the destroyer] That is, the Angel of God, sent to kill the first-borne, of whom some doubt, whether he were a good, or a bad Angel; more like a good one, because ordained of God for safetie to his servants, and most sit to execue vengeance on his enemies, Chap. 14. 19. 24, 25. and 23. from vers. 20. to 23. And most usually the wicked are destroyed by good Angels; and the godly chastised (as in Jobs case) by the bad, and they are delivered and succoured, by the good: nor is he to be accounted a bad Angel, because (if the Israelites had not marked their doores) he would have destroyed them: for if they had disobeyed so easie a command, for their owne safetie, they had deserved to have beene destroyed and God himselfe threatens to destroy Jeremie, if he should disobey him, in setting himselfe against a rebellious people, Jer. 1. vers. 17. But, though this might be a good Angel, (who executed a double Commission of mercy and justice, the one on the Israelites, the other on the Egyptians) yet they might be plagued with evill Angels, and so it is said they were, Psalms 78:49. albeit some translate those words, (according to the Hebrew) messengers of evils, and meane by those messengers, Moses, and Aaron, foretelling the plagues of Egypt, in the 7, 8, and 9. Chapters of this Booke.