Exodus 9:22-26

"And Jehovah said unto Moses, Stretch forth thy hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man, and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field, throughout the land of Egypt. And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and Jehovah sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down unto the earth; and Jehovah rained hail upon the land of Egypt. So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous. such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field. Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail"

"Fire mingled with hail ..." This is usually interpreted as the type of lightning seen in severe electrical storms, in which fire sometimes runs along on the ground. It might actually have been something beyond this. Hailstorms are among the most destructive and violent events in nature. This writer saw a hailstorm that devastated a section of Rock Creek Park (Washington, D.C.) in the early 1950's, in which some of the hailstones were five inches in diameter. Hedging against the disbelief anticipated, several of these were preserved in a deep-freeze icebox as a means of convincing the skeptics!

Skeptical comments about "all of the cattle" having already been destroyed (Exodus 9:6) are based solely upon careless and inaccurate reading of Exodus 9:1-7, where "the cattle" were strictly limited to "those in the field" (Exodus 9:3). This type of criticism is typical of Biblical enemies.

"And brake every tree ..." No tree of any age or size can escape very severe damage by the kind of hailstorm presented in these verses.