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Exodus 9

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1 And Jehovah saith unto Moses, `Go in unto Pharaoh, and thou hast spoken unto him, Thus said Jehovah, God of the Hebrews, Send My people away, and they serve me,

2 for, if thou art refusing to send away, and art still keeping hold upon them,

3 lo, the hand of Jehovah is on thy cattle which [are] in the field, on horses, on asses, on camels, on herd, and on flock -- a pestilence very grievous.

4 `And Jehovah hath separated between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt, and there doth not die a thing of all the sons of Israel's;

5 and Jehovah setteth an appointed time, saying, To-morrow doth Jehovah do this thing in the land.'

6 And Jehovah doth this thing on the morrow, and all the cattle of Egypt die, and of the cattle of the sons of Israel not one hath died;

7 and Pharaoh sendeth, and lo, not even one of the cattle of Israel hath died, and the heart of Pharaoh is hard, and he hath not sent the people away.

8 And Jehovah saith unto Moses and unto Aaron, `Take to you the fulness of your hands [of] soot of a furnace, and Moses hath sprinkled it towards the heavens, before the eyes of Pharaoh,

9 and it hath become small dust over all the land of Egypt, and it hath become on man and on cattle a boil breaking forth [with] blains, in all the land of Egypt.'

10 And they take the soot of the furnace, and stand before Pharaoh, and Moses sprinkleth it towards the heavens, and it is a boil [with] blains, breaking forth, on man and on beast;

11 and the scribes have not been able to stand before Moses, because of the boil, for the boil hath been on the scribes, and on all the Egyptians.

12 And Jehovah strengtheneth the heart of Pharaoh, and he hath not hearkened unto them, as Jehovah hath spoken unto Moses.

13 And Jehovah saith unto Moses, `Rise early in the morning, and station thyself before Pharaoh, and thou hast said unto him, Thus said Jehovah, God of the Hebrews, Send My people away, and they serve Me,

14 for, at this time I am sending all My plagues unto thy heart, and on thy servants, and on thy people, so that thou knowest that there is none like Me in all the earth,

15 for now I have put forth My hand, and I smite thee, and thy people, with pestilence, and thou art hidden from the earth.

16 `And yet for this I have caused thee to stand, so as to show thee My power, and for the sake of declaring My Name in all the earth;

17 still thou art exalting thyself against My people -- so as not to send them away;

18 lo, I am raining about [this] time to-morrow hail very grievous, such as hath not been in Egypt, even from the day of its being founded, even until now.

19 `And, now, send, strengthen thy cattle and all that thou hast in the field; every man and beast which is found in the field, and is not gathered into the house -- come down on them hath the hail, and they have died.'

20 He who is fearing the word of Jehovah among the servants of Pharaoh hath caused his servants and his cattle to flee unto the houses;

21 and he who hath not set his heart unto the word of Jehovah leaveth his servants and his cattle in the field.

22 And Jehovah saith unto Moses, `Stretch forth thy hand towards the heavens, and there is hail in all the land of Egypt, on man, and on beast, and on every herb of the field in the land of Egypt.'

23 And Moses stretcheth out his rod towards the heavens, and Jehovah hath given voices and hail, and fire goeth towards the earth, and Jehovah raineth hail on the land of Egypt,

24 and there is hail, and fire catching itself in the midst of the hail, very grievous, such as hath not been in all the land of Egypt since it hath become a nation.

25 And the hail smiteth in all the land of Egypt all that [is] in the field, from man even unto beast, and every herb of the field hath the hail smitten, and every tree of the field it hath broken;

26 only in the land of Goshen, where the sons of Israel [are], there hath been no hail.

27 And Pharaoh sendeth, and calleth for Moses and for Aaron, and saith unto them, `I have sinned this time, Jehovah [is] the Righteous, and I and my people [are] the Wicked,

28 make ye supplication unto Jehovah, and plead that there be no voices of God and hail, and I send you away, and ye add not to remain.'

29 And Moses saith unto him, `At my going out of the city, I spread my palms unto Jehovah -- the voices cease, and the hail is not any more, so that thou knowest that the earth [is] Jehovah's;

30 but thou and thy servants -- I have known that ye are not yet afraid of the face of Jehovah God.'

31 And the flax and the barley have been smitten, for the barley [is] budding, and the flax forming flowers,

32 and the wheat and the rye have not been smitten, for they are late.

33 And Moses goeth out from Pharaoh, [from] the city, and spreadeth his hands unto Jehovah, and the voices and the hail cease, and rain hath not been poured out to the earth;

34 and Pharaoh seeth that the rain hath ceased, and the hail and the voices, and he continueth to sin, and hardeneth his heart, he and his servants;

35 and the heart of Pharaoh is strong, and he hath not sent the sons of Israel away, as Jehovah hath spoken by the hand of Moses.

   

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.