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[296]
But when God saw that he was ungrateful, and upon the ceasing of
this calamity would not grow wiser, he sent another plague upon the Egyptians:
- An innumerable multitude of frogs consumed the fruit of the ground; the
river was also full of them, insomuch that those who drew water had it
spoiled by the blood of these animals, as they died in, and were destroyed
by, the water; and the country was full of filthy slime, as they were born,
and as they died: they also spoiled their vessels in their houses which
they used, and were found among what they eat and what they drank, and
came in great numbers upon their beds. There was also an ungrateful smell,
and a stink arose from them, as they were born, and as they died therein.
Now, when the Egyptians were under the oppression of these miseries, the
king ordered Moses to take the Hebrews with him, and be gone. Upon which
the whole multitude of the frogs vanished away; and both the land and the
river returned to their former natures. But as soon as Pharaoh saw the
land freed from this plague, he forgot the cause of it, and retained the
Hebrews; and, as though he had a mind to try the nature of more such judgments,
he would not yet suffer Moses and his people to depart, having granted
that liberty rather out of fear than out of any good consideration. 1
1 Of this judicial hardening the hearts and blinding the eyes of wicked men, or infatuating them, as a just punishment for their other willful sins, to their own destruction, see the note on Antiq. B. VII. ch. 9. sect. 6.
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