Exodus 8:26

And Moses said, it is not meet so to do,.... It being the command and will of God that they should go three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice there; and besides it was dangerous, the

And Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land. Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land.

It is not meet, Heb. not right, neither in God’ s eyes, who hath appointed us the place as well as the thing; nor in the Egyptians’ eyes, as it follows. The abomination of the Egyptians; that which the Egyptians abhor to kill, or to see killed; as not only Scripture, but profane authors, as Diodorus, and Tully, and Juvenal, witness, because they worshipped them as gods, as is notoriously known. Their fear was just; for when once a Roman had but killed a cat, though imprudently, the people tumultuously met together, and beset his house, and killed him in spite of the king and his princes, who used their utmost power and diligence to prevent it.

Exodus 8:26 And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?Ver. 26. Will they not stone us?] Superstition is cruel; witness the Popish Inquisition to Lithgow, who, in ten hours, received seventy various torments. And the massacre of Paris, wherein they poisoned the Queen of Navarre, murdered the most part of the peerless nobility in France, their wives and children, with a great sort of the common people, a hundred thousand in one year in various parts of the realm; some say three hundred thousand! The bloody and barbarous persecutions of the religious abroad in Bohemia, the Valtoline, Piedmont, and Netherlands; the Marian dog-days here at home; are better known than I need to mention them.

(26) It is not meet so to do.—Pressed to remain “in the land,” and sacrifice, Moses deemed it right to explain to the king why this was impossible. The Israelites would have to “sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians”—i.e., animals of which the Egyptians abominated the killing; and if they did this in the presence of Egyptians, a riot would be certain to break out—perhaps a civil war would ensue. The animal worship of the Egyptians is a certain, and generally recognised, fact. It seemed to the Greeks and Romans the most striking characteristic of the Egyptian reliction. (See Herod, ii. 65-76; Diod. Sic. i. 82-84; Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 36; &c.) The sacrificial animals of the Hebrews—sheep, goats, and cattle—were all of them sacred animals, either to the Egyptians generally, or to the inhabitants of certain districts. A Theban could not endure the sacrifice of a sheep, nor a Men-desian that of a goat (Herod. ii. 42). White cows and heifers—perhaps cows and heifers generally—were sacred to Isis-Athor. Any bull-calf might be an Apis; and it could not be known whether he was Apis or not till the priests had examined him (Herod. iii. 28). The extent to which the Egyptians carried their rage when a sacred animal was killed in their presence is illustrated by many facts in history. On one occasion a Roman ambassador, who had accidentally killed a cat, was torn to pieces by the populace (Diod. Sic. i. 83). On another, war broke out between the Oxyrinchites and the Cynopolites, because the latter had eaten one of the fish considered sacred by the former (Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. § 44). The fear of Moses was thus not at all groundless. Will they not stone us?—This is the first mention of “stoning” in Scripture or elsewhere. It was not a legalised Egyptian punishment; but probably it was everywhere one of the earliest, as it would be one of the simplest, modes of wreaking popular vengeance. Æschylus mentions it (Sept. 100 Th. 183), also Herodotus (v. 38). It was known in ancient Persia (Ctes. Fr. 50).

Verse 26. We shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians] That is, The animals which they hold sacred, and will not permit to be slain, are those which our customs require us to sacrifice to our God; and should we do this in Egypt the people would rise in a mass, and stone us to death. Perhaps few people were more superstitious than the Egyptians. Almost every production of nature was an object of their religious worship: the sun, moon, planets, stars, the river Nile, animals of all sorts, from the human being to the monkey, dog, cat, and ibis, and even the onions and leeks which grew in their gardens. Jupiter was adored by them under the form of a ram, Apollo under the form of a crow, Bacchus under that of a goat, and Juno under that of a heifer. The reason why the Egyptians worshipped those animals is given by Eusebius, viz., that when the giants made war on the gods, they were obliged to take refuge in Egypt, and assume the shapes or disguise themselves under different kinds of animals in order to escape. Jupiter hid himself in the body of a ram, Apollo in that of a crow, Bacchus in a goat, Diana in a cat, Juno in a white heifer, Venus in a fish, and Mercury in the bird ibis; all which are summoned up by Ovid in the following lines: - Duxque gregis fit Jupiter ------------- Delius in corvo, proles Semeleia capro, Fele soror Phoebi, nivea Saturnia vacca, Pisce Venus latuit, Cyllenius ibidis alis. METAM., l. v., fab. v., 1. 326. How the gods fled to Egypt's slimy soil, And hid their heads beneath the banks of Nile; How Typhon from the conquer'd skies pursued Their routed godheads to the seven-mouth'd flood; Forced every god, his fury to escape, Some beastly form to take, or earthly shape. Jove, so she sung, was changed into a ram, From whence the horns of Libyan Ammon came; Bacchus a goat, Apollo was a crow, Phoebe a cat, the wife of Jove a cow, Whose hue was whiter than the falling snow; Mercury, to a nasty ibis turn'd, The change obscene, afraid of Typhon mourn'd, While Venus from a fish protection craves, And once more plunges in her native waves. MAYNWARING. These animals therefore became sacred to them on account of the deities, who, as the fable reports, had taken refuge in them. Others suppose that the reason why the Egyptians would not sacrifice or kill those creatures was their belief in the doctrine of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls; for they feared lest in killing an animal they should kill a relative or a friend. This doctrine is still held by the Hindoos.

26. Moses objects that, if they do this, they will arouse the religious susceptibilities of the Egyptians, and be in danger of their lives. meet] i.e. suitable, proper; an archaism, not unfrequent in AV., RV.: see e.g. Genesis 2:18, Matthew 3:8 (AV.: RV. worthy), Exodus 15:26. the abomination of the Egyptians] i.e. animals which the Egyptians deemed it unlawful to sacrifice, and the sacrifice of which would consequently shock them: as the cow (which was sacred to Isis), the bull (which, according to Hdt. ii. 41, was only sacrificed by them when it was ‘clean,’ i.e. free from the sacred marks of Apis), sheep at Thebes, and goats (according to Wiedemann, an error for rams) at Mendes: see Hdt. ii. 38, 41, 42, 46; cf. Wilk.-Birch, ii. Exodus 460, iii. 108 f., 304 f.; Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch, pp. 180–3, 187 f., 196 f., 218 f.

The abomination - i. e. an animal which the Egyptians held it sacrilegious to slay. The ox, bull, or cow, is meant.

26. The abomination of the Egyptians — The Egyptians would not allow them to worship in the land according to Jehovah’s will.