Exodus 10:13

The locusts are the eighth of the plagues the LORD sent on Egypt (Exodus 7–12). They follow the hail (Exodus 9:22), which had already ruined much of Egypt’s crops and livestock (Exodus 9:25). The hail smote the flax and the barley and spared the wheat and the spelt (Exodus 9:31–32), and that spared harvest is what the locusts now come to eat.

Pharaoh had been warned. Moses and Aaron told him that locusts would cover the land if he kept refusing (Exodus 10:1–6). His own officials, seeing the ruin of Egypt and fearing worse, urged him to let the Israelites go (Exodus 10:7). He would let only the men go, and Moses rejected that (Exodus 10:8–11). So when the LORD speaks in verse 12, he is answering a king who has heard the warning, heard his own court plead with him, and chosen to hold on.

God told Moses what the plagues were for. “The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD” (Exodus 7:5), he said, and he would bring his people out of Egypt by great acts of judgment (Exodus 7:4). To Pharaoh he said that he had raised him up to show his power in him and to make his name known throughout the earth (Exodus 9:16), words Paul quotes in Romans 9:17–18. So the plagues are judgment on a king who holds God’s people captive, and they are also God keeping his promise. He had told Abraham that his descendants would be afflicted in a foreign land and then brought out (Genesis 15:13–14), he renewed that promise to Moses (Exodus 6:1–8), and he had spoken of a land flowing with milk and honey waiting for them (Exodus 3:8).

Egypt lived on its harvests, which depended on the yearly flooding of the Nile, so a plague that took every plant struck at the life of the nation. The Egyptians honoured gods of fertility and harvest, such as Min and Renenutet, and they revered Pharaoh as a divine king. A swarm that stripped the whole land bare showed that the LORD, the God of Israel, rules the land and everything that grows in it.

The locusts “went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt.” Coasts, gᵉbûwl, means a border or boundary, and by extension the territory inside it, so “all the coasts of Egypt” is the whole country from border to border. Egypt itself, Mitsrayim, is a dual form, naming Upper and Lower Egypt together. Every region was reached.

They were “very grievous”. Grievous, kâbêd, means heavy. Used of a swarm or a crowd it means great and numerous, and figuratively it can mean severe or hard to bear. With mᵉʼôd, “very” or “exceedingly”, it describes a swarm vast and crushing. The KJV calls the hail of the seventh plague “very grievous” as well (Exodus 9:24).

“Before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.” Scripture says it plainly: this swarm had no equal before it and would have none after it. The never-before meaning comes from these clauses, while mᵉʼôd simply says how great the swarm was. The word for after, ʼachar, properly means the hind part, and it marks both place (behind) and time (after), here the time to come. Locusts were a known and dreaded disaster in Egypt and Canaan, and this one stood apart in its size and in being sent and ended by the word of the LORD.

Then Pharaoh “called for Moses and Aaron in haste”. The verb mâhar means to hurry, and whether the hurry is good or bad depends on the setting. Here it is a ruined country and a king who wants relief at once. The man the Egyptians revered as a living god, the keeper of the order they called Ma’at, sends for two men of the people he had enslaved and admits that he has done wrong. For such a ruler that was a deep humiliation.

“I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you.” The verb for sinned, châṭâʼ, properly means to miss, and so to sin. Pharaoh had said “I have sinned” once before, after the hail (Exodus 9:27), and then gone back on his word. He names the LORD, the God who had told him through these men, “Let my people go” (Exodus 10:3), and he calls him “your God”, using ʼĕlôhîym, the usual Hebrew word for God. He knows now whose hand is on Egypt, and he still speaks of the LORD as the God of Moses and Aaron and keeps him at a distance. He also owns a wrong “against you”, against the men whose warnings he had refused and whom he had put off with promises he broke.

“Now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once.” To forgive, nâsâʼ, is to lift or carry, and so to take a burden away. It is the verb behind “the east wind brought the locusts” in verse 13 and behind “took away the locusts” in verse 19. The wind lifted the locusts into Egypt, Pharaoh asks for his sin to be lifted, and the wind lifts the locusts out again. His sin, chaṭṭâʼâh, is the word for an offence, and the same word names the sin offering. “Only this once” asks for one more reprieve, and it shows that his mind is on this one plague.

He asks them to “intreat the LORD your God, that he may take away from me this death only.” Death, mâveth, means death of every kind, and figuratively pestilence or ruin. “This death” is the plague itself, the ruin of a land with nothing left to eat and famine ahead. Pharaoh says “from me”, and the death he means is the ruin of his country and its food. By asking them to intreat the LORD, he admits that Moses can bring his case before the God whose power is on Egypt.

“And he went out from Pharaoh, and intreated the LORD.” Moses went out (yâtsâʼ, to go or come out) from the royal court and brought the matter straight to the LORD. The verb for intreated, ʻâthar, is the one Pharaoh used in verse 17, and it means to pray or plead. Moses does what he was asked, and he does it at once.

Pharaoh, whom Egypt held to stand between the people and their gods, has had to ask a prophet of the LORD to pray for him. Moses prays for the man who had enslaved his people, carrying out the commission the LORD had given him (Exodus 7:1). He would plead for Israel too, after the golden calf (Exodus 32:11–14). Abraham pleaded with the LORD for Sodom (Genesis 18:23–33), Samuel promised Israel that he would keep praying for them (1 Samuel 12:23), and Paul asks the church to pray for all men, for kings and for all in authority (1 Timothy 2:1–2). The LORD heard Moses’ prayer and answered it in the very next verse, though it was offered for an unrepentant king.

“And the LORD turned a mighty strong west wind.” To turn, hâphak, is to turn about or overturn, and the LORD who drove the east wind now reverses it. “Mighty strong” is literally very strong, with the same mᵉʼôd that made the locusts “very grievous”. The Hebrew for west here is yâm, the word for sea, the same word as “sea” in “Red sea”, so it is a sea wind. A wind from the west carries the swarm eastward, toward the Red sea. It “took away the locusts”, with the verb nâsâʼ once more, “and cast them into the Red sea”.

The Hebrew calls this the sea of çûwph, a word of Egyptian origin for reeds and especially papyrus, which is why it can be called the Sea of Reeds. The water that swallowed the locusts is the sea where God would soon open a way for Israel and overthrow Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 14), so it became a place of both judgment and deliverance. Isaiah speaks of the LORD who makes a way in the sea (Isaiah 43:16), and a psalm tells how he stills the storm (Psalm 107:29). Wind and water obey him in judgment and in mercy alike.

“There remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt.” The verb for remained is shâʼar, the word used in verse 12 of what the hail had left. The hail left a remnant and the locusts ate it, and now of the locusts themselves nothing remains, “not one”, ʼechâd, the numeral one. The verb itself means simply to be left, and the completeness lies in the negation. Some read “not one” to the last insect, and others take it as the strong way Scripture speaks of a thing wholly finished, and on either reading the plague ended the moment God said it was over. He is as thorough in removing a judgment as in sending it.

“But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go.” To harden, châzaq, is to make strong, make firm or harden. The heart, lêb, is the whole inner person, the feelings, the will and even the mind, so a hardened heart is a will set fast against God. Pharaoh has had his prayer answered and every locust is gone, and he goes back to his old refusal.

God had told Moses before the plagues began that he would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4:21, Exodus 7:3), and at the start of this chapter he said it again, so that he might show his signs (Exodus 10:1). Pharaoh’s heart was hard from the first sign (Exodus 7:13). Exodus says plainly that Pharaoh hardened his own heart after the frogs and after the flies (Exodus 8:15, Exodus 8:32), and after the boils it says that the LORD hardened it (Exodus 9:12). Exodus uses other verbs for Pharaoh’s heart as well, one meaning to make heavy and one to make hard, and châzaq is the one for making strong or firm.

The God who drove the locusts in and out with the wind came among us in Jesus. Jesus calmed the storm with a word (Mark 4:39), he walked on the sea (Matthew 14:25), and he fed thousands from a few loaves (Matthew 14:19–21, John 6:11). These are the works of the Creator who rules wind and sea.

Israel’s slavery in Egypt pictures a deeper slavery. Jesus said that everyone who commits sin is the servant of sin, and that those the Son sets free are free indeed (John 8:34–36). Those made free from sin become servants of God (Romans 6:22), delivered from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God’s Son (Colossians 1:13–14). Christ is the greater Moses, faithful over God’s house (Hebrews 3:1–6). Luke calls the death Jesus would accomplish at Jerusalem his departure, in Greek his exodos (Luke 9:31), and Paul calls him our Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7).

The darkness and the “very grievous” judgment of these verses point to the cross. There Christ cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) bore the judgment for sin, so that we who believe are saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:9). Whoever believes in him is spared condemnation (John 3:16–18), and he is the one appointed to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42), who will bring in the new heaven and the new earth (Revelation 21:1–4).

Pharaoh spoke of “the LORD your God”. In Christ those who were far off are brought near by his blood, for he broke down the middle wall of partition and made Jew and Gentile one (Ephesians 2:13–18). The repentance John the Baptist and Jesus preached is a turning from sin to God (Matthew 3:2, Mark 1:15). Pharaoh’s resistance ended in ruin, while Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death (Philippians 2:8) and triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15).

Moses went out and prayed for his oppressor. Christ, our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14–16) and the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), prayed on the cross for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34), and he ever lives to intercede for all who come to God through him (Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:34). Pharaoh asked to be spared “this death” for a season. The death Christ saves us from is the wages of sin, and the life he gives is eternal and abundant (Romans 6:23, John 10:10).

The LORD rules the smallest creatures and the strongest winds. He sends the locusts on an east wind and removes them on a west wind, and when he says the plague is over, every last locust is gone. He warns before he strikes, he keeps his promise to bring his people out, and he hears the prayer of his servant even when it is offered for an enemy.

The passage also shows how trouble can press right words out of a heart that stays hard. Pharaoh said “I have sinned” and meant “take this away”. The God who lifted the locusts from Egypt is the God who in Christ lifts away sin itself, and he gives the godly sorrow that turns a heart to him for good. When trouble drives us to pray, that prayer can become the start of true turning, and Moses’ prayer for Pharaoh shows that God’s people may bring even those who have wronged them before the LORD.