Exodus 9

This chapter continues the history of the Ten Plagues with Plague V (Exodus 9:1-7), Plague VI (Exodus 9:8-12), and Plague VII (Exodus 9:13-35). As the record unfolds, the student should note the gradation in the severity of the plagues, the decreasing ability of the magicians to stand before Moses, the gradual erosion of the adamant position of Pharaoh, and the increasing numbers of the Egyptians themselves who were led to believe in the reality and supremacy of the God of the Israelites. Such a skillful and perfectly unified narrative is simply impossible from any such scrambling of "J," "E," "D," "P," etc., (with half a dozen redactors standing by to try to make it fit), as that which is asserted by critical assailants of the Biblical text to have been the case. The documentary hypotheses regarding the origin of the Pentateuch are proof of the bankruptcy of O.T. criticism. Only Moses could have written what is revealed here!

Drowning men catch at straws, and the critics have seized upon the mention of camels in Exodus 9:3, labeling it as "anachronistic",[1] but this is merely a critical bias. Even Harford admitted that, "The camels must have been those of the visiting Bedouins, as they were not naturalized in ancient Egypt."[2] However, camels were known to the patriarchs centuries earlier as in the travels of Rebekah to be the bride of Isaac, and the thesis that the Jews never took any camels with them to Egypt is untenable. Furthermore, at the investiture of Joseph as the Grand Vizier of Egypt, the herald went ahead of him and cried "Abrek," which is the very word still used throughout the world as a command for the camel to kneel.[3] The use of this word by a high official in the court of Pharaoh in the days of Joseph is absolutely incompatible with any theory that denies the existence of camels in Egypt from earliest times. True, there are no representations of camels on the monuments, but, "They are occasionally mentioned in the inscriptions."[4] "The camel is one of the oldest of domestic animals,"[5] and any allegation that the worldwide empire of the Pharaohs was not familiar with that beast rests upon a very precarious assumption. The Biblical references to camels are authentic.