Flies

Flies appear in scripture in three settings: as the swarming plague-instrument Yahweh dispatches against Egypt, as a small carcass-class agent whose decay-power furnishes a wisdom-figure for folly's disproportionate weight, and as a prophetic figure-of-summons by which Yahweh whistles for an empire-army to settle on the land. The fly is small, but the texts hold it up at every register where a small thing carries an outsized stroke.

The Plague of Flies on Egypt

The fourth plague is announced as conditional on Pharaoh's refusal to release Israel: "For if you will not let my people go, look, I will send swarms of flies on you, and on your slaves, and on your people, and into your houses: and the houses of the Egyptians will be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they are" (Ex 8:21). Yahweh is the sending-subject; the target list piles Pharaoh, slaves, people, houses, and ground; the filling-clause names the Egyptian houses as full of the swarms — men, dwellings, and the ground beneath them all under the same sweep.

The plague's evidentiary edge is the partition. "And I will set apart in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies will be there; to the end you may know that I am Yahweh, [whose Speech dwells] in the midst of the earth" (Ex 8:22). The set-apart Goshen exemption is the sign-mechanism: the flies fall on Egypt and not on Israel, so the plague is not an outbreak of weather but a discriminating stroke. "And I will put redemption between my people and your people: by tomorrow will this sign be" (Ex 8:23) — the boundary itself is named "redemption."

The plague then arrives as announced: "And Yahweh did so; and there came grievous swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his slaves' houses: and in all the land of Egypt the land was corrupted by reason of the swarms of flies" (Ex 8:24). The land is corrupted by the flies — the small insect-class is the agent of the country-wide corruption.

Pharaoh negotiates under the fly-pressure. He first offers an in-the-land sacrifice (Ex 8:25), which Moses refuses on the ground that Israel's offerings are disgusting to the Egyptians and would draw stones from them (Ex 8:26); Moses counter-proposes a three-days' journey into the wilderness (Ex 8:27). Pharaoh concedes the wilderness sacrifice with a "you⁺ will not go very far away" qualifier and asks Moses to entreat against the flies (Ex 8:28). Moses promises entreaty for the swarms' removal but warns Pharaoh against further deceit (Ex 8:29). Moses goes out and entreats Yahweh (Ex 8:30), and "Yahweh did according to the word of Moses; and he removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his slaves, and from his people; not one remained" (Ex 8:31). The removal is total — not one remained. Pharaoh then hardens his heart this time also.

The Flies in the Plague-Recital Psalms

Israel's worship-recitals fold the fly-plague into Egypt's catalogue. Asaph's stroke at v45 is paired: "He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them; And frogs, which destroyed them" (Ps 78:45). Yahweh is the sending-subject; the consequence-clause grades the flies' effect at devouring register rather than at nuisance — they are full-damage agents — and the parallel frog-clause sets the insect-stroke alongside its companion creature-plague.

The Hallelujah-psalm's matching stanza pairs flies with a second insect-species: "He spoke, and there came swarms of flies, And lice in all their borders" (Ps 105:31). The verb here is spoke — the flies are summoned into being by the word of Yahweh — and the in all their borders clause totalizes the lice-spread across the entire Egyptian territory, so the plague is exhibited as a Yahweh-spoken double-stroke covering the land border to border.

Yahweh Hisses for the Fly: The Empire-Summons Figure

Isaiah lifts the fly-class to a figural register where it becomes the army-figure of an empire. "And it will come to pass in that day, that Yahweh will hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria" (Isa 7:18). Yahweh himself is the active summoner, using a beekeeper's-hiss to call the swarm; the fly is sourced from the farthest-Nile region of Egypt and the bee from the land of Assyria. The fly-and-bee pair is exhibited as the divinely-summoned army-figures of the two great empire-foes whose Yahweh-issued hiss draws them onto the land in the named day. The same fly-class that fell on Egypt as plague is now the figure for an Egypt-summoned-against-Judah army-swarm — Yahweh's whistle is the same instrument either way.

Dead Flies and the Disproportion of Folly

The Preacher fastens the fly-class at one further register, the carcass-tier where the dead-fly bodies are the operative agent. "Dead flies cause the oil of the perfumer to gush forth a stench; [so] does a little folly outweigh wisdom and honor" (Ec 10:1). The dead-fly participial-modifier grades the fly-state at corpse-tier where the insect is registered not as living pest but as decay-producing carcass within the perfumer's mixture; the predicate-clause grades the operative-effect at scent-corruption register where the perfumed oil is exhibited as turned from fragrance to stench by the small intruder-bodies; the bracketed [so] UPDV editorial-supply marks the simile-pivot connecting the fly-corruption to the folly-corruption.

The fly is small, the perfumer's craft is skilled, the folly is little, the wisdom and honor are great — and yet the small spoils the great. The figure runs in the same register as the rest of FLIES: a small insect-class is held up against a much larger mass and the small thing carries the stroke. In Exodus the small fly fills the houses; in the psalms the small fly devours and is spoken across all the borders; in Isaiah the small fly is whistled across continents into an army; in Ecclesiastes the small dead fly turns the perfumer's oil to stench. The fly's pattern across UPDV is its disproportion to its size.