the swarm: the dense mass of pests God sent as the fourth plague on Egypt, filling houses and ruining the land
This word belongs to a single story. It names the fourth blow God strikes against Egypt: a dense swarm that pours into Pharaoh's palace and the houses of his officials, covers the ground itself, and leaves the country spoiled, while the district of Goshen where Israel lives is deliberately kept clear of it. Two psalms retelling the exodus reach back for the same word, and it appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
What the text never says is what the swarm was made of. The word seems to be built from a root meaning "to mix," which has pulled readers in two directions: some hear a mixed horde of assorted creatures, others a mass of small pests mixed together in one cloud. Instead of a species, the account gives effects:
- it arrives in such weight that the story calls it heavy
- it gets inside houses rather than staying out in the fields
- it leaves the land itself ruined behind it
- one psalm says the swarm devoured the Egyptians, so it bit or stung
- when God lifts it, not one of them is left
Hebrew has a plain word for a fly (זְבוּב), and a separate word for the gnats of the plague just before this one (כֵּן), which stands beside this word in Psalm 105:31. The writers used neither. They chose a term that pictures the swarm as one oncoming mass rather than the creatures inside it, and they used it for nothing else. English versions have to supply a creature the Hebrew withholds, which is why they do not agree.
Disputed
What creature the fourth plague consisted of. The narrative never identifies the swarm, and the noun occurs nowhere outside this one episode, so every identification rests on the derivation of the word, on the ancient translations, and on the effects the text describes.
- majoritySwarming insects, most plausibly biting or blood-sucking flies. The Greek Old Testament renders the word with a term for the dog-fly at every occurrence, Jerome's Latin has flies of various kinds, and the standard lexica gloss it as a swarm of flies; Psalm 78:45 says the swarm devoured its victims, which suits an insect that bites.; HALOT, s.v. עָרֹב; BDB, s.v. עָרֹב; DCH, s.v. עָרֹב; Greta Hort, "The Plagues of Egypt," Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 69 (1957): 84-103 and 70 (1958): 48-59
- minorityA mixed horde of assorted wild creatures, taking the noun directly from the root sense of mixing. This reading is carried by much of the classical Jewish exegetical tradition, and it accounts easily for the ruin of the land and for the devouring reported in Psalm 78:45 without requiring an unusually aggressive insect.; Rashi, Commentary on Exodus 8:17 (Hebrew numbering; English 8:21)