Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 12:30

"And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead." — Exodus 12:30 (ASV)

A great cry. See the comment on Exodus 11:6. The combination of public calamity, private grief, and shocked religious fanaticism might well produce a cry such as there was none like it, neither shall be like it any more (Exodus 11:6).

Not a house where there was not one dead. This cannot have been literally true. In half the families a daughter would have “opened the womb;” in others, the firstborn son would have been absent, or dead previously.

To judge Scripture fairly, we must make allowance for the hyperbole of Eastern thought and expression, which causes the substitution of universal terms for general ones, and the absence of qualifying clauses.

The meaning is that in the great majority of houses there was one dead. This may well have been so, if we include the dependants and the animals. Pet animals—dogs, cats, gazelles, and monkeys—abounded in Egyptian homes.