September 30th, 2025
126. Does All Always Mean All?
The following question was submitted by school children who were studying the story of the plagues against Egypt: The story says, “Watch out, because the hand of the Lord will bring a very severe disease on your livestock which is in the field. It will be on the horses, donkeys, camels, herds, and flocks. 6So the next day, that is what the Lord did, and all the livestock of the Egyptians died, but none of the livestock of the Israelites died.” Exodus 14:9 says, “The Egyptians pursued them. All the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, his charioteers, and his army caught up with them where they were camping by the sea beside Pi Hahiroth, which faces Baal Zephon.” If all the horses died how could Pharaoh chase Israel with chariots?
The story itself implies that the word all is not to be understood in an absolute sense (every last one) but in the relative sense of a general destruction—“a very severe disease on your livestock which is in the field.” The disease struck animals of every type that were in the field. Pharaoh’s chariot horses were probably on-the-ready in their stables.
Similar language appears in the accounts of other plagues. The plague of hail destroys all the animals and crops in the field. “Throughout the entire land, the hail struck everything that was in the field, both people and animals. The hail also struck every plant in the field and shattered every tree in the field” (9:25). The account states that the hail affected some crops more than others. “The flax and the barley were destroyed, because the barley was ripe, and the flax was in bloom. But the wheat and the spelt were not destroyed, because they ripen later” (9:31-32). Furthermore, some crops that survived the hail were destroyed by the locusts: “The locusts will eat what little you have left after the hail. They will also eat every tree that you have growing in the field.” All these plagues were devastating destructions but not 100%.
Similar language is used elsewhere in the Bible. Judges 20 tells us “Then all the people of Israel came out, and the whole community from Dan to Beersheba, including the Israelites in Gilead, assembled as one man before the Lord at Mizpah. 2The pillars of the people from all the tribes of Israel took their places in the assembly of the people of God―four hundred thousand foot soldiers, armed with swords.” Verse 2 makes it clear that “all the people” does not mean every individual but rather the leaders and a sizable army that represented the whole nation. Such use of the word all to refer to a totality but not necessarily to every individual is fairly common.
Sometimes expressions of totality are not mathematical accounts but exaggerations for emotional impact (hyperbole). “I told you a million times not to do that.” Genesis 45:57 tells us “The whole world came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe all over the whole world.” Moses is not intending to say that people from China and North America came to buy grain from Joseph, but that the famine was not limited to Egypt but affected the whole world known to them. Mark 1:4-5 tells us: “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.” Other passages make it clear that not everyone in Judea was baptized. Some especially among the leaders despised John and baptism.
Biblical writers can use hyperbole, but that category does not apply here. We should reserve the term hyperbole for cases in which there is obvious overstatement for emotional impact. “I am so hungry I could eat a horse.” “He hit the ball a mile.”
What we have here in Exodus is not hyperbole. It is the fairly common relative use of totality words like all and every. This is contrasted with the absolute use—every single one. Sometimes writers will give an indication of which use is intended—all, that is, every last one; all, except for a and b. Sometimes it is simply assumed that the readers will be able to distinguish between the uses by the context and by their knowledge of the language. This is another example of the principle that understanding a word requires more than looking up the word’s base meaning in a dictionary. It requires looking at all of the usage of the word in the immediate and wider context.