And Pharaoh rose up in the night, and all his servants. This general disturbance differentiates the present visitations from that which came upon the host of Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:35). Then, the calamity came with such silence and secrecy, that the deaths were not suspected until men rose to go about their various tasks in the morning Now, every household seems to have been aroused from its sleep in the night. We must suppose sharp and painful illness, terminating after a few hours in death. The disaster itself may have been one from which Egypt often suffers in the spring of the year (Kalisch); but its attacking all the firstborn and no others, and no Israelites, as well as its announcement, plainly showed it to be miraculous. There was a great cry. See the comment on Exodus 11:6. For there was not a house where there was not one dead. This is perhaps a slight hyperbole. There would be many families in which there was no son; and some houses might contain no male who had opened the womb. It is always to be borne in mind, that the language of Scripture—especially where exciting and tragical events are narrated—is poetical, or at the least highly rhetorical.
HOMILETICS
The death of the first-born.
From the death of the first-born we may learn:—
I. THE SEVERITY OF GOD'S LONG DEFERRED JUDGMENTS. That punishment will overtake the wicked sooner or later was the conviction of heathendom no less than of the Jewish and Christian worlds. Horace says—"Judgment may halt, but yet it rarely fails to overtake the guilty one at last." Tibullus—"Wretch, though at first thy sin no judgment meet, vengeance will come at length with silent feet." But the greater heaviness of the punishment that is long deferred does not appear to have attracted their notice. Yet experience might have taught it them. Who has not seen the long triumphant career of a thoroughly bad man, crowned with success for years, seeming to turn all he touched to gold, "flourishing," as the Psalmist has it, "like a green bay tree," yet ending in calamities and misfortunes so striking, and so heaped one upon another, as to draw general attention? It is invidious, perhaps, to note instances; but the present generation has seen at least one example among the crowned heads of Europe. And Scripture is full of examples. How long God's Spirit strove with men in the antediluvian world, as they proceeded from one wickedness to another, heaping up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath, till the flood came and swept away the ungodly! For what a prolonged term of years must the long-suffering of God have borne with the cities of the plain, as they more and more corrupted themselves, till in all Sodom there were not ten godly men left! And then, how signal the punishment! Again, what an instance is Ahab of the operation of the law! Flourishing in every way, in spite of his numerous sins—his idolatries, cruelties, selfishness, meanness, hatred of God's servants—victorious over Benhadad, supported by all the forces of Jehoshaphat, encouraged by his successes to undertake an aggressive war against Syria—and then struck down in a moment, slain by an arrow shot at a venture (1 Kings 22:34)—his blood licked up by dogs—his wife and seventy sons murdered! The Pharaohs and the Egyptians had now worked their wicked will on Israel for a century or more, since the king arose "who knew not Joseph"—all this time they had been treasuring up to themselves wrath (Romans 2:5)—and now it had fallen upon them in full force. Let sinners beware of trying the forbearance and long-suffering of God too far—let them tremble when all goes well with them, and no punishment comes. Let them be assured that the account of their offences is strictly kept, and that for each they will have to suffer. Delay does but mean accumulation. However long suspended, the bolt will fall at last, and it will be proportioned in its severity to the length of the delay, and the amount of the wrath stored up.
II. THE SUDDENNESS WITH WHICH THEY COME UPON MEN. It was night—it was the hour of repose, of peace, silence, tranquillity. All had gone to rest unsuspectingly. No one anticipated evil. Each said to himself, as he lay down, "To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant," when suddenly, without warning, there was death everywhere. Fathers saw the light of their eyes snatched from them—mothers beheld their darlings struggling in the agonies of dissolution. A shrill, prolonged cry sounded throughout the land. So the flood came upon man unawares (Luke 17:27)—and a sudden destruction overthrew the cities of the plain (ib. 28, 29)—and Ahab found himself mortally wounded when he was thinking of nothing but victory—and in the height of his pride Herod Agrippa was seized with a fearful malady—and Uzziah's leprosy smote him in a moment—and in the night of his feast was Belshazzar slain. Wicked men are for the most part thinking of nothing less when the judgments of God fall upon them. They have said to their soul—"Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry," when the dread sentence goes forth—"Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." God's judgments often come in the night. We know not what a day, nor what a night may bring forth. Let us commend our souls to God when we lie down to rest, and repeat the prayer of the Litany against sudden death.
III. THE IMPARTIALITY WITH WHICH THEY ARE DEALT OUT UPON ALL CONDITIONS OF MEN. "Pale death smites equally the poor man's but and the king's palace," says a heathen moralist. And so it is with all God's judgments. He is no respecter of persons. "Without respect of persons he judgeth according to every man's work" (1 Peter 1:17). Greatness furnishes no security against him. His messengers can enter the palace, elude the sentinels, pass the locked doors, make their way into the secret chamber, smite the monarch, sleeping or waking, with disease, or death, or frenzy. Nor can obscurity escape him; "All things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." The lowest dungeon, the most wretched garret, the obscurest cellars are within his ken, their inmates known, the moral condition of each and all of them noted. His judgments find men out as easily in the darkest haunts of vice, or the most wretched abodes of poverty, as in royal mansions. And as greatness will not prevent him from chastising, so neither will meanness The "woman behind the mill," the "captive in the dungeon" are his creatures and his servants, no less than the great, and must be either his true servants, or rebels against his authority. If they are the-latter, their obscurity and insignificance will not save them from his judgments, any more than the great man's greatness will save him. Vice must not look for impunity because it is low-placed, and hides itself in a corner.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR