Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning,.... The next morning, a time in which the mind is most composed and sedate, and fit to attend to what may be suggested:lo, he goeth out unto the water; the river Nile, either to take his morning's walk, and to refresh himself at the waterside, as the Jerusalem Targum; or to observe divinations upon the water, as a magician, as the Targum of Jonathan.
So in the Talmud it is said, that the Pharaoh in the days of Moses was a magician. Or rather, as Aben Ezra thinks, which he says is a custom of the kings of Egypt to this day, to go out in the months of Tammuz and Ab, i.
e. June, and July, when the river increases, to observe how many degrees it has ascended, by which the fruitfulness of the ensuing season was judged of. See Gill on "Amos 8:8" Or else he went to worship the rising sun, or the Nile, to pay his morning devotions to it: for not only Jarchi, and other Jewish writers, say it was their chief god, but Plutarch also affirms, that nothing was so much honoured with the Egyptians as the Nile; and both Theodoret on this place, and Athanasius elsewhere says, that they reckoned it a god, and worshipped it as such; and it has been usual with other nations to worship rivers, as Aelianus reports:and thou shall stand by the river's brink against he come; over against the brink of the river Nile, in order to meet him:and the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take in thine hand; as a terror to Pharaoh, on sight of which he might be put in mind of what had been done, and by means of which he might fear other wonders would be wrought; by this it appears, that after the rod had been turned into a serpent, it became a rod again, as it did at Horeb, Ex 4:4.
Moses having previous notice of all this, shows the prescience of God, and his certain knowledge of future contingent events. T. Bab. Moed. Katon, fol. 18. 1. De lside & Osir. Vide Philo de Vita Mosis, l.
1. p. 617. Contr. Gentil p. 20. & de Incarnatione, p. 73. Var. Hist. l. 2. c.