Commentaria in Exodum
You will say: After Moses, Joel chap. 1, verses 3 and 4, it is said: That which the palmerworm hath left, the locust hath eaten, and that which the locust hath left, the bruchus hath eaten, and that which the bruchus hath left, the mildew hath consumed: and Joel adds that the like was never seen.
I answer, that Joel metaphorically by these four, namely palmerworm, locust, bruchus and mildew, signifies the army of the Chaldeans, who four times laid waste Jerusalem: first, when they took king Joakim, with whom Daniel was taken; secondly, when they carried off his son Joachim; thirdly, when they took Sedecias captive; fourthly, when Nabuzardan reduced the temple to ashes: which devastation is rightly compared to mildew. So St. Jerome, whom all Catholics commonly follow, except Theodoret and Lyranus. So Joel explains himself, verse 6, when he says: “For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number.” See Ribera there.
15. AND THEY COVERED THE WHOLE FACE OF THE EARTH,—the cultivated, namely, and the clothed with shoots; for what would the locusts feed on, or what lay waste, in sandy and bare earth? The Hebrew is, the land was darkened.
AND WHATSOEVER FRUITS WERE ON THE TREES.—The Hebrews call every fruit pome, both that which has a tender and that which has a hard rind: that there could be fruits then, though perhaps not yet quite ripe, in Egypt, a region so hot, is not strange; for it was already March: for in this cold climate May often presents them to us. Secondly, “pomes” can be taken here by metonymy for buds, or berries swelling into fruit.
For so commonly when a tree is in flower we are wont to say: On this tree there are very many apples (that is, buds), reckoning the flower for the hope of fruit.
17. THAT HE TAKE AWAY FROM ME.—In Hebrew is added only, as if to say: Only this time let God spare, I will offend no more.
THIS DEATH,—this plague, namely the locust, which brings death to all plants, and consequently will bring death to all men: for these will die of hunger, if all the crop that is in the blade is hurt.
19. A WIND FROM THE WEST.—In Hebrew, a wind of the sea: for because the Mediterranean Sea is to the west of the Holy Land, as of Egypt, hence the Hebrews by sea signify the West.
AND IT TOOK THE LOCUSTS, AND CAST THEM INTO THE RED SEA.—Thou wilt ask, whence is the sea called Red, and whether it is truly red? First, Strabo and Uranius, whom Stephen cites in book On Cities, will have this sea called and made red from the reflection of the sun, which, though it receives the redness of the neighbouring mountains, reciprocated by the casting of the sun’s rays, seems to represent it. Secondly, others will have it that such is the nature of its water and sea that it is red.
Thirdly, Ctesias of Cnidus thinks this sea is made red by a certain spring which sends red water full of cinnabar into that sea. Whence Solinus too, chap. 36: Varro, he says, says that on the shore of the Red Sea there is a spring, from which if sheep drink, they change colour, so that from white they become tawny and blackish. Fourthly, this sea, says Pliny, book 6, chap. 23, is called in Greek Erythraean, that is red, from king Erythras the son of Perseus, whose tomb in the island Tyrina of the Red Sea they say is shown.
Pereira thinks the same at the end of chapter 14. So also Q. Curtius, Philostratus, book 3 of the Life of Apollonius, who says that the sea itself is in itself not red but blue; nay Arrian, book 8 of the Acts of Alexander: This sea, he says, is called Red from Erythras, the first king there.
But I say that this sea is not in itself red, but is called red from the red sand which is at the bottom of this sea. That it is so, experience has taught: for sailors drawing water from it with the eye saw it not red but pellucid; and clearly understood that the red colour is represented in these waters from the red sands, or the corals of its bottom (for coral, Pliny teaches, book 32, chap. 2, is produced in this gulf) with which the bottom of that sea abounds. So from John Barrius the Conimbricenses, tract. 8 in the Meteors, chap. 1, and Andrew Masius on Josue chap. 2, and others.
Why the sea is called suph?
Note: In Hebrew this sea is called suph, that is, of ends, because it divides Egypt from Arabia and the Holy Land. Secondly, others render suph turbid, others weedy and rushy: for it is fertile of sedge and rushes. So Vatablus, and St. Jerome, epist. 127 to Fabiola.
CAST IT.—In Hebrew, fixed, that is, cast down in a heap and sank.
21. LET THERE BE DARKNESS UPON THE LAND OF EGYPT SO THICK THAT IT MAY BE FELT.—Scripture speaks according to the common way of men. For so in darkness we go groping, as if the dark air appeared thick and could be felt. Abulensis, Burgensis and Pereira add that these darknesses were truly palpable, because they were themselves a most thick mist. Secondly, others render, let there be darkness, so as to take away the darkness of night, that is, overwhelm and obscure it. Thirdly, the Chaldee renders, let there be darkness, even after the gloom of night has retired. For the Hebrew yamesh can be derived from mush, that is, to depart, to remove; but our Interpreter and the Septuagint derive it from mashash, that is, to feel.
This is the ninth plague, namely of darkness, and a fitting one. First, because the Egyptians had shut up the Hebrews, sons of light, in work-prisons, bound to hard labours. With darkness and prison therefore they are justly punished, because they had unjustly shut up others in the same. Secondly, the plague of darkness was sent upon them, that they might acknowledge themselves unworthy of this light, and might in this as it were in an image foretaste the darkness of hell. The Wise Man gives both these causes in the whole of chapter 17, chiefly the last verse, and chap. 18, verse 4.
Thou wilt ask, what was the cause of this darkness? Philo answers it was an eclipse. But this obscures the sun, not the stars; and this lasts not three days, but an hour only. Secondly, Jansenius on Wisdom chap. 17 intimates that that darkness was made not in the air but in the eyes only of the Egyptians: that they, like the Sodomites, were struck with blindness, or aorasia; but this contradicts Scripture, which says that these darknesses were palpable, while it was light to the Hebrews. Thirdly, more probably Cajetan thinks the cause of this darkness was the withdrawal of the rays of the sun and the other stars, so that toward the Egyptians, wherever they stayed, they did not send their rays, but only toward the Hebrews. Fourthly and best, Philo, Burgensis, Abulensis and Pereira hold that the cause of the darkness was clouds and the thickest mists, and so great a condensation of the air that by no light, not even by the rays of the sun, was it penetrable. For this is what is said Wis. 17: “Neither could the clear flames of the stars lighten that horrible night.”
Note: This darkness began not on the tenth, as Tornielli will have it, but on the eleventh day of the first month; for it lasted three days, namely to the 14th day, on which Moses, called by Pharao, foretold him the slaughter of the firstborn for the next night, as will appear chap. 11, verse 4. On the tenth day, then, the Hebrews procured the paschal lamb, as God commanded chap. 12, verse 3. On the following day, the eleventh, the plague of darkness was inflicted on the Egyptians: it ceased on the thirteenth day. On the next day, the 14th, Moses threatened Pharao with the slaughter of the firstborn, and God inflicted it on the next night of the 15th day (namely in the Pasch).