Commentaria in Exodum
Tropologically, this plague, says Origen, has ulcers and blains with fervour: in the ulcers is signified deceitful malice; in the blains, swelling and inflated pride; in the fervour, anger and the madness of fury.
For truly he who is swollen with pride and raging is mad. Sapor, king of the Persians, called himself king of kings, partaker of the stars, brother of the sun and moon, as Herodotus testifies, book 2, and Pliny, book 2; was he not foolish? The physician Menecrates asked this one reward from those he cured, that being delivered they should confess themselves his servants, and call him Jove. Hence he wrote to the king with this title: “Jupiter Menecrates to king Agesilaus, greeting”; to whom he wrote back in this form: “King Agesilaus to Menecrates, a sound mind.” Nestorius the heretic, made bishop of Constantinople, on the next day made an address to the people full of arrogance, in which he promised to give heaven to each: the orthodox hissed off his folly. Domitian the Emperor was the first to order himself to be called Lord and God, says Eusebius. The Romans laughed at the man’s pride. Rightly Aesop, being asked by Chione, “what Jupiter did?” answered: “He abases the high, exalts the lowly.” And Innocent III, Pontiff, book On the Vileness of Man: “Pride,” he says, “overthrew the tower of Babel, confounded the tongue, laid low Goliath, hanged Aman, slew Nicanor, destroyed Antiochus, drowned Pharao, killed Sennacherib. Alas! whence this pride of man? whose life painful penalty rolls on, whose penalty the more painful necessity of death closes; to whom being is a moment, life a shipwreck, the world an exile; to whom death either presses or threatens to press.”
Secondly, St. Prosper, 1 part On the Promises, chap. 36, and Rupert: Those who violate the sixth precept, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and burn with lust, these, burning with sulphurous fire and ulcerous, shall bear eternal burning in soul and body. “For all adulterers are as an oven heated by the baker,” says Osee, chap. 7. St. Augustine, however, adapts this plague to murderers, who burn with anger, but he here inverts the order of the precepts of the Decalogue. “Thou shalt not kill” is not the sixth but the fifth precept of the Decalogue.
11. NEITHER COULD THE MAGICIANS STAND BEFORE MOSES FOR THE BOILS.—This is the third victory of Moses over the magicians. For first he overcame them when the serpent of Moses devoured their serpents. Secondly, when he produced the sciniphs, which the magicians could not produce.
Thirdly, here by afflicting them with boils he utterly overcame them. So Rupert. Hence it appears that the magicians, though conquered, yet until now resisted Moses with words and calumnies and with all their effort, and so hardened Pharao more and more; for though they acknowledged God in the third sign, yet they did not glorify Him as God, nor worship Him. Calvin adds that the magicians equally effected by their incantations all the signs that Moses had done until now, namely the blood, the frogs, the sciniphs, or, as Calvin prefers, lice, the dog-fly, the plague and the boils. Whence does Calvin say this, if not from his own spirit of giddiness? For Scripture asserts the quite contrary, namely that they failed in the third sign, and could not produce sciniphs, whereby it sufficiently intimates that they could effect or produce no sign further.
12. AND THE LORD HARDENED PHARAO’S HEART.—Here for the first time God is said to have hardened Pharao’s heart, namely when the magicians, who until now had encouraged and hardened him, had now failed, plainly conquered and afflicted. See what was said chap. 7, verse 3.
14. AT THIS TIME I WILL SEND ALL MY PLAGUES UPON THY HEART,—as if to say: I have begun to press thee, O Pharao, I will go on; for it is fixed with me not to desist, but to send one plague after another upon thee, until I drown thee, ever more rebellious and resisting, in the Red Sea.
ALL MY PLAGUES,—not those I can, but those I have destined to send for thy destruction.
UPON THY HEART,—as if to say: The former have not pricked thee; come, with my darts I will aim at thy very heart, and send such as shall wound, touch and vex thy heart.
15. FOR NOW I WILL STRETCH FORTH MY HAND TO STRIKE THEE AND THY PEOPLE WITH PESTILENCE.—“With pestilence,” by which I shall kill thy firstborn in the last plague, says Pereira. But it is uncertain whether the firstborn were killed by this pestilence, and that plague happened not now but after three others. Add that Pharao did not perish in this plague: but this is said here; for it follows, “and thou shalt perish from the earth.”
Secondly, others from the Hebrew render: And indeed if I had wished, I could have killed thee with pestilence (with which I killed thy cattle), and thou wouldst have perished from the earth; but therefore I have raised thee up. So the Chaldee. But the Hebrew does not have “if,” and they threaten Pharao with pestilence and destruction assertively, not conditionally. I say then: pestilence here signifies every kind of destruction which God afterwards sent upon Pharao, as if to say: I will add plagues to plagues, until thou be cut off from the earth. This is plain from what precedes, to which this connects by the causal particle “for”; verse 14 preceded: “At this time I will send all my plagues upon thy heart”: with pestilence therefore, that is, with exile and death; for so deber, that is pestilence, our Interpreter renders, Psalm 77:50, when he says: “Their cattle he shut up to death (in Hebrew, to pestilence)”; and Osee 13:14: “O death, I will be thy death (in Hebrew deber, that is, pestilence).” So commonly we call traitors the pests of the commonwealth. So Terence in the Adelphi calls that pimp “the pest of youths.” In like manner the sword among the Hebrews signifies any kind of destruction and death, as I said on chap. 5, verse 21.
AND THOU SHALT PERISH FROM THE EARTH.—The Hebrew here has all in the past: “Behold now I have stretched out my hand, I have struck, and thou hast perished,” as if to say: So surely have I decreed to destroy thee, as if I had already struck thee, and thou hadst perished. Behold with how grave a threat God tries and beats the hardest heart of Pharao, that it may be softened; but in vain: for as though it were adamant, by the beating it hardened the more.
16. AND THEREFORE HAVE I RAISED THEE, THAT I MAY SHEW MY POWER.—Some explain it thus: Therefore have I hardened thee, that I might have occasion of punishing thee continually, and so of showing my power. But this is the blasphemous heresy of Calvin. I say then: for “I have raised thee” the Hebrew is heemadticha, that is, I made thee stand, which signifies two things. First, I set thee up: whence our Interpreter renders, “I have set up [posui] thee”; secondly, “I have sustained thee”; for he who sustains another makes him stand and sets him up, that he may stand firm. Whence the Chaldee renders, I have sustained thee; and the Septuagint, thou hast been preserved. St. Augustine reads it either way here, Quest. 32, and St. Ambrose on chap. 9 to the Romans. And both readings are true; for the latter completes the former in this way: first, “I have set thee up, and established thee,” as king namely; secondly, “I have sustained thee,” namely as king, that thou mightest endure in thy kingdom. The sense therefore is, as if to say: I, God, have made thee, O Pharao, king, sustained, preserved, and permitted thee to rise as a tyrant against my people; that I in turn might rise against thee as an enemy with so many most powerful plagues, and at last drown thee in the Red Sea, that so all may acknowledge, fear and worship my justice and power. So Chrysostom and Photius on chap. 9 to the Romans.