Exodus 12:30 - Exposition

And Pharaoh rose up in the night, and all his servants . This general disturbance differentiates the present visitations from that which came upon the host of Sennacherib ( 2 Kings 19:35 ). Then, the calamity came with such silence and secrecy, that the deaths were not suspected until men rose to go about their various tasks in the morning Now, every household seems to have been aroused from its sleep in the night. We must suppose sharp and painful illness, terminating after a few hours in death. The disaster itself may have been one from which Egypt often suffers in the spring of the year (Kalisch); but its attacking all the firstborn and no others, and no Israelites, as well as its announcement, plainly showed it to be miraculous. There was a great cry . See the comment on Exodus 11:6 . For there was not a house where there was not one dead . This is perhaps a slight hyperbole. There would be many families in which there was no son; and some houses might contain no male who had opened the womb. It is always to be borne in mind, that the language of Scripture—especially where exciting and tragical events are narrated—is poetical, or at the least highly rhetorical.