Read Exodus 8:16-19 at Bible Gateway.
Hebrew paragraph division
Exo 8:16-19 {s} The plague of gnats + magicians could not do also
16 And YHVH said to Moses: “Say to Aaron: Stretch out your rod, and smite the dust of the earth, that it may become gnats throughout all the land of Egypt.” 17 And they did so; and Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and there were gnats upon man, and upon beast; all the dust of the earth became gnats throughout all the land of Egypt. 18 And the magicians did so with their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they could not; and there were gnats upon man, and upon beast. 19 Then the magicians said to Pharaoh: “This is the finger of God;” but Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not to them; as YHVH had spoken. {s}
Original Hebrew
Gnat is Strong’s H3654, ken, a concrete noun meaning, “gnats,” from Strong’s H3661 כנן kanan, a primitive root meaning, “to set out, to plant a vineyard.” The ancient pictographs are kaph + nun + nun.
kaph כ, ך = the open palm, thus bend, open, allow, tame
nun נ, ן = the seed, thus continue, heir, son
nun נ, ן = the seed, thus continue, heir, son
From ancient times and even today, the most common method of propagating grapevines is to pinch off a cutting from an established vine, and root it. Thus one parent vine can produce thousands of child vines bearing the same grapes. The story the pictographs are telling, is of the opening (kaph) of the seed (nun) i.e., the parent root, from which the original vine grows, which then is propagated (by rooting cuttings, the second nun).
“Gnats” comes from this root because the relatively short lifespan of the adult gnat is spent in swarms solely for the purpose of mating. A single gnat pair can produce 10,000 eggs during its lifespan. It can also relate because of the cutting or pinching of the vine. Gnats are in the same family as biting midges; a swarm of the tiny insects can be unrelenting in their stinging bites that pinch, and cause intensely itching welts for up to a week afterward.
I do not know why some versions render the insect plague, “lice,” when a biting midge is indicated by the Hebrew.
Exo 8:16-19 reverse parallelism
The central axis’ of the B pairs show how this plague increases glory to YHVH in an incremental multiplication. As YHVH had instructed them, Moses and Aaron did so, and the land was covered with gnats; and the same language structure appears for the magicians in the Hebrew: they also did so, i.e., by working their secret arts, but could not bring forth gnats. Perhaps they thought up until now, since they could do likewise, that Moses and Aaron were charlatans who were just saying God had spoken to them; but the plague of gnats showed them that it was really God who was demanding Israel to be let go.
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