Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary Verse 4. About midnight will I go out] Whether God did this by the ministry of a good or of an evil angel is a matter of little importance, though some commentators have greatly magnified it. Both kinds of angels are under his power and jurisdiction, and he may employ them as he pleases. Such a work of destruction as the slaying of the first-born is supposed to be more proper for a bad than for a good angel. But the works of God's justice are not less holy and pure than the works of his mercy; and the highest archangel may, with the utmost propriety, be employed in either.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 4-10 - The death of all the first-born in Egypt at once: this plague had bee the first threatened, but is last executed. See how slow God is to wrath. The plague is foretold, the time is fixed; all their first-bor should sleep the sleep of death, not silently, but so as to rouse the families at midnight. The prince was not too high to be reached by it nor the slaves at the mill too low to be noticed. While angels slew the Egyptians, not so much as a dog should bark at any of the children of Israel. It is an earnest of the difference there shall be in the grea day, between God's people and his enemies. Did men know what difference God puts, and will put to eternity, between those that serv him and those that serve him not, religion would not seem to them a indifferent thing; nor would they act in it with so much carelessnes as they do. When Moses had thus delivered his message, he went out from Pharaoh in great anger at his obstinacy; though he was the meekest of the men of the earth. The Scripture has foretold the unbelief of man who hear the gospel, that it might not be a surprise or stumbling-bloc to us, Ro 10:16. Let us never think the worse of the gospel of Chris for the slights men put upon it. Pharaoh was hardened, yet he wa compelled to abate his stern and haughty demands, till the Israelite got full freedom. In like manner the people of God will find that ever struggle against their spiritual adversary, made in the might of Jesu Christ, every attempt to overcome him by the blood of the Lamb, an every desire to attain increasing likeness and love to that Lamb, wil be rewarded by increasing freedom from the enemy of souls _________________________________________________
Original Hebrew ויאמר559 משׁה4872 כה3541 אמר559 יהוה3068 כחצת2676 הלילה3915 אני589 יוצא3318 בתוך8432 מצרים׃4714
