12:29-36 The Egyptians had been for three days and nights kept in anxiety and horror by the darkness; now their rest is broken by a far more terrible calamity. The plague struck their first-born, the joy and hope of their families. They had slain the Hebrews' children, now God slew theirs. It reached from the throne to the dungeon: prince and peasant stand upon the same level before God's judgments. The destroying angel entered every dwelling unmarked with blood, as the messenger of woe. He did his dreadful errand, leaving not a house in which there was not one dead. Imagine then the cry that rang through the land of Egypt, the long, loud shriek of agony that burst from every dwelling. It will be thus in that dreadful hour when the Son of man shall visit sinners with the last judgment. God's sons, his first-born, were now released. Men had better come to God's terms at first, for he will never come to theirs. Now Pharaoh's pride is abased, and he yields. God's word will stand; we get nothing by disputing, or delaying to submit. In this terror the Egyptians would purchase the favour and the speedy departure of Israel. Thus the Lord took care that their hard-earned wages should be paid, and the people provided for their journey.

Verse 33. The Egyptians were urgent upon the people. The Egyptians feared that, if any further delay took place, the God of the Hebrews might not be content with slaying all the first-born, but might punish with death the whole nation, or at any rate all the males. It is easy to see how their desire to get rid of the Israelites would expedite matters, and enable all to set out upon the journey on the same day.

And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people,.... The people of Israel; not using force, but strong entreaties, the most powerful arguments, and importunate language they were masters of:

that they might send them out of the land in haste: this looks as if it was the people about Pharaoh, his ministers and courtiers, they were pressing upon to dismiss the Israelites at once, and to hasten their departure; or else Moses and Aaron, and the elders of the people, to stir them up to a quick dispatch of their affairs, that they might be soon rid of them; unless the sense is, that they were very solicitous and earnest with the people, that they would get away out of the land as fast as they could:

for they said, we be all dead men; for their firstborn being all slain, they expected that they themselves, and the rest of their families, would be struck with death next; and this they feared would be the case in a very little time, if they did not depart:

for they had sufficient reason to convince them, that it was purely on their account, and because they had not leave to go out of the land, that all the above judgments, and particularly the last, were inflicted on them.

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