Exodus 10

Exodus 10 delivers the eighth and ninth plagues — locusts and darkness — and ends with the final breach of audience between Moses and Pharaoh. The chapter is framed at its opening by the catechetical statement of purpose that the LORD has been working toward since 5:2’s question, and closes with Pharaoh’s “see my face no more” — the door that the Passover narrative of chapter 11 will open onto the climactic tenth plague.

The catechetical opening (10:1-2). The chapter’s first verses give the LORD’s stated reason for what is to follow: “I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him: And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the LORD.” The plagues’ purpose is now made explicit. They are not primarily punitive (Egypt could have been struck once); they are pedagogical — and the pedagogy extends across generations. The verse is the structural key for the entire Exod 10-15 sequence and the explicit anchor of the Passover institution that follows in Exod 12-13, which will deploy the same father-to-son catechetical formula three more times (Exodus 12:26–27↗, Exodus 13:8↗, Exodus 13:14–15↗). The 10:2 verse is also the OT taproot of the Shema’s father-to-son extension at Deuteronomy 6:7–9↗.

The eighth plague: locusts (10:3-20). Moses and Aaron come in with the standard warning, now augmented by the LORD’s escalation-formula: the locusts will fill houses “which neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers’ fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day.” The chapter then breaks for an internal-court detail that is one of the plagues narrative’s most consequential single sentences. After Moses leaves, Pharaoh’s servants speak: “How long shall this man be a snare מוֹקֵשׁ moqesh Hebrew ‘Snare, trap, bait-stick.’ The OT vocabulary for the trap-mechanism that closes on a hunted animal. The metaphor places Moses as the device that has caught the Egyptian state. The verse is structurally significant: the dissent emerges within Pharaoh's own court, before the eighth plague — Pharaoh's hardening is now contradicted from within. The fear-of-the-LORD among Pharaoh's servants planted at 9:20 has now reached open speech. unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?” The fear-of-the-LORD planted among Pharaoh’s servants at 9:20 has now reached open speech. Pharaoh’s hardening is being contradicted from within.

The first negotiation produces Pharaoh’s first explicit compromise: “Go, serve the LORD your God: but who are they that shall go?” Moses’ reply names the whole assembly: “We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go; for we must hold a feast unto the LORD.” Pharaoh’s counter-compromise is sharper than chapter 8’s: “Not so: go now ye that are men, and serve the LORD; for that ye did desire.” The men only — leaving women, children, and livestock as hostages against Israel’s return. Moses and Aaron are driven out.

The plague executes with the chapter’s most carefully recorded meteorology. The LORD brings an east wind ( qadim רוּחַ קָדִים ruach qadim Hebrew ‘East wind.’ The Sinai-Egyptian east wind (qadim, also khamsin in modern Arabic) is the hot dry wind that crosses the Sinai from Arabia; it is the natural-history vehicle for desert-locust swarms reaching the Nile valley. The LORD's use of the qadim recurs at the parting of the Red Sea (Exod 14:21, where the same east wind drives back the waters) — a structural echo placing the same divine wind-instrument at two of the Exodus narrative's climactic moments. ) all that day and night; in the morning the wind brings the arbeh אַרְבֶּה arbeh Hebrew ‘Locust.’ The most common of the OT's locust-words (alongside yeleq, chasil, gazam). Arbeh is one of the four locust-types of Joel's plague-of-locusts oracle (Joel 1:4, 2:25), where Joel reads a locust invasion as a covenant-curse instrument and the LORD's army. The Exod 10 locust-plague is also the OT taproot of the apocalyptic locust-imagery of Rev 9:1-11 (the locusts from the bottomless pit, given as scorpions in power against those who do not have God's seal). Two of the OT's longest plague-typologies — Joel's and Revelation's — both anchor here. — locusts in numbers without precedent or successor. They cover the face of the earth so that the land is darkened, eat every herb and every fruit of the trees the hail had left, and leave not any green thing through all the land of Egypt.

Pharaoh’s second confession follows. He calls Moses and Aaron “in haste”: “I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you. Now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat the LORD your God, that he may take away from me this death only.” The confession is more elaborate than 9:27’s; the repentance-language is intensified (“forgive,” “this death only”); the request is the same. Moses intercedes. The LORD turns a west wind — a mighty strong west wind רוּחַ יָם ruach yam Hebrew Literally ‘sea wind’ — the Mediterranean wind, blowing from the west, structurally opposite to the qadim. The chapter's meteorology is precise: east wind to bring the locusts in from the desert; west wind to drive them out to the Red Sea. The locusts are not killed but removed; the chapter does not develop the detail, but standard commentaries note that the removal-into-the-sea is the same fate that will befall Pharaoh's chariots at Exod 14. — that takes away the locusts and casts them into the Red Sea: “there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt.” Pharaoh’s heart is hardened.

The ninth plague: darkness (10:21-29). No warning. The LORD instructs Moses to stretch out his hand toward heaven, and there falls a darkness חֹשֶׁךְ choshek Hebrew ‘Darkness.’ The chapter's distinctive phrase ‘darkness which may be felt’ (10:21) is weyamesh choshek — the verb mush carrying the sense ‘grope, feel one's way’ rather than ‘touch as a substance.’ Standard commentaries treat the phrase as describing a darkness so total that the Egyptians grope as if blind. The same noun choshek is the primordial darkness of Gen 1:2 over which the LORD's spirit moves before creating light; the ninth plague's structural sense is creation-reversal, darkness re-imposed where the LORD's first creative act was light. “which may be felt” upon Egypt. Three days; no man rises from his place; no man sees his fellow. The plague’s target is the most direct of the entire sequence: Ra, the sun-god, Egypt’s chief deity and the divine principle behind Pharaoh’s own claimed sonship. The Goshen-division operates here at its most absolute: “all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.”

Pharaoh’s third negotiation produces his third escalating compromise: “Go ye, serve the LORD; only let your flocks and your herds be stayed: let your little ones also go with you.” The livestock-as-hostage proposal is the inverse of chapter 10’s first round (men only); now Pharaoh offers women and children but keeps the herds. Moses’ refusal is again theological: the livestock are the sacrifices — “Thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings… Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the LORD our God; and we know not with what we must serve the LORD, until we come thither.” The chapter records that the LORD again hardens Pharaoh’s heart.

The chapter’s audience-thread closes in 10:28-29 with the final breach. Pharaoh’s words: “Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more; for in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die.” Moses’ reply: “Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face again no more.” The plague-cycle’s verbal negotiation ends here. Pharaoh and Moses will not meet again until chapter 12’s brief midnight summons after the tenth plague, and that meeting is recorded without the chapter-10 dialogue’s structure — the verbal contest is over. What remains is the announcement of the firstborn (chapter 11), the Passover institution (chapter 12), and the departure.