Plague; Pestilence
Archimandrite Nikifor’s Biblical Encyclopedia
(Exod. 9:3)—a severe contagious and deadly disease. The pestilence among Egypt’s livestock was one of the plagues by which God humbled Pharaoh and displayed the impotence of Egypt’s gods. Biblical writers also use the word broadly for devastating epidemic disease (1 Kings 8:37). A three-day pestilence came upon Israel after David’s proud census (2 Sam. 24). The source describes an “Eastern plague” with acute fever and large swellings, evidently reflecting nineteenth-century accounts of bubonic plague; biblical pestilence is not always medically identifiable with that single disease.