Exodus10chapter 10

Exodus 10:1-2

for I have hardened his heart: The reason for the whole sequence is stated here and it is instruction rather than punishment, that a man might tell in the ears of his son and his grandson what things I have wrought in Egypt. The command Go in unto Pharaoh puts this plague in the same slot as the frogs at 8:1 and the murrain at 9:1, warned in the palace rather than at the river, which is how each triad of three is built. From 9:12 the text has made the LORD the subject of the hardening and it never changes back, so 10:1, 10:20 and 10:27 all read the same way.

Exodus 10:3

This is the last of the seven times the demand is made with its purpose attached, let my people go, that they may serve me, running from 4:23 through 7:16, 8:1, 8:20, 9:1 and 9:13. After this verse the argument is no longer over whether Israel goes but over who and what goes with them. Pharaoh's own servants pick up the opening words in verse 7 and aim the question at Moses instead.

Exodus 10:4-6

The word locust occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and the threat is that it will finish what the hail began, eating the residue of that which is escaped. Exodus 9:31 and 9:32 had said the flax and the barley were smitten while the wheat and the rie were not grown up, so the two plagues take the harvest in stages. Moses then uses the measure the text keeps for these last strokes, a thing which the fathers and their fathers had never seen, already spoken of the hail at 9:18 and 9:24, and he turns and walks out before Pharaoh has answered.

Exodus 10:7

The court breaks with the king, which chapter 9 had prepared when some of his servants feared the word of the LORD and brought their cattle in out of the hail at 9:20. They borrow the words Moses used four verses earlier and turn them around, asking how long a man rather than how long a refusal. Their own account of the country, knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed, is given before the eighth plague has fallen.

Exodus 10:8-9

Pharaoh grants the words Go, serve the LORD your God and then asks for the terms, and the terms are what the rest of the chapter is fought over. Moses answers with everyone and everything, the young and the old, the sons and the daughters, the flocks and the herds, and grounds it on the request first made at 5:1, that we must hold a feast unto the LORD. The reason he gives is the service itself, which is the thread the book carries from the bondage of 1:13 and 1:14 to the order of worship in chapter 40.

Exodus 10:10-11

The first counteroffer of the chapter cuts the party down to the men, and it belongs to a series: sacrifice in the land at 8:25, go not very far away at 8:28, the men only here, and leave the flocks at 10:24. Moses turns down every one of them and holds to the whole household with its cattle, because a service with parts kept back in Egypt would still be Egypt's service. Pharaoh has the two men driven out from his presence, and at 11:1 he is told he will thrust the whole nation out.

Exodus 10:12-13

The hand is commanded and the rod does the work, the same shepherd's stick handed to Moses at the bush in 4:2, which swallowed the magicians' rods at 7:12 and turned the river at 7:20. The agent is an east wind that blows a full day and a full night, and the same wind blows all night at 14:21 to open the sea. An east wind had blasted the ears of corn in the dream of Genesis 41:6, the dream that brought Israel down into Egypt in the first place.

Exodus 10:14-15

Every green thing goes, the herbs of the field and the fruit of the trees the hail had left, so the stroke takes the food of the coming year and not only the crop standing in the field. The text gives it the superlative it gave the hail at 9:18 and 9:24 and will give the death of the firstborn at 11:6, that there were none like these before and none shall be after. Joel 1:4 and Revelation 9:3 both reach for locusts when they describe a day of judgment.

Exodus 10:16-17

This is the second time Pharaoh says I have sinned, after 9:27 where he added that the LORD is righteous, and 9:27 is the first place in Scripture where anyone is recorded saying the words. What he asks to have taken away is the death and not the sin, and the word only carries his request twice over. Matthew Henry reads the confession as fear of the plague rather than a change of mind, and verse 20 puts a hardened heart directly after it.

Exodus 10:18-19

Moses prays for the country that is holding his people, as he did at 8:12, 8:30 and 9:33, so the man who brings the plague is also the man who asks for its removal. The wind that carried the locusts in is answered by a mighty strong west wind that carries them out and casts them into the Red sea, and this verse is the first place in Scripture the Red sea is named. The water that swallows the plague here swallows the army at 14:28 and is named again in the song at 15:4.

Exodus 10:20

This is one of nineteen statements about Pharaoh's heart in the book, and from 9:12 onward the LORD is the subject of every one of them. Through the first five plagues the text either puts the act on Pharaoh or leaves it stative, at 7:13, 7:22, 8:15, 8:19, 8:32 and 9:7, and the order of those statements matters to both sides of the argument. Romans 9:17 quotes Exodus 9:16 and Romans 9:18 draws the words whom he will he hardeneth out of it. Sproul reads the whole sequence as one act with two true descriptions, divine sovereignty and human responsibility each real, while the free-will reading takes the order as God confirming a man in the direction he had already chosen.

Exodus 10:21-22

The ninth plague arrives with no warning and no demand attached to it, which closes the third triad the way the lice at 8:16 and the boils at 9:8 closed the first two. The phrase darkness which may be felt occurs nowhere else in Scripture, and the darkness holds for three days. Readings that match each plague to a named Egyptian god, with Ra standing behind this one, are taught by Chuck Missler and others; what Exodus itself says is at 12:12, that against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment, and it names no deity.

Exodus 10:23

Egypt is stopped where it stands for three days while the children of Israel have light in their dwellings, and the division between the two peoples has now been stated at four plagues running, at 8:22, 9:4, 9:26 and here. The line is drawn by dwelling rather than by desert, which is the shape the blood on the door takes at 12:13, where the sign is what God sees and not who is inside. The chapter says nothing about how the light in Goshen was kept.

Exodus 10:24-25

The last counteroffer keeps the cattle back, which would send Israel out to a feast with nothing to offer at it. Pharaoh has moved from the men only in verse 11 to letting the little ones go as well, so the ground has narrowed to the herds, and the herds are the part the service actually needs. Moses answers that the sacrifices and burnt offerings have to come out of their own animals.

Exodus 10:26

Moses gives the reason and it is the one the whole book turns on, for thereof must we take to serve the LORD our God. Then he adds a line a reader can pass over, that they do not know with what they must serve until they come thither, so nothing can be handed over in advance because nothing yet knows what it will be needed for. Charles Spurgeon preached this verse as Full Redemption and read the hoof as the measure of how much of a man belongs to God.

Exodus 10:27-29

Pharaoh ends the audience with a threat of death, see my face no more, and Moses takes the words as settled, Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face again no more. Chapter 11 verses 4 to 8 have Moses speaking to Pharaoh again and going out from him in a great anger, and readers differ over it: Adam Clarke takes those words as spoken at this same interview, while others read them as a later meeting. Either way the bargaining is over, and what comes next is announced to Pharaoh rather than negotiated with him.