him we have redemption through his blood. His is the true 'blood of sprinkling, which speaketh

better things than the blood of Abel.' It is better than the blood of the Passover-lamb, for it effects for us a far greater deliverance than that of the Israelites; it redeems us from the bondage of Satan and sin, from the fear of death and hell.—¶ On the upper doorpost of the houses. Heb. pan by al hammashkoph; i. e. the lintel, or that part of the door-frame which lies across the door-posts over head. The Hebrew word in its radical signification denotes looking, and may here imply a part of the door-frame which was peculiarly prominent and conspicuous, which would naturally be looked at. Others, however, suppose, with perhaps more plausibility, that the term carries the import of looking through, and implies that the Egyptian houses had lattices or windows over their doors, through which it was customary for the inmates to look upon hearing a knock. It was not to be sprinkled upon the threshold, perhaps out of regard to its typical import, to intimate that the blood of Christ is not to be trodden under foot, or count. ed by any as an unholy thing.

8. Roast with fire. Because it could sooner be made ready by roasting than by boiling. This circumstance consti. tuted a marked difference between the Passover-lamb and all the other peaceofferings, the flesh of which was usually boiled, in order to be eaten both by the people and the priests, as something ad. ditional even at the paschal solemnity. Wherefore in 2 Chron. 35. 13, the two kinds of offerings are accurately distinguished: 'And they roasted the passover with fire according to the ordi nance: but the other holy offerings sod they in pots, and in caldrons, and in pans.' Whether any more satisfactory

e Deut. 16.7.

moral reason can be assigned for this order, than that the extremity of our Savior's sufferings from the fire of God's wrath might be thereby affectingly depicted, we pretend not to say.— - With unleavened bread. This also was ordered for the sake of expedition, Deut. 16. 3, as both Abraham and Lot, in preparing a hasty meal for their visiters, caused unleavened cakes to be made. The original term is supposed to be derived from a word signifying to press, squeeze, or compress, and is applied to bread destitute of the fermenting matter, because it has its parts closely compressed together, and becomes what we commonly call heavy. So, on the other hand, our English word 'leaven,' is formed from the French 'levain,' which is derived from the verb 'lever,' to raise up, the effect produced upon dough by leaven rendering the bread light and spongy. The use of unleavened bread as a perpetual observance in the paschal celebration may have been designed to remind the chosen people of their leaving Egypt in such haste as to be obliged to carry their unleavened dough with them. It is also not unreasonably to be inferred from one or two passages in the New Testament, that a mystical meaning was couched under this circumstance. Leaven is a species of corruption, caused by fermentation, and tending to putrefaction. For this reason it is said of our Savior, Luke, 12. 1, 'He began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.' Paul also in 1 Cor. 5. 7, 8, says, 'Purge out therefore the old leaven; for Christ our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.'-¶ With

bitter herbs.

Heb. merorim, bitters, or bitternesses. That is, with bitter things, bitter ingredients; alluding doubtless to herbs, such as succory or wild lettuce, as it is rendered in the Vulgate, although some commentators have imagined that not herbs, but a bitter or sour sauce, like that mentioned by the Evangelist in which Jesus dipped the sop which he gave to Judas, John, 13. 26, is meant. But this is less likely, as the Talmudists enumerate the different species of herbs allowed to be eaten with the paschal lamb, among which were the lettuce, the endive, the horehound, &c. In modern times, in England and some other northern countries, we are told that horse-radish is used. The Israelites were probably commanded to eat these bitter herbs on this occasion in remembrance of their afflictions in Egypt, where their lives had been made bitter.

9. Eat not of it raw. That is, halfroasted, or superficially done, having some of the blood remaining in it. With the express prohibition, Gen. 9. 4, against eating blood before them, they scarcely needed to be warned against eating flesh absolutely raw. But in the hurry with which the first passover was observed, and with so great a number of paschal lambs, it might easily happen that some of them would be but imperfectly done, unless specially admonished on that score.- -T Nor sodden at all with water. Not boiled at all. Sodden is the past participle of seethe, to boil. Should it be deemed superfluous to say 'sodden, or boiled, with water,' there being no other way supposable in which the flesh of animals would be boiled, it may be observed in reply, that the Heb. word bashal is applied both to roasting and boiling, and Moses, in order to take away the