After these plagues, gnats are brought forth. This animal flies through the air suspended on wings. But it is so subtle and minute that it escapes being seen by the eye unless one looks closely. But when it lands on the body it drills in with a sharp sting. If anyone cannot see it flying, he still feels its sting immediately.

This sort of animal can be compared with the subtlety of heretics, who drill into souls with the subtle stings of their words. They attack with such cunning that one who is deceived neither sees nor understands the source of his deception. At the third sign the magicians yielded and said, The finger of God is here.^[1] Those magicians stand for heretics and their animosity.

The apostle states this when he says, Just as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so too these men resisted the truth. They are corrupt in mind and reprobate in matters of faith. But they will not advance any further. Their madness will be manifested to everyone, just as Jannes’ and Jambres’ was.^[2] The minds of the Egyptian magicians were disquieted by their own corruption, and their power failed at the third sign. They confessed that the Holy Spirit was against them, for the Spirit was in Moses.

The Holy Spirit is put in the third place, and he is the finger of God. Thus the magicians failed at the third sign and said, The finger of God is here. The Holy Spirit, well disposed and favorable, gives rest to the meek and humble of heart but, when he is opposed, stirs up disquiet against the merciless and the proud. Those tiny gnats signified this disquiet, at which Pharaoh’s magicians failed and said, The finger of God is here.

Here I see a difficulty occurring to one of limited knowledge [of Scripture], that is, why miracles are also done by magical arts, for the magicians of Pharaoh also made serpents and other similar things. But what is a much greater cause of wonder is how the power of the magicians, who could make serpents, utterly failed when it came to very small gnats. For the sciniphs,^[1] by which the proud people of Egypt were afflicted, are very small flies. And there certainly the magicians who failed, exclaimed, This is the finger of God. We are thereby given to understand that not even the angels and the spirits of the air, who transgressed and were cast from that home of sublime and ethereal beauty into this most profound darkness, as into a prison peculiar to them, could do anything that they could by means of their magical arts, if the power had not been given to them from above.

Isn’t the finger of God to be understood as being the Holy Spirit? Read the Gospel, and see that where one Evangelist has the Lord saying, If I with the Spirit of God cast out demons,^[1] another says, If I with the finger of God cast out demons.^[2] So if that law too was written by the finger of God, that is, by the Spirit of God, the Spirit by which Pharaoh’s magicians were defeated, so they said, This is the finger of God, . . . why can it not be said of it, For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has delivered you from the law of sin and death?^[3]

Kynomyia^[1] does not represent dog fly, as the Latins translated it, with the Greek letter upsilon; according to the sense of the Hebrew the diphthong oi should be written so that the word is koinomyia, that is, every genus of flies.

In the fourth place, Egypt is struck with flies. The fly is an insolent and restless animal. What does it stand for except the arrogant concerns of carnal desires? Egypt is struck with flies because the hearts of those who love this world are battered by the disquiet of their desires.^[1]

The translators of the Septuagint put cynomyia here, which means dog fly. This word meant the habits of a dog, in which the pleasures of the mind and the indulgence of the flesh are constantly expressed. By dog fly this passage can also mean the eloquence of lawyers, which they use to tear at one another like dogs.

You^[1] wrote to me that you were disturbed by what you read: Let us sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians to God. But you had the means to explain it: that in Genesis it is written, The Egyptians abominated the shepherd of flocks.^[2] This was certainly not because of the man, but because of the sheep. For the Egyptians cultivated the earth with the plow; Abraham and Jacob, however, and later Moses and David, were shepherds and bestowed a certain royal discipline upon this occupation.

Thus the Egyptians hated pure sacrifices, that is, zeal complete and perfect for virtue and discipline. For what wicked men hate is pure and pious among good men. The indulgent man hates the labor of virtue; the glutton shrinks back from it. And so the Egyptian body, because it loves allurements, turns away from the virtues of the soul. It hates authority, and shrinks from the discipline of the virtues and all labors of this sort.

The Egyptian, then flees these things; he is an Egyptian and not a man. You have knowledge of human nature; you will understand this. But reject what they follow and choose, since these two—prudence and folly—cannot be in accord with one another. And so, just as the virtues of prudence and continence exclude whatever belongs in any way to imprudence and intemperance, so every foolish man and every incontinent man has no part in what good men have or in the inheritance of the wise and continent man.

The Egyptians disdained the eating of sheep. But what the Egyptians abhor, the Israelites offer to God. The unjust despise a clean conscience as weak and abject, but the just turn it into a sacrifice to God of virtue. The righteous, as they worship God, offer their purity and gentleness to him. The reprobate despise these virtues and consider them foolishness. See See See