The Eighth Plague, that of the locusts, is the easiest of all to comprehend. This was a direct blow at the Egyptian conception of Providence, and a sweeping victory over all that was holy in the eyes of this idolatrous people. These ancient people ascribed the fertility of their fields and the abundance of the harvests to certain specific deities. The modern scholar establishes this fact by studying the hymns of praise and the votive records of the Egyptians. But after the hail had hammered their lovely ripening crops flat on the ground, and even while they mourned their loss, swarms of locusts descended like a cloud, and swept the land as clean of vegetation as a forest fire could have done. To see God’s purpose in this act, we need only consider the prophecy of Joel. With a fidelity to detail that arouses the admiration of the modern entomologist, this prophet of Israel portrays the devastation of the land by a swarm of locusts, as a judgment from God upon His own people. When famine and want stare men in the face, and they are beyond the hope of other aid, then they turn back to God in sorrow and in repentance. For where can men turn except to God, when the land lies barren and devastated, and famine stalks the earth? Thus in Egypt, when God would teach an unforgettable lesson to the proud and haughty king whose impertinent comment had been, “Who is this Jehovah?”, He punctuated His answer to Pharaoh’s question with a swarm of locusts. It is reasonable to conclude that long after the starving Egyptians had forgotten the pangs of hunger that came inevitably on the heels of that visitation of consuming insects, the lesson of that visitation remained. All these disasters, following one after the other, had struck telling blows at the very foundation of Egypt’s religion. But a worse was to follow. The Ninth Plague struck at the very apex and head of all the Great Company of the pantheon. The most essential thing in all the physical realm is light, and the Egyptians seemed to realize this fact. The darkness of the ninth plague was a supernatural darkness. This much is evident from the record, which says that it covered the land so grossly, the people sought refuge in bed! Evidently artificial light would not penetrate that fearful gloom; _but the children of Israel had light in their dwellings!_ Of course they had it! They are the people who later sang: “Jehovah is my light and my salvation.” But the songs of the Egyptians were directed to different gods entirely. Here, then, was a golden opportunity to test the might of these conflicting ideas of deity. Is Jehovah able to maintain His superiority over the hosts of the Egyptian gods? They were indeed mighty in the hearts of the people, and the contest was long and grim.