Bible Commentaries
Exodus 7

Verses 1-25

Exodus 7:1-2

The literature of France has been to ours what Aaron was to Moses, the expositor of great truths which would else have perished for want of a voice to utter them with distinctness. The relation which existed between Mr. Bentham and M. Dumont is an exact illustration of the intellectual relation in which the two countries stand to each other. The great discoveries in physics, in metaphysics, in political science, are ours. But scarcely any foreign nation except France has received them from us by direct communication. Isolated by our situation, isolated by our manners, we found truth, but we did not impart it. France has been the interpreter between England and mankind.

Macaulay on Walpole's Letters.

References. VII. 3, 4. E. L. Hull, Sermons Preached at King's Lynn (3rd Series), p. 94.

Exodus 7:11

We cannot close such a review of our five writers without melancholy reflections. That cause which will raise all its zealous friends to a sublime eminence on the last and most solemn day the world has yet to behold, and will make them great for ever, presented its claims full in sight of each of these authors in his time. The very lowest of these claims could not be less than a conscientious solicitude to beware of everything that could in any point injure the sacred cause. This claim has been slighted by so many as have lent attraction to an order of moral sentiments greatly discordant with its principles. And so, many are gone into eternity under the charge of having employed their genius, as the magicians employed their enchantments against Moses, to counteract the Saviour of the World.

John Foster on The Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion (ix.).

Exodus 7:12

Love, a myrtle wand, is transformed by the Aaron touch of jealousy into a serpent so vast as to swallow up every other stinging awe, and makes us mourn the exchange.

Coleridge.

Reference. VII. 12. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix. No. 521.