Exodus 8:16

16 ADONAI said to Moshe, "Say to Aharon: 'Reach out with your staff and strike the dust on the ground; it will become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.'"

Exodus 8:16 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 8:16

And the Lord said unto Moses
On the twenty seventh day of the month, according to Bishop Usher, the same day the flogs were removed; no warning is given him of the next plague, at least there is no account of any:

say unto Aaron, stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land;
in some one part of the land, that place nearest to him where there was a quantity of dust; for it cannot be imagined that he should smite all the dust of the land in every part of it, but smiting one part served for the whole:

that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt:
not gnats, as some, nor flies, as others, but lice, though perhaps not of the common and ordinary sort, but new and extraordinary, and it may be of different sorts, suitable to different creatures.

Exodus 8:16 In-Context

14 they gathered them in heaps till the land stank.

15 But when Pharaoh saw that he had been given some relief, he made himself hardhearted and would not listen to them, just as ADONAI had said would happen.

16 ADONAI said to Moshe, "Say to Aharon: 'Reach out with your staff and strike the dust on the ground; it will become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.'"

17 They did it -Aharon reached out his hand with his staff and struck the dust on the ground, and there were lice on people and animals; all the dust on the ground became lice throughout the whole land of Egypt.

18 The magicians tried with their secret arts to produce lice, but they couldn't. There were lice on people and animals.