Chapter Ten

1–15. The eighth plague—locusts. 16–20. Pharaoh’s repentance and hardening. 21–23. The ninth plague—darkness. 24–29. Pharaoh’s agreement to release the Hebrews on the condition that their livestock remain in Egypt.

Exodus 10:1. And the Lord said to Moses: Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, so that I may perform these signs of mine among them, Moses should not be troubled by Pharaoh’s stubbornness, which leads to new plagues; the hardening of his heart is God’s work, fully in accordance with the predictions (Exod 7:3-5).

Exodus 10:2. and so that you may tell your son and your grandson about what I did in Egypt, and about the signs of mine that I performed in it, and so that you may know that I am the Lord. Inevitable in view of Pharaoh’s disposition, the coming calamities may bring great benefit both to the present generation and to his descendants, if the latter become acquainted with them (Ps 43:2). Everyone will understand on the basis of them the almighty power of the One Who Is and the faithfulness of His promises.

Exodus 10:3. Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him: Thus says the Lord, God of the Hebrews: How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Release my people, that they may worship me; Exodus 10:4. If you refuse to release my people, behold, tomorrow [at this same time] I will bring locusts upon [all] your territory: Exodus 10:5. and they shall cover the face of the land so that one cannot see the land, and they shall eat all the remaining [vegetation on the land], what has escaped the hail; and they shall devour all the trees that grow in your fields, Exodus 10:6. and they shall fill your houses, the houses of all your servants and [all] the houses of all the Egyptians, something which your fathers and your fathers’ fathers have not seen from the day they lived upon the earth until this day. [Moses] turned and left Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s resistance cannot continue indefinitely, for who can withstand the will of God (Rom 9:19)? It will only provoke the almighty Lord to inflict a new measure of punishment—an invasion of migratory (arbe) locusts on an unprecedented scale (Exod 10:6, Joel 2:3-4). They will complete the disaster brought by the hail.

Exodus 10:7. Then Pharaoh’s servants said to him: How long will he torment us? Release these people, that they may worship the Lord, their God; do you not yet see that Egypt is perishing? In view of the futility of Moses’ words, the courtiers attempt to influence Pharaoh. According to them, Egypt will perish from the coming plague. And indeed, after hail destroyed the first part of the harvest (Exod 9:21), the Egyptians could hope to save the second (Exod 9:32), but now by the Lord’s determination the second must also perish (Exod 10:5), with the result that the land faces terrible famine. To save themselves from it, the courtiers propose to Pharaoh to release “these people,” that is, the entire people,

Exodus 10:8. And they brought Moses and Aaron back to Pharaoh, and [Pharaoh] said to them: Go, worship the Lord, your God; but who and who will go? While agreeing in general with the proposal of his nobles, Pharaoh cannot permit the departure of the entire people. This is indicated by his question: “Who and who will go?”

Exodus 10:9. And Moses said: We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, and with our flocks and our herds we will go, for we have a feast to the Lord [our God]. In the feast in honor of the Most High, the entire people must participate without exception; and flocks are needed for sacrifices (Exod 10:26). Moreover, with the departure of the people, there is no one to leave the herds with; they too must go.

Exodus 10:10. [Pharaoh] said to them: May the Lord be with you! I am willing to release you; but why do you want to take the children? You see, you have evil intent! Exodus 10:11. No: Go, only the men, and worship the Lord, since you are asking for that. And they drove them from Pharaoh. Seeing in Moses’ answer an evil intent, that is, the desire to leave Egypt altogether, Pharaoh addresses him with an ironic remark: “May the Lord be with you just as I... will release you and your children.” If God is able to help you in your intent to leave all of you just as I can release you with the young, old, and daughters, then certainly you will leave. But I cannot release all of you, nor can your Most High help you in this; therefore go as I permit, go only the men—“gattebharim”—men as opposed to women and children, men, excluding women and children (Exod 12:37). By releasing only the men and detaining the children, Pharaoh obviously desires that the latter remain as a pledge for their fathers’ return.

Exodus 10:12. Then the Lord said to Moses: Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt, and let the locusts come upon the land of Egypt and eat all the vegetation of the land [and all the fruit of the trees], all that remained after the hail. Exodus 10:13. So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night. When morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. The expulsion of Moses and Aaron, as an expression of Pharaoh’s contemptuous attitude toward them, the messengers of God, and thus also toward Him, provoked a new act of divine judgment upon Egypt—the appearance of locusts brought by the east wind (ruach kadim), corresponding to which the wind that carried them to the Red Sea is called from the opposite direction, the west wind (“ruach yam,” Exod 10:19)). Since, according to travelers’ accounts, locusts are brought to Egypt by the southwest wind from the Libyan Desert, some see in the Hebrew text’s mention of the east wind a direct error arising from the author of Exodus being unfamiliar with Egyptian nature. Such a view was expressed, among others, by the Septuagint translators, who put in their text: “ὁ ἄνεμος ὁ νότος”—the south wind. But the reading of the original text does not contradict the factual data. According to some witnesses, for example, Denon, Ebers, and others, locusts are brought to Egypt also from the east. The same is affirmed by Baumgarten, who sees in the relatively unusual appearance of locusts from the east in Egypt a manifestation of the almighty power of the Lord, extending beyond the limits of Egypt, the power of the Omnipresent.

Exodus 10:14. And the locusts came upon all the land of Egypt and alighted on the whole territory of Egypt in great abundance; never before had there been such locusts, nor shall there be such again; Exodus 10:15. they covered the face of all the land, so that the land could not be seen, and they ate all the vegetation of the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left, and not a green thing remained, neither on the trees nor on the plants of the field throughout all the land of Egypt. The appearance of locusts in tremendous quantity is fully consistent with other biblical testimonies (Jer 46:23, Nah 3:15), and the remark about their voracity and the darkness caused by their appearance is confirmed by (Deut 28:38, Isa 33:4, Joel 2:2).

Exodus 10:16. Then Pharaoh urgently called Moses and Aaron and said: I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you; Exodus 10:17. Now forgive my sin once more, and pray to the Lord your God, that he may take away from me this plague. In Pharaoh’s request to pray is shown both an awareness of his own powerlessness and the powerlessness of his gods, who proved unable to protect from the locusts the gardens and fields that the Egyptians believed they guarded.

Exodus 10:18. [Moses] left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. Exodus 10:19. And the Lord turned a very strong west wind, and it carried the locusts and threw them into the Red Sea; not a single locust remained throughout all the land of Egypt. Exodus 10:20. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the sons of Israel go. With the passing of the calamity, the sense of humility and the consciousness of his guilt disappear from Pharaoh’s soul (Exod 10:17).

Exodus 10:21. Then the Lord said to Moses: Stretch out your hand toward heaven, so that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be felt. Exodus 10:22. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was a dense darkness over all the land of Egypt for three days; Exodus 10:23. they could not see one another, and no one left his place for three days; but all the sons of Israel had light in their dwellings. The account of the ninth plague first emphasizes the symbolic action accompanying it—Moses raising his hands toward heaven, which brings about the darkness; then the density of the darkness (a darkness that can be felt), so thick that no one could do anything, the three-day duration of the plague, and finally the miraculous deliverance of the land of Goshen from it. By the first and last features, the new plague is a supernatural event. But since one of its elements—dense darkness—is observed during the southwest wind khamsin, the entire ninth plague is identified with a phenomenon common in Egypt. The beginning of such an understanding was set by the Septuagint text, which in describing the ninth plague speaks of “darkness, gloom, and storm”—the latter being a constant companion of the khamsin—and the author of the Book of Wisdom of Solomon (Wis 17). But for all the similarity between the ninth plague and the khamsin, there is, however, an essential difference between them. The essence of the former lies in darkness; about the suffocating air and scorching sand—the main elements of the khamsin—the Bible makes no mention. The Septuagint text mentions a storm, but the Masoretic reading agrees with the Vulgate, the Targum of Onkelos, and the Syriac, Arabic, and Samaritan translations. Furthermore, although the khamsin blows for two, three, or four days, it does not do so continuously. At most it lasts 12 hours, since it does not blow at night. Consequently, continuous three-day darkness cannot occur during the khamsin. The three-day darkness that covered Egypt served as clear proof of the powerlessness of the supreme god Ra, the god of the sun, who was now subject to the will of the Most High and proved incapable of giving his worshippers even a trace of light.

Exodus 10:24. Pharaoh called Moses [and Aaron] and said: Go, worship the Lord [your God], but let your flocks and your herds remain; only your children may go with you. If the people cannot leave without livestock, just as travel through the wilderness requires them, then leaving it in the land of Goshen serves as a reliable pledge for the Hebrews’ return to their settlement. Earlier, such a pledge was the detention of the children (Exod 10:10-11).

Exodus 10:25. But Moses said: [No,] you must also provide us with sacrifices and burnt offerings to present to the Lord our God; Exodus 10:26. our livestock, too, shall go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind; for from them we shall take our sacrifice to the Lord our God; and we do not know what we shall offer in sacrifice to the Lord until we arrive there. As Moses, so to speak, says to Pharaoh: You demand that we leave our livestock. In fact, you not only cannot insist on this, but, having acknowledged your guilt (Exod 10:16), you ought to provide animals for sacrifice to the Most High. This, of course, you will not do; in that case, our herds will go with us. And since it is now unknown what animals and how many of them will be offered in sacrifice, all herds must go: “not a hoof shall be left behind.”

Exodus 10:27. And the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. Exodus 10:28. And Pharaoh said to him: Get away from me; take care not to appear before me again; on the day you appear before me you shall die. The particular strength of Pharaoh’s hardening was shown in the threat to kill Moses.

Exodus 10:29. And Moses said: As you have said, I will not see your face again. “I will not see your face again” seems to contradict the testimony of (Exod 12:31) and (Exod 11:4-8). But as for the first passage, it does not yet indicate with certainty that Moses saw Pharaoh’s face at that time. He was summoned to the king at night, after the death of his firstborn, that is, at a time when the father, as a sign of mourning for his dead son, should have covered his face according to ancient custom (2 Sam 19:4). According to others, the expression “I will not see your face again” means I will not come, if circumstances do not change, I will not come of my own will and desire. Furthermore, the speech (Exod 11:4-8) is a direct continuation of the words (Exod 10:29), pronounced by Moses before his departure from the royal palace. There is a direct indication of this in the words (Exod 11:8): “[Moses] left [Pharaoh] in anger.” The irritation of God’s messenger is fully understandable in view of the stubbornness displayed by Pharaoh (Exod 10:27) and the threat to kill him (Exod 10:28) and is completely inexplicable on the assumption that the speech (Exod 11:4-8) was pronounced at a new appearance; there is no indication anywhere that Pharaoh did or said something that could provoke Moses’ anger.