Exodus 9:3

Upon thy cattle. Hitherto the plagues had been directed against the Egyptians themselves rather than against their property. Property may have have suffered somewhat under the preceding plague (see ch. 8:24), but otherwise the various afflictions had been the cause of little more than annoyance and pain. Now property was to be affected. Whether Pharaoh would be more impressed by calamities that impoverished his subjects than by those that merely caused them personal suffering remained to be seen. With this in view, the hand of God was first laid upon their cattle, or rather, upon all their domesticated animals.

The horses. Horses, which had been unknown prior to the Hyksos invasion and which consequently do not appear in the list of animals presented to Abraham (Gen. 12:16), first became common under the Eighteenth Dynasty. They seem to have been used chiefly in warfare.

Camels. The camel was not widely used throughout the ancient Near East before the 13th century B.C.; hence it is mentioned but infrequently in the earlier Biblical records. However, representations of camels found in Egypt, Syria-Palestine, and Mesopotamia from the third and second millenniums B.C. show that sporadic domestication of this animal had taken place long before the 13th century B.C. (see on Gen. 12:16; 24:11).

Murrain. The usual Hebrew term for “plague,” and so rendered in the RSV.

Inasmuch as the particular disease here mentioned affected animals only, the word might be rendered “animal plague.” Epidemic cattle diseases are not uncommon in Egypt and have at times carried off vast numbers of animals. The miraculous character of this visitation, however, was indicated by its previous announcement, by its appearance on the day appointed, by its severity, and by the fact that the animals of the Hebrews remained unaffected.