Catholic Commentary
Agricultural Aside: Partial Destruction of the Crops
31The flax and the barley were struck, for the barley had ripened and the flax was blooming.32But the wheat and the spelt were not struck, for they had not grown up.
Exodus 9:31–32 describes which crops were destroyed during the hail plague: barley and flax, which had matured and ripened, were struck down, while wheat and spelt survived because they had not yet fully grown. The passage illustrates that the crops' vulnerability stemmed from their advanced growth stage, making them exposed to the destructive hailstones.
God's judgment is never indiscriminate—He takes exactly what is ripe for destruction and preserves what still needs to grow.
Literally, the text functions as a reliable historical marker: scholars note that this agricultural detail is internally consistent with Egyptian planting calendars, lending the narrative historical verisimilitude.
Allegorically, the distinction between crops destroyed and crops spared prefigures the Paschal mystery's pattern: that which is "ripe" for judgment — pride, hardness of heart, self-sufficiency — falls, while that which is still forming, still tender and low to the ground, is preserved for a later, greater purpose. Origen (Homilies on Exodus, Hom. IV) saw in the plagues a progressive discipline: God does not destroy at once what might yet serve his purposes.
Morally, the passage invites reflection on timing in the spiritual life. Flax — used for oil lamps — and barley — the grain of the humble — are destroyed when they have, ironically, reached their peak. The soul that thinks itself "ripe" in its own righteousness may be most exposed. Wheat and spelt, still underground and growing in hiddenness, survive. The "not yet grown up" becomes a sign of grace.
Anagogically, the surviving wheat anticipates the eucharistic grain — Christ himself — who descends in hiddenness, grows in the womb and in obscurity at Nazareth, and whose "hour has not yet come" until the appointed time (John 2:4; 7:30).
Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage through its insistence on the graduated and purposeful character of divine judgment. The Church has consistently taught, against both a deterministic fatalism and a chaotic view of providence, that God acts with precision and wisdom in history. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "God's almighty power is in no way arbitrary: 'In God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical'" (CCC §271, citing St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I, q.25, a.5). The hail does not obliterate everything indiscriminately; it takes exactly what is ripe for destruction and leaves the rest — a sign not of weakness but of sovereign artistry.
Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§42), affirmed that the "dark passages" of the Old Testament must be read within the whole economy of salvation, understanding divine judgment as always ordered toward a redemptive end. Here, the sparing of wheat is not accident but economy: the wheat must survive because the final, decisive confrontation with Pharaoh — and the sacrifice of the firstborn that mirrors it — has not yet arrived. God is never wasteful.
St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I–II, q.87, a.3) taught that temporal punishments are medicinal before they are retributive, aimed at correction. The partial destruction of crops signals to Pharaoh and to Egypt that there is still time for repentance — a theme Pharaoh tragically refuses (v. 34). This echoes the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes §13) that suffering in history has a pedagogical dimension when received in faith.
The Church Fathers, particularly St. Augustine (City of God, X.8), saw in the plagues of Egypt a typology of the judgments that purify the soul from attachment to the things of "Egypt" — the world. The crops that perish are the goods of this age when we cling to them as final ends; the wheat that survives is the life ordered toward God.
Contemporary Catholics live in a culture saturated with the anxiety of timing — of things not going according to plan, of apparent incompleteness. Careers that stall, vocations that seem delayed, prayers that appear unanswered. Exodus 9:31–32 offers a startlingly concrete word of comfort: what has "not yet grown up" is not abandoned — it is protected.
There is also a sharper, more demanding application. The crops destroyed were not worthless; flax and barley were valuable, even noble. Their destruction came precisely because they were exposed — fully above ground, ripened in the open. The spiritual danger of premature ripeness — the soul that considers itself fully formed, self-sufficient in its virtue, no longer needing growth — is real. The saints, virtually without exception, warned against spiritual complacency disguised as maturity.
Practically: examine what in your life you consider "done" — a relationship, a moral struggle, a work of charity — that may still need the hiddenness of growth. And examine what you are grieving as "destroyed" that may, in God's economy, have been ripe for removal so that the deeper wheat of your life might survive to serve his purposes. God's providence is precise. Nothing is lost carelessly.
Commentary
Exodus 9:31 — "The flax and the barley were struck, for the barley had ripened and the flax was blooming."
The narrative of the seventh plague (Exod 9:13–35), the plague of hail, reaches its climax in a brief but telling agricultural parenthesis. The sacred author, writing for an audience that would have known Palestinian and Egyptian agricultural cycles, supplies precise botanical detail: barley (se'orah) in Egypt ripened in late January or February, while flax (pishtah) was harvested slightly earlier, already in bloom at the same time. These were Egypt's early-season crops and their economic importance cannot be overstated. Flax was the foundation of Egypt's linen industry — the fabric of priestly garments, royal burial wrappings, and the everyday clothing of the population. Barley was the staple grain of the poor and the basis for Egypt's beloved beer. Their destruction, then, was not incidental: the blow struck Egyptian commerce, religious practice (priestly linen), and the sustenance of the common person all at once.
The verb nukkah ("were struck") is the same root (nakah) used throughout the plague narratives for the decisive blows delivered by God. The choice of the same vocabulary is deliberate — these crops did not merely fail; they were struck, as one strikes an enemy. The detail that the barley "had ripened" (aviv) and the flax was "blooming" (giv'ol) indicates that both crops were at their most vulnerable stage above ground: tall, exposed, and unable to withstand the weight and force of hailstones mixed with fire (v. 24). Their very maturity was their undoing — a fact that carries profound typological resonance.
Exodus 9:32 — "But the wheat and the spelt were not struck, for they had not grown up."
The contrast is equally pointed. Wheat (chittah) and spelt (kussemeth) — wheat being the higher-value grain used for priestly offerings and the bread of the wealthy, spelt being a hardier winter grain — were "not grown up" (afilot, literally "late-growing" or "dark," i.e., still low to the ground). Because they had not yet emerged fully above the soil, the hail passed over them. The verb used, lo nukkah, echoes the language of the Passover itself (pasach, to pass over), anticipating the great protective act of God still to come.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses
Reading with the fourfold sense of Scripture — as St. John Cassian systematized and the affirms (CCC §115–118) — these verses open onto multiple dimensions of meaning.