Exodus 12:29-30

PLAGUE X

"And it came to pass at midnight, that Jehovah smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the first-born of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead."

Here, dramatically stated, came the execution of the Tenth Plague upon Egypt. The fact of everyone rising up in the middle of the night should be taken as an indication that death followed some kind of violent and painful visitation with the result that the cries of the victims aroused the households. Had this not been the case, the dead would have been discovered, not that night, but the next morning.

Several quibbles concerning these verses are:

1. "The captive that was in the dungeon" is used in Exodus 12:29, whereas, "the maid-servant that is behind the mill" is used in the parallel place in Exodus 11:5; but those with knowledge of those times tell us that many of the maid-servants who ground the corn and performed other menial tasks in Egypt were also captives in their dungeons.
   
2. There was not a house where there was not one dead. The quibbler wants to know about those houses were there were not any first-born! Such quibbles disappear in the light of the usage in all languages in which major proportions of anything are commonly referred to by the word "all." See my commentary on Matthew (at Matthew 3:5,6) for a discussion of the Biblical use of hyperbole, and also other N.T. examples of it.
   

This tenth and final plague accomplished all that God had said concerning it. Pharaoh did indeed at last let the people go. he even sent for Moses and Aaron whom he had vowed never to see again, apparently joining with his servants and officers in hastening the departure of the children of Israel.

"There was a great cry in Egypt ..." This must be understood as typical of the Final Judgment, as indicated in Revelation 6:14ff. When God shall at last execute the sentence of death upon Adam and Eve in the person of their total posterity, what an occasion of remorse and terror shall it be? When evil men, men of exactly the same attitude that appears in the Pharaoh of Exodus, when such men who profess not even to know God, who suppose that they shall never be punished no matter what they do, who in their atheism consider themselves as the highest thing in all creation - when such men shall suddenly be summoned with all mankind to the bar of Eternal Judgment, it will indeed be a time of universal fear and mourning. Both in Matthew and in Revelation, such thoughts are stressed: "Then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and with great glory" (Matthew 24:30). See the special O.T. report on the terrors of that day in my Commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai, pp. 141-144.