The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Sixth Plague: Boils
Exodus 9:8–12 — The Sixth Plague: Boils. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
8Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from the furnace; in the sight of Pharaoh, Moses is to toss it into the air.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh way·yō·mer ’el- mō·šeh wə·’el- ’a·hă·rōn qə·ḥū lā·ḵem mə·lō ḥā·p̄ə·nê·ḵem pî·aḥ kiḇ·šān lə·‘ê·nê p̄ar·‘ōh mō·šeh ū·zə·rā·qōw haš·šā·may·māh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-said YHWH to Moses and-to Aaron, ‘Take for-yourselves fullness-of your-two-fists of soot of-a-kiln, and-let-toss-it Moses toward-the-heavens, before-the-eyes of-Pharaoh.’”
Where the English smooths the original
Much of Goshen had been converted into a brick-field ( Exodus 1:14 ; Exodus 5:7-13 ); and though most of the bricks made would be simply dried in the sun, a portion would be subjected to artificial heat in brick-kilns. When ashes from one of these kilns were made the germs of a disease that was a sore infliction, their own wrongdoing became to the Egyptians a whip wherewith God scourged them.
Ashes of the furnace . Rather "soot from the furnace." The word commonly used in Hebrew for "ashes" is different.The Pulpit editors flag the very lexical point the literal rendering makes — pîaḥ is soot, not the ordinary ’ēp̄er.
Both were to take them up, but Moses only to sprinkle them, as at other times Aaron only did the work, to show that they were but instruments, which God could use as he pleased, and God was the principal author of it.
כּבשׁן is not an oven or cooking stove, but, as Kimchi supposes, a smelting-furnace or lime-kiln; not so called, however, a metallis domandis, but from כּבשׁ in its primary signification to press together, hence (a) to soften, or melt, (b) to tread down.
The act was evidently symbolic: the ashes were to be sprinkled toward heaven, challenging, so to speak, the Egyptian deities. There may possibly be a reference to an Egyptian custom of scattering to the winds ashes of victims offered to Typhon.Barnes supplies the upward-gesture reading the literal note flags — a challenge flung at the sky-gods; K&D, by contrast, expressly rejects any link to Egyptian sacrifice-ashes, so the two voices disagree and the text leaves the gesture open.
Pharaoh and his people were warned by it that God's power would be shown on themselves, not in the way of mere annoyance - as with the earlier plagues - but of serious injury - and if so , why not of death? Thus, the sixth plague heralded the tenth, and, except the tenth, was the most severe of all.The Pulpit editors read the sixth plague as a deliberate foreshadowing of the tenth: the first blow to strike the body warns of the blow that will end it.
9It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on man and beast throughout the land.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hā·yāh lə·’ā·ḇāq ‘al kāl- ’e·reṣ miṣ·rā·yim wə·hā·yāh ’ă·ḇa‘·bu·‘ōṯ liš·ḥîn pō·rê·aḥ ‘al- hā·’ā·ḏām wə·‘al- hab·bə·hê·māh bə·ḵāl ’e·reṣ miṣ·rā·yim
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-it-shall-become fine-dust over all the-land of-Egypt, and-shall-become festering-blisters breaking-out as-inflammation on the-man and-on the-beast in-all the-land of-Egypt.”
Where the English smooths the original
שׁחין (a common disease in Egypt, Deuteronomy 28:27 ) from the unusual word שׁחן (incaluit) signifies inflammation, then an abscess or boil ( Leviticus 13:18 .; 2 Kings 20:7 ). אבעבּעת, from בּוּע, to spring up, swell up, signifies blisters
i.e. be dispersed in the air over the whole land in the shape of fine dust, which settling down on men and cattle, will produce boils. For ’âbâḳ , fine, flying dust, cf. Isaiah 5:24 ; Isaiah 29:5 .
A burning scab, which quickly raised blains and blisters; whereby they were both vehemently inclined to scratch themselves, and yet utterly disenabled from it by its great soreness.
No physical change is intended by the expression used, but simply that the "soot" or "ash" should be spread by the air throughout all Egypt, as dust was wont to be spread.
A boil - Means probably a burning tumor or carbuncle breaking out in pustulous ulcers. The miracle consisting in the severity of the plague and its direct connection with the act of Moses.Barnes locates the miracle not in the disease itself — a known Egyptian malady — but in its severity and its instantaneous tie to Moses' gesture, the very point K&D and JFB press.
10So they took soot from the furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on man and beast.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yiq·ḥū ’eṯ- pî·aḥ hak·kiḇ·šān way·ya·‘am·ḏū lip̄·nê p̄ar·‘ōh mō·šeh way·yiz·rōq ’ō·ṯōw haš·šā·mā·yə·māh way·hî ’ă·ḇa‘·bu·‘ōṯ šə·ḥîn pō·rê·aḥ bā·’ā·ḏām ū·ḇab·bə·hê·māh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-they-took the-soot of-the-kiln and-they-stood before Pharaoh, and-tossed it Moses toward-the-heavens, and-it-became inflammation-of-blisters breaking-out on the-man and-on the-beast.”
Where the English smooths the original
Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven. —Presenting it, as it were, to God, in evidence of His people’s wrongs.
and stood before Pharaoh; not in his palace, or in any covered room, but in some place open to the heaven, a courtyard or garden adjoining to the palace
as the brick-kiln was one of the principal instruments of oppression to the Israelites [De 4:20; 1Ki 8:51; Jer 11:4], it was now converted into a means of chastisement to the Egyptians, who were made to read their sin in their punishment.
The soot of a kiln , and tossed it for ‘sprinkled it up,’ as v. 8.Cambridge twice over corrects both nouns and the verb of the older renderings — soot (not ashes) of a kiln (not furnace), tossed (not sprinkled).
11The magicians could not stand before Moses, because the boils had broken out on them and on all the Egyptians.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ha·ḥar·ṭum·mîm yā·ḵə·lū wə·lō- la·‘ă·mōḏ lip̄·nê mō·šeh mip·pə·nê haš·šə·ḥîn kî- haš·šə·ḥîn hā·yāh ba·ḥăr·ṭum·mim ū·ḇə·ḵāl miṣ·rā·yim
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-not could the-magicians to-stand before Moses because-of the-inflammation, for the-inflammation was on the-magicians and-on all Egypt.”
Where the English smooths the original
But now, being on a sudden smitten with these ulcers, in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, they were rendered so contemptible, that they durst not again look either Moses or Pharaoh in the face; for we hear no more of them after this time. To this, it seems, the apostle refers, ( 2 Timothy 3:9 ,) when he says their folly was “manifested unto all men.”
Could not stand before Moses, as they hitherto had done, both as spies and as adversaries; for though their understandings were convinced of God’s hand and infinite power, yet their hearts were not changed
It is uncertain whether the magicians were present accidentally, or had come for the express purpose of “withstanding Moses” ( 2Timothy 3:8 ). The latter may be suspected, as the plague was made to fall with special violence upon them.
On this occasion their persistency was punished by the sudden falling of the pestilence upon themselves with such severity that they were forced to quit the royal presence and hasten to their homes to be nursed.
12But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said to Moses.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh ’eṯ- way·ḥaz·zêq par·‘ōh lêḇ wə·lō šā·ma‘ ’ă·lê·hem ka·’ă·šer Yah·weh ’el- dib·ber mō·šeh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-strengthened YHWH the-heart-of Pharaoh, and-not did-he-listen to-them, just-as YHWH had-spoken to Moses.”
Where the English smooths the original
The judicial punitive hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by God Himself now began. As with the heathen in later times, “because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. God gave them over to a reprobate mind” ( Romans 1:28 ), so now with Pharaoh: because he had twice hardened himself
Before he had hardened his own heart, and resisted the grace of God; and now God justly gave him up to his own heart’s lusts, to strong delusions, permitting Satan to blind and harden him. Wilful hardness is generally punished with judicial hardness.
Up to this time the hardening of Pharaoh's heart has been ascribed to himself, or expressed indefinitely as a process that was continually going on - now for the first time it is positively stated that God hardened his heart, as he had threatened that he would ( Exodus 4:21 ).
He having often, and so long hardened his own heart, God gave him up to judicial hardness of heart, to his own corruptions, the temptations of Satan, and the lying magicians about him
He had hardened his own heart, and now God justly gave him up to his own heart's lusts, permitting Satan to blind and harden him. If men shut their eyes against the light, it is just with God to close their eyes. This is the sorest judgment a man can be under out of hell.Henry's whole comment is a single block on vv. 8–12; this closing line names judicial hardening as the gravest thing short of hell, and grounds it in the man's own prior self-hardening.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The sixth plague begins with a gesture loaded with memory. Moses and Aaron are to take mᵉlōʼ ḥop̄nêḵem — “the fullness of your two fists” — of pîaḥ kibšān, the fine soot of a kiln. The translators’ “ashes of the furnace” is twice wrong, and the public-domain voices say so: the Pulpit Commentary corrects “ashes” to “soot” (the Hebrew pîaḥ is not the sacrificial ’ēp̄er), and Keil & Delitzsch fix the vessel — kibšān “is not an oven or cooking stove, but… a smelting-furnace or lime-kiln,” from a root “to press together… to tread down.” Why soot, and why a kiln? Because Israel had been crushed in exactly these. Ellicott traces it: “much of Goshen had been converted into a brick-field,” and when its kiln-soot “were made the germs of a disease… their own wrongdoing became to the Egyptians a whip wherewith God scourged them.” Benson and Henry say the same in a sentence each — “they had oppressed Israel in the furnaces, and now the ashes of the furnace are made a terror to them” (Henry). The instrument of oppression becomes the instrument of judgment. Then Moses flings it — ûzᵉrāqô haššāmaymâ, “and he tosses it toward the heavens,” the violent scatter-verb zāraq, not the “sprinkle” of the older Bibles (Cambridge: “tossed it for ‘sprinkled it up’”). Barnes hears in the upward throw a symbolic challenge flung at the Egyptian sky-gods; Gill and the Pulpit Commentary hear the opposite — a sign that the plague descends from heaven, from the God of heaven. Both readings are old; the text holds the gesture open.
This is the hinge of the whole plague-cycle. For the first time, as Ellicott, K&D, and the Pulpit Commentary each note, the visitation strikes not the Nile, not the cattle, not the crops, but the persons of the Egyptians — haʼāḏām, “the man,” himself. The soot becomes ’āḇāq, the lightest flying dust (Cambridge sends us to Isaiah 5:24; 29:5), settling everywhere to raise šᵉḥîn — an inflammation, from a rare root “to be hot” (K&D) — “breaking out,” pōrēaḥ, into ’ăḇaʻbuʻōṯ, blisters, the Septuagint’s phlyktídes. The Hebrew verb is grimly beautiful: pāraḥ is to bud, to blossom — the boils flower on the skin. Poole feels the cruelty of it: a burning scab that left its victims “vehemently inclined to scratch themselves, and yet utterly disenabled from it by its great soreness.” The Pulpit Commentary draws the warning the plague itself implies: the same power that can raise boils “could also (it must have been felt) smite it with death… Thus, the sixth plague heralded the tenth.”
The collapse of Egypt’s religious establishment is told in one quiet verb-play. In v. 10 Moses and Aaron stood (ʻāmaḏ) before Pharaoh; in v. 11 the ḥarṭummîm — the sacred-scribes, the lector-priests who once matched the early signs (Exodus 7:11, 22) — “could not stand [laʻămōḏ] before Moses because of the boils.” The very posture of confrontation is denied them. The Hebrew even puns: they cannot stand “before the face of” Moses (lip̄nê) “from the face of” (mip̄pᵉnê) the inflammation. Benson watches them vanish from the story: “they durst not again look either Moses or Pharaoh in the face; for we hear no more of them after this time,” and he hears Paul behind it — “their folly was ‘manifested unto all men’” (2 Timothy 3:9). Poole presses the deeper point: their understandings were convinced of God’s power, “yet their hearts were not changed.” Knowledge of the hand of God is not the same as surrender to it — a verdict that prepares the reader for Pharaoh in v. 12.
The unit closes on the gravest sentence in the chapter, and the commentators are unanimous about what makes it grave. The Pulpit Commentary states it flatly: “now for the first time it is positively stated that God hardened his heart.” Through five plagues Pharaoh hardened himself (8:15, 32); now wayḥazzēq YHWH — “and YHWH made strong” (Piel of ḥāzaq, “to fasten upon”) — the heart of Pharaoh. Yet the voices guard the justice of it. Benson: “Before he had hardened his own heart… and now God justly gave him up to his own heart’s lusts… Wilful hardness is generally punished with judicial hardness.” Ellicott reaches for the parallel in Romans 1: “because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. God gave them over to a reprobate mind.” Gill names the means — God gave him up “to his own corruptions, the temptations of Satan, and the lying magicians about him.” And the closing clause, kaʼăšer dibber YHWH, “just as YHWH had spoken to Moses,” ties the outcome back to the decree of Exodus 4:21 and 7:3: this is no improvisation but the unfolding of a word given long before. The frame is exact — God says at v. 8, God acts at v. 12.
Set against the rule that Scripture alone is final authority, three things stand out — offered to be tested, not trusted. First, the judgment is measured, and the measure is in the offender’s own hand. God does not reach for a foreign weapon; He picks up the soot of Israel’s own slave-kilns and turns it on the oppressor. Justice here is not arbitrary force but a moral mirror — “sometimes God shows men their sin in their punishment” (Henry). The reader is meant to recognize the principle, not merely the event. Second, exposure precedes condemnation. The priests’ craft is not refuted in debate; it simply fails on their own bodies, and Scripture’s own commentary (Paul, by Benson’s and Ellicott’s reading) is that false power, fully tested, is finally “manifest to all.” The Word does not fear the contest; it lets it run until the counterfeit collapses. Third, and hardest, the hardening of Pharaoh is named by God as God’s act — and never excuses the man. The same Bible that says “the LORD hardened” says Pharaoh “hardened his own heart” first. Held under Scripture, the two are not contradiction but sequence: wilful resistance ripened into judicial abandonment. The text refuses both fatalism and self-rule; it leaves the sinner responsible and the LORD sovereign, and does not let go of either.
The deepest line of the passage is not the plague but the silence after it: a man can see the hand of God on his own flesh, lose the very priests he trusted, and still — by his own long choosing, now sealed by God — refuse to hear. The sixth plague is a warning written in the body about what becomes of a heart that has hardened itself too long. Read whole, vv. 8–12 hold two truths in one frame without dissolving either: the LORD is sovereign over Pharaoh’s very will, and Pharaoh is wholly responsible for it. Keep what the Word supports; this reading is fallible.
The soot of the slave-kiln, flung at heaven, comes down as judgment — God’s justice often wears the shape of the sin it answers.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The rare noun kibšān, “kiln,” occurs in only four verses in the whole Hebrew Bible. Two of them frame catastrophe and theophany: Abraham looks toward Sodom and sees smoke rising “as the smoke of a kibšān” (Genesis 19:28), and at Sinai the mountain smokes “as the smoke of a kibšān” (Exodus 19:18). Here the same kiln yields the soot of the sixth plague. The shared rare word knits judgment-smoke, mountain-fire, and plague-soot into one image of God’s presence as consuming heat — Cambridge cites both these verses on Exodus 9:8.
Exodus 9:8 · Genesis 19:28 · Exodus 19:18
basis: shared rare lexeme H3536 kibšân (kiln) — occurs in only 4 verses total; Verifier confirms the link to both Genesis 19:28 and Exodus 19:18
Moses takes “the fullness of his two hollowed fists” (mᵉlōʼ ḥop̄nêḵem) of soot. The word for the cupped fist, ḥōp̄en, is rare (six verses), and one of its other occurrences is the Day of Atonement: the high priest takes (lāqaḥ) a censer full of coals and his two fists full (mᵉlōʼ ḥop̄nāyw) of incense, and the smoke covers the mercy seat (Leviticus 16:12). The verbal overlap — lāqaḥ + mᵉlōʼ + ḥōp̄en — is exact. A grim inversion: the same priestly handful that, on the mercy seat, brings atoning smoke, here scatters the dust of wrath over Egypt.
Exodus 9:8 · Leviticus 16:12
basis: shared rare lexeme H2651 chôphen (cupped fist, 6 vv) with H4393 mᵉlôʼ and H3947 lâqach — Verifier confirms; the same three-word gesture frames the Day of Atonement censer-rite
The combination of the cupped fist (ḥōp̄en) and the verb zāraq, “to fling/scatter,” recurs in Ezekiel 10:2, where the man in linen is told to fill his two fists with burning coals from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city — and Jerusalem burns. The two scenes share the gesture and the lexemes: a hand filled with fire-residue, flung out, and a city brought under judgment. Where Egypt’s soot rises, Jerusalem’s coals fall; the same divine signature is on both.
Exodus 9:8 · Exodus 9:10 · Ezekiel 10:2
basis: shared rare lexeme H2651 chôphen (6 vv) with H2236 zâraq (to scatter/fling, 33 vv) — Verifier confirms the doubled verbal link between the soot-gesture and Ezekiel’s coal-scattering
The word šᵉḥîn, “inflammation/boil,” is uncommon (twelve verses) and runs as a single thread through Scripture’s accounts of bodily affliction. It is the boil that covered Job “from the sole of his foot unto his crown” (Job 2:7) — Ellicott and JFB both draw the comparison — and the “boil” healed on Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:7; Isaiah 38:21), and the diagnostic “boil” of the leprosy law (Leviticus 13:18–20). Leviticus 13:20 is the tightest link of all: it shares with Exodus 9:9 both šᵉḥîn (the boil) and pāraḥ (the verb “to break out / blossom”) — the Verifier confirms the doubled lexeme. Most pointedly, the boil is the curse God later threatens against a disobedient Israel itself: “the LORD will smite you with the boil of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 28:27, 35). The Pulpit Commentary and K&D both note that the name there is “the same in the Hebrew”; Gill calls it “the botch of Egypt.” The plague God sends on Egypt becomes the covenant warning to His own people: judgment is no respecter of nation.
Exodus 9:9 · Exodus 9:11 · Leviticus 13:18 · Leviticus 13:20 · Deuteronomy 28:27 · Deuteronomy 28:35 · Job 2:7 · 2 Kings 20:7 · Isaiah 38:21
basis: shared rare lexeme H7822 shᵉchîyn (boil, 12 vv) across all listed refs — Verifier confirms; Leviticus 13:20 doubles the link by also sharing H6524 pârach. Deuteronomy 28:27 names it ‘the boil of Egypt,’ the identical Hebrew word (noted by Pulpit Commentary and K&D)
The diseased eruption “breaks out” by the verb pāraḥ (pōrēaḥ), whose plain sense is to bud, sprout, blossom like a flower. The same verb, in the same Pentateuch, describes Aaron’s rod that overnight “put forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds” (Numbers 17:8) — the sign that vindicated the true priesthood against Korah’s rebels. The juxtaposition is bitter and exact: on the priest’s dead staff the verb produces life and divine attestation; on Egyptian flesh the same verb produces boils, and the lector-priests who match Pharaoh’s rebellion cannot even stand (v. 11). What blossoms is, in both cases, a verdict — life for God’s chosen servant, sickness for the resisting kingdom. Held honestly: this is a structural/thematic link on a moderately common verb (33 vv), not a rare quotation; the Verifier confirms only the shared lexeme pāraḥ, so the contrast is the editor’s reading, argued from the shared word, not asserted as a citation.
Exodus 9:9 · Exodus 9:10 · Numbers 17:8
basis: shared lexeme H6524 pârach (to bud/break forth, 33 vv) — Verifier confirms; a moderately common verb, so this is a thematic/ironic contrast (budding rod vs. budding boils), not a rare verbal quotation
Exodus 9:12 is the first verse in which YHWH is the stated subject of the hardening, but it is not the first time the LORD has named it. Long before any plague, He told Moses, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 4:21; cf. 7:3). The verbal threads are dense — ḥāzaq (harden), lēḇ (heart), Parʻōh (Pharaoh) — binding 9:12 to those foretelling verses, and the closing clause, “just as the LORD had spoken to Moses,” makes the link explicit. The hardening is not a reversal of plan but its appointed unfolding.
Exodus 9:12 · Exodus 4:21 · Exodus 7:3
basis: shared lexemes H2388 châzaq, H3820 lêb, H6547 Parʻôh (all common, freq 266/551/235) — verbal overlap establishes a thematic chain, not a rare quotation; the text itself asserts the link (‘just as the LORD had spoken’)
Several voices (JFB, K&D, Henry, Benson) read the kiln-soot as a deliberate echo of Israel’s servitude, and Deuteronomy 4:20 names the image directly: God brought Israel out of “the iron furnace, out of Egypt.” Held honestly: the Hebrew word there is kûr (the smelting-furnace, H3564), not the kibšān of Exodus 9:8 — the Verifier finds no shared lexeme beyond the common verb lāqaḥ. So the connection is thematic and image-based, argued by the commentators, not a verbal quotation. K&D themselves make the conceptual case: God made “the soot or ashes of the lime-kiln, the residuum of that fiery heat and emblem of the furnace in which Israel groaned, into a seed… [of] burning boils.”
Exodus 9:8 · Deuteronomy 4:20
basis: thematic/image link only — the ‘iron furnace’ of Deut 4:20 is kûr (H3564), a different word from kibšân (H3536); Verifier finds only common H3947 lâqach shared, so this is argued from the motif (per K&D, JFB), not a verbal quotation
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The magicians who “could not stand before Moses because of the boils” are, in the New Testament’s own reading, a type of those who resist the truth. Paul names them — “as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so these also resist the truth… but they will proceed no further, for their folly will be manifest to all” (2 Timothy 3:8–9) — and both Ellicott and Benson connect Exodus 9:11 to that very passage. The pattern is figural and apostolically attested: counterfeit power, brought into contact with the genuine work of God, is exposed and silenced. Held honestly: this is a cross-Testament link (Greek 2 Timothy ↔ Hebrew Exodus), so it rests on no shared original-language lexeme — it is a typological reading the apostle himself authorizes.
Exodus 9:11 · 2 Timothy 3:8
Paul takes the hardening of Pharaoh as Scripture’s clearest case of God’s sovereign freedom: “he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens” (Romans 9:18), citing the Pharaoh narrative directly. Read toward Christ, the contrast is the point: where Pharaoh is the vessel of wrath who hears the word and will not obey (šāmaʻ), Christ is the obedient Servant who learns obedience and is heard (Hebrews 5:7–8). The plague-narrative’s anatomy of a heart that refuses to hear sets in relief the one Heart that perfectly heard and obeyed the Father. Held honestly: Romans is Greek, Exodus Hebrew — no shared lexeme is possible; this is a structural-theological link, argued from Paul’s own use of the Exodus account, not asserted from the words.
Exodus 9:12 · Romans 9:18
Gill notes the resonance himself: “with this plague the first vial poured forth on mystical Egypt, or antichrist, has some agreement” — for the first bowl of Revelation pours out “a foul and painful sore” (a boil) “upon the men who had the mark of the beast” (Revelation 16:2). The end-time judgment deliberately recapitulates the plagues of Egypt, and the Lamb who pours out the bowls is the same LORD who flung the soot at heaven. The sixth plague’s boil reappears as the eschatological sign of judgment on those who refuse Christ. Held honestly: a cross-Testament typology (Greek Revelation ↔ Hebrew Exodus) with no shared lexeme — a figural reading flagged by Gill and grounded in Revelation’s patent use of the plague-cycle.
Exodus 9:9 · Revelation 16:2
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), dedicated to the public domain (CC0). The Hebrew is the Masoretic tradition; transliterations, parsings, the literal renderings, and the “where the English smooths the Hebrew” notes are this tool’s own work (⚙) — careful but fallible; check them against BDB/HALOT and a standard grammar.
The named voices are quoted verbatim from public-domain works on Exodus 9:8–12, drawn via Biblehub from their original editions: Charles Ellicott (1878), Joseph Benson (1810s), Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary (1706), Albert Barnes (1834), Jamieson–Fausset–Brown (1871), Matthew Poole (1685), John Gill (1746–63), the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1880s), the Pulpit Commentary (1880s), and Keil & Delitzsch (1860s). Where Matthew Henry’s Concise and K&D give one block-comment covering vv. 8–12, the excerpt for each verse is taken from that single source-text for the verse it is filed under.
On the cross-references: links carrying the verbal / quotation — confirmed badge rest on rare shared Hebrew lexemes computed by the Verifier — kibšān (4 vv), ḥōp̄en (6 vv), šᵉḥîn (12 vv) — which is why they rank above the common-word thematic links; Leviticus 13:20 is the tightest of the boil-links, sharing both šᵉḥîn and the verb pāraḥ. Three threads are honestly held below that line: the ‘iron furnace’ of Deuteronomy 4:20 is a different Hebrew word (kûr, not kibšān), so that connection is marked structural/thematic, argued from the motif (per K&D, JFB) rather than the vocabulary; the Pharaoh-hardening chain to Exodus 4:21; 7:3 rests on common words (ḥāzaq, lēḇ, Parʻōh), so it too is thematic, though the text’s own “just as the LORD had spoken” asserts the link; and the budding-rod contrast with Numbers 17:8 turns on the moderately common verb pāraḥ (33 vv), so it is an editor’s ironic reading, structural not verbal. All three Christ-readings are cross-Testament (Greek ↔ Hebrew) and therefore cannot use shared Strong’s numbers; they are tiered typological/structural and grounded in the New Testament’s own use of the Exodus narrative (2 Timothy 3:8; Romans 9:17–18; Revelation 16:2), not asserted from the words. ⚙ All synthesis here is machine-generated and has no authority — weigh it against Scripture. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)