Exodus 9:8-9
The SIXTH plague-the BOILS and BLAINS Verse 8. Handfuls of ashes of the furnace] As one part of the oppression of the Israelites consisted In their labour in the brick-kilns, some have observed a congruity between the crime and the punishment. The furnaces, in the labour of which they oppressed the Hebrews, now yielded the instruments of their punishment; for every particle of those ashes, formed by unjust and oppressive labour, seemed to be a boil or a blain on the tyrannic king and his cruel and hard-hearted people. Verse 9. Shall be a boil] shechin. This word is generally expounded, an inflammatory swelling, a burning boil; one of the most poignant afflictions, not immediately mortal, that can well affect the surface of the human body. If a single boil on any part of the body throws the whole system into a fever, what anguish must a multitude of them on the body at the same time occasion! Breaking forth with blains] ababuoth, supposed to come from baah, to swell, bulge out; any inflammatory swelling, node, or pustule, in any part of the body, but more especially in the more glandular parts, the neck, arm-pits, groin, &c. The Septuagint translate it thus: καιεσταιελκηφλυκτιδεςαναζεουσαι. And it shalt be an ulcer with burning pustules. It seems to have been a disorder of an uncommon kind, and hence it is called by way of distinction, the botch of Egypt, De 28:27, perhaps never known before in that or any other country. Orosius says that in the sixth plague "all the people were blistered, that the blisters burst with tormenting pain, and that worms issued out of them." [Anglo-Saxon] Alfred's Oros., lib. i., c. vii.
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