出埃及记 8:21

Chinese NCV (Simplified)

如果你不讓我的人民離開這裡，看哪，我必叫蒼蠅落在你和你臣僕，以及人民的身上，進到你的宮殿；埃及人的房屋都必充滿蒼蠅，他們所在的地方也是這樣。

Parallel Translations

Chinese Union (Simplified)
你 若 不 容 我 的 百 姓 去 ， 我 要 叫 成 群 的 苍 蝇 到 你 和 你 臣 仆 并 你 百 姓 的 身 上 ， 进 你 的 房 屋 ， 并 且 埃 及 人 的 房 屋 和 他 们 所 住 的 地 都 要 满 了 成 群 的 苍 蝇 。

Contextual Overview

²⁰ The Lord told Moses, "Get up early in the morning, and meet the king of Egypt as he goes out to the river. Tell him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go so they can worship me. ²¹ If you don't let them go, I will send swarms of flies into your houses. The flies will be on you, your officers, and your people. The houses of Egypt will be full of flies, and they will be all over the ground, too. ²² But I will not treat the Israelites the same as the Egyptian people. There will not be any flies in the land of Goshen, where my people live. By this you will know that I, the Lord , am in this land. ²³ I will treat my people differently from your people. This miracle will happen tomorrow.'" ²⁴ So the Lord did as he had said, and great swarms of flies came into the king's palace and his officers' houses. All over Egypt flies were ruining the land. ²⁵ The king called for Moses and Aaron and told them, "Offer sacrifices to your God here in this country." ²⁶ But Moses said, "It wouldn't be right to do that, because the Egyptians hate the sacrifices we offer to the Lord our God. If they see us offering sacrifices they hate, they will throw stones at us and kill us. ²⁷ Let us make a three-day journey into the desert. We must offer sacrifices to the Lord our God there, as the Lord told us to do." ²⁸ The king said, "I will let you go so that you may offer sacrifices to the Lord your God in the desert, but you must not go very far away. Now go and pray for me." ²⁹ Moses said, "I will leave and pray to the Lord , and he will take the flies away from you, your officers, and your people tomorrow. But do not try to trick us again. Do not stop the people from going to offer sacrifices to the Lord ."

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

swarms: or, a mixture of noisome beasts, etc. The word arov is rendered ךץםןלץיב, kunomuia, the dog-fly, by the LXX (who are followed by the learned Bochart), which must have been particularly hateful to the Egyptians, because they held dogs in the highest veneration, under which form they worshipped Anubis. Psalms 78:45, Psalms 105:31, Isaiah 7:18

Reciprocal: Exodus 8:24 - there Exodus 10:6 - fill

Cross-References

Genesis 3:17
Then God said to the man, "You listened to what your wife said, and you ate fruit from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat. "So I will put a curse on the ground, and you will have to work very hard for your food. In pain you will eat its food all the days of your life.

Genesis 4:12
You will work the ground, but it will not grow good crops for you anymore, and you will wander around on the earth."

Genesis 5:29
Lamech named his son Noah and said, "He will comfort us in our work, which comes from the ground the Lord has cursed."

Genesis 6:5
The Lord saw that the human beings on the earth were very wicked and that everything they thought about was evil.

Genesis 6:17
I will bring a flood of water on the earth to destroy all living things that live under the sky, including everything that has the breath of life. Everything on the earth will die.

Genesis 8:1
But God remembered Noah and all the wild and tame animals with him in the boat. He made a wind blow over the earth, and the water went down.

Genesis 8:2
The underground springs stopped flowing, and the clouds in the sky stopped pouring down rain.

Genesis 8:3
The water that covered the earth began to go down. After one hundred fifty days it had gone down so much that the boat touched land again. It came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month.

Genesis 8:6
Forty days later Noah opened the window he had made in the boat, and

Genesis 8:7
he sent out a raven. It flew here and there until the water had dried up from the earth.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Else, if thou wilt not let my people go,.... But remainest obstinate and inflexible:

behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee; the word used is generally thought to signify a "mixture", and is interpreted by many a mixture of various creatures; the Targum of Jonathan paraphrases it a mixture of wild beasts, and so Josephus k understands it of all sorts of beasts, of many forms, and such as were never seen before; according to Jarchi, all sorts of evil beasts are meant, as serpents and scorpions, mixed together; and so Aben Ezra says it signifies evil beasts mixed together, as lions, wolves, bears, and leopards; but it is not likely the houses should be filled with these, or the ground covered with them, as after related: and besides, they would soon have destroyed, all the inhabitants of the land, since as it follows they are said to be upon them; rather a mixture of insects is intended; the Septuagint; version renders it the "dog fly", and so Philo the Jew l; which, as Pliny m says, is very troublesome, to dogs especially, about their ears, and this version Bochart n approves of:

and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses; they should be sent unto and settle first on his own person, and also on his ministers and courtiers, and upon all his subjects in general, and get into their houses, and be very troublesome guests there:

and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of the swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are; their number would be so very great.

k Antiqu. l. 2. c. 14. sect. 3. l De Vita Mosis, l. 1. p. 622. m Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 34. n Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 4. c. 15. col. 555.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Swarms of flies - Generally, supposed to be the dog-fly, which at certain seasons is described as a plague far worse than mosquitos. Others, however, adopt the opinion that the insects were a species of beetle, which was reverenced by the Egyptians as a symbol of life, of reproductive or creative power. The sun-god, as creator, bore the name Chepera, and is represented in the form, or with the head, of a beetle.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

The FOURTH plague - FLIES

Verse Exodus 8:21. Swarms of flies upon thee — It is not easy to ascertain the precise meaning of the original word הערב hearob; as the word comes from ערב arab, he mingled, it may be supposed to express a multitude of various sorts of insects. And if the conjecture be admitted that the putrid frogs became the occasion of this plague, (different insects laying their eggs in the bodies of those dead animals, which would soon be hatched, see on Exodus 8:14), then the supposition that a multitude of different hinds of insects is meant, will seem the more probable. Though the plague of the locusts was miraculous, yet God both brought it and removed it by natural means; see Exodus 10:13-19.

Bochart, who has treated this subject with his usual learning and ability, follows the Septuagint, explaining the original by κυνομυια, the dog-fly; which must be particularly hateful to the Egyptians, because they held dogs in the highest veneration, and worshipped Anubis under the form of a dog. In a case of this kind the authority of the Septuagint is very high, as they translated the Pentateuch in the very place where these plagues happened. But as the Egyptians are well known to have paid religious veneration to all kinds of animals and monsters, whence the poet: -

Omnigenumque deum monstra, et latrator Anubis,

I am inclined to favour the literal construction of the word: for as ערב ereb, Exodus 12:38, expresses that mixed multitude of different kinds of people who accompanied the Israelites in their departure from Egypt; so here the same term being used, it may have been designed to express a multitude of different kinds of insects, such as flies, wasps, hornets, c., &c. The ancient Jewish interpreters suppose that all kinds of beasts and reptiles are intended, such as wolves, lions, bears, serpents, &c. Mr. Bate thinks the raven is meant, because the original is so understood in other places and thus he translates it in his literal version of the Pentateuch: but the meaning already given is the most likely. As to the objection against this opinion drawn from Exodus 8:31, there remained not one, it can have very little weight, when it is considered that this may as well be spoken of one of any of the different kinds, as of an individual of one species.