he lifted: Exodus 17:5-6, Exodus 17:9-12; Numbers 20:8-12
all the waters: As the Nile was held sacred by the Egyptians, as well as the animals it contained, to which they annually sacrificed a girl, or as others say, both a boy and girl, God might have designed this plague as a punishment for such idolatry and cruelty; and to shew them the baseness of those elements which they reverenced, and the insufficiency of the gods in which they trusted. All the punishments brought upon them bore a strict analogy to their crimes. Exodus 7:17-18; Psalms 78:44, Psalms 105:29; John 2:9-11; Revelation 8:8