What Does Exodus 8:17 Mean?

And they did so. Aaron stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and there were gnats on man and beast. All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. Verse 17's execution report is complete: all the dust of Egypt becomes gnats. The plague's source (dust) and scope (all the land of Egypt) are both quantified with the maximizing "all": all the dust, all the land. The gnats cover "man and beast": not just human beings but also the animal population. Every living creature in Egypt that is not a gnat is covered with gnats. The plague is not selective; it touches everything.

The gnat plague has an inherent quality of pervasiveness that distinguishes it from frogs: gnats (Hebrew: kinim, possibly lice, gnats, or mosquitoes: the exact identification is uncertain) are small enough to enter every orifice, to be impossible to avoid through careful movement or closed doors. The Frog plague was grotesque but relatively avoidable in principle (frogs are visible and slow); the gnat plague is qualitatively different in that gnats are invisible at close range, too small to individually remove, and can penetrate any space. The escalation from frogs to gnats is an escalation in unavoidability.

The gnats "on man and beast" also create a cross-species equality of affliction that the frogs did not: frogs in beds and ovens affected human domestic life; gnats on every human and animal body affect every living being simultaneously. The plague is not a domestic inconvenience but a bodily one: every person in Egypt, regardless of social status, shares the same gnat-covered skin. King and slave, priest and farmer, all are covered in gnats. The plague strips away the social distinctions that protect the powerful from the discomforts the weak endure: everyone in Egypt is equally afflicted.