HKB
house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs" (or dough).
Supposing that such a plague was to come upon us at the present day, we should consider it to be a terrible annoyance, yet scarcely worthy of the name of plague, and certainly not to be classed with the turning of a river into blood, with the hail and lightning that destroyed the crops and cattle, and with the simultaneous death of the first-born. But the Egyptians suffered most keenly from the infliction. They were a singularly fastidious people, and abhorred the contact of anything that they held to be unclean. We may well realize, therefore, the effect of a visitation of Frogs, which rendered their houses unclean by entering them, and themselves unclean by leaping upon them; which deprived them of rest by getting on their beds, and of food by crawling into their ovens and upon the dough in the kneading-troughs.
And, as if to make the visitation still worse, when the plague was removed, the Frogs died in the places into which they had intruded, so that the Egyptians were obliged to clear their houses of the dead carcases, and to pile them up in heaps, to be dried by the sun or eaten by birds and other scavengers of the East.
As to the species of Frog which thus invaded the houses of the Egyptians, there is no doubt whatever. It can be but the GREEN, or EDIBLE FROG (Rana esculenta), which is so well known for the delicacy of its flesh. This is believed to be the only aquatic Frog of Egypt, and therefore must be the species which came out of the river into the houses.
Both in Egypt and Palestine it exists in very great numbers, swarming in every marshy place, and inhabiting the pools in such numbers that the water can scarcely be seen for the Frogs. Thus the multitudes of the Frogs which invaded the Egyptians was no matter of wonder, the only miraculous element being that the reptiles were simultaneously directed to the houses, and their simultaneous death when the plague was taken away.
Frogs are also mentioned in Rev. xvi. 13: "And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet." With the exception of this passage, which is a purely symbolical one, there is no mention of Frogs in the New Testament. It is rather remarkable that the Toad, which might be thought to afford an excellent symbol for various forms of evil, is entirely ignored, both in the Old and New Testaments. Probably the Frogs and Toads were all classed together under the same title.
FISHES.
Impossibility of distinguishing the different species of Fishes--The fishermen Apostles--Fish used for food--The miracle of the loaves and Fishes--The Fish broiled on the coals--Clean and unclean Fishes--The Sheat-fish, or Silurus--The Eel and the Muræna--The Long-headed Barbel--Fish-ponds and preserves--The Fish-ponds of Heshbon--The Sucking-fish--The Lump-sucker--The Tunny--The Coryphene.
We now come to the FISHES, a class of animals which are repeatedly mentioned both in the Old and New Testaments, but only in general terms, no one species being described so as to give the slightest indication of its identity.
This is the more remarkable because, although the Jews were, like all Orientals, utterly unobservant of those characteristics by which the various species are distinguished from each other, we might expect that St. Peter and other of the fisher Apostles would have given the names of some of the Fish which they were in the habit of catching, and by the sale of which they gained their living.