Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/289

XXXII.] with flesh. But Moses and Aaron came up, collected them together, drew a circle round them with the sacred staff, and the wild beasts licked the feet of the prophets and followed them into the presence of Pharaoh.

Moses and Aaron repeated their message to Pharaoh, but he would not hearken to them, but drove them from his presence. Aaron smote the river; but Moses on no occasion smote the Nile, for he respected the river which had saved his life as a babe. Then the Lord brought frogs upon the land, and filled all the houses; they were in the beds, on the tables, in the cups. And the king sent for Moses and said: "Intreat the Lord, that He may take the frogs from me and from my people." So the Lord sent a great rain, and it washed the frogs into the Red Sea.

The next plague was lice.

The fourth plague was wild beasts.

The fifth was murrain.

The sixth was boils and blains upon man and beast.

The seventh was hail and tempest. Now Job regarded the word of Moses, and he brought his cattle within doors, and they were saved; but Balaam regarded it not, and all his cattle were destroyed.

The eighth was locusts; these the Egyptians fried, and laid by in store to serve them for food; but when the west wind came to blow the locusts away, it blew away also those that had been pickled and laid by for future consumption.

The ninth plague was darkness.

The tenth was the death of the first-born.

The Book of Jasher says that, the Egyptians having closed their doors and windows against the plagues of flies, and locusts, and lice, God sent the sea-monster Silinoth, a huge polypus with arms ten cubits long, and the beast climbed upon the roofs and broke them up, and let down its slimy arms, and unlatched all the doors and windows, and threw them open for the flies and locusts and lice to enter.

But the Mohammedans give a different order to the signs:—(1) the rod changed into a serpent; (2) the whitened hand;