The Plague-Words of the Bible

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Edward Grossman has a corona-related question. Citing the King James Version (KJV) of the verses in the 91st Psalm, “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday,” Mr. Grossman inquires about the Hebrew word that is translated by the KJV as “pestilence,” dever. How, he wants to know, if at all, does dever differ from mageyfah, another biblical word, usually rendered by the King James Version as “plague,” that means epidemic in modern Hebrew?

This is, of course, a Passover-related question too, since dever—its full description in the book of Exodus is dever kaved m’od, “a very heavy dever”—was, according to the book of Exodus, the fifth of the ten plagues visited by God upon the Egyptians. When we recite the list of the plagues in the Haggadah at the seder table, flicking a drop of wine onto our plates for each of them, dever comes between arov and sh’ḥin. The latter, generally translated as “boils,” is stated by the Bible to be an eruptive skin condition; but the nature of arov is unclear.