Exodus 11

INTRODUCTORY.

( 1.) During the progress of these judgments, which occupied at least several months, there were, of course, constant interviews between Moses and the elders of Israel, and between them and the people, of which we have no account in the narrative, and there was a gathering and a marshalling of the people for the great decisive expedition towards which all these providences were leading them. The history has directed our attention chiefly to the leading actors, Moses and Pharaoh, but now, in the first three verses of this chapter, in order to make clear the following narrative, it glances back to events which were meanwhile transpiring in Israel. The first three verses are, then, parenthetical, and the account of Moses’s final interview with Pharaoh, which commenced Exodus 10:24, is then resumed, and finished Exodus 11:8. The last two verses of this chapter are retrospective of the whole history of these judgments .

( 2.) Adam Clarke, following Kennicott, supposed that there are here several omissions in the Hebrew text which the Samaritan supplies. But the critical examination made by Gesenius has now so completely destroyed the authority of the Samaritan where it is not supported by the Hebrew, that the great expectations once entertained of essential revision of our received text from that Version may now be said to be completely dissipated. The Samaritan variations from the Hebrew are now almost universally admitted to be simply ignorant or meddlesome alterations, No one would see this more clearly than Dr. Clarke were he to write to-day.