I Will Send Swarms of Flies

‘I Will Send Swarms of Flies Upon Thee’ Commentary by Geoffrey Nuttall Bible Passage This engraving comes from a lavishly illustrated Bible, first published in 1700. Centre stage in this epic reimagining of the plagues of insects (gnats first, soon to be followed by flies), Moses gestures with his right hand towards an Egyptian, who hops up and down in a desperate attempt to shake the biting creatures from his bare legs. Behind the prophet, the Egyptian magician stands—hands raised, mouth wide open: a figure of melodramatic horror. Almost a peripheral figure within this vast scene of human suffering, on the far right, is the pharaoh. He sits, an isolated figure amongst his terrified courtiers, on the stone steps of a Doric palace, looking down at his broken shield, crawling with insects, a symbol of his shattered power. Only the rats, who scurry across the foreground gorging on the fallen insects, seem immune from the torment. To the far left, beside the fallen segment of a fluted column, the ordinary people vainly attempt to cover themselves against the swarm. The ground rises towards the middle distance, past merchants leading donkeys, handlers trying to control a pair of baying camels, children, and dogs, and a group of horsemen, their mounts driven wild by the insects. Standing on the line of a low ridge, we see the barely recognizable figure of Aaron, his arms outstretched as he visits the plague upon the innumerable masses of the city. Foreshadowed in the ruined architecture of the foreground, the great buildings of the pharaoh’s metropolis, a mixture of classical and exotic styles (notably in the allusion to Pieter Bruegel the Elder’sTower of Babel in the top right-hand corner), stretch away in the far distance, awaiting their abandonment and decline. St Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) saw a parallel between the plagues of Egypt, and the Ten Commandments that God handed down to Moses. The distraction caused by the third plague of gnats, he suggested, is the counterpoint to the third commandment, ‘[r]emember the Sabbath day, to sanctify it’ (Exodus 20:8). Perhaps we may imagine the meditative pharaoh of Luyken’s engraving—the only figure at rest amidst the manic activity of his people—to be reflecting on Augustine’s denunciation of his ‘most iniquitous and malignant obstinacy’ (Augustine, Expositions Psalm 78.28), and the words of Scripture quoted by Augustine in this context: ‘Be still, and see that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10; Hill 1990: 244).