For Teaching

Exodus 10: What the Passage Says

105 claims across 29 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Exodus 10 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses to go to Pharaoh again, saying he has made Pharaoh and his officials stubborn so that these signs can be done and retold to later generations. Moses warns of locusts; Pharaoh's officials urge him to give in, but he will only let the men go, so the locusts come and strip every green thing the hail had left. Pharaoh admits he has sinned and the locusts are blown into the Red Sea, then a darkness that can be felt covers Egypt for three days while the Israelites have light. Pharaoh offers to let the people go without their animals, Moses refuses, and Pharaoh orders Moses never to see his face again.

Claim by Claim

10:1
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD told Moses to go in to Pharaoh.
- The LORD said he had made Pharaoh's heart heavy.
- The LORD said he had made the heart of Pharaoh's servants heavy.
- The LORD said he did this so that he might set these signs of his among them.
10:2
- The LORD said this was also so that Moses might recount in the hearing of his son and his son's son what the LORD had done in dealing harshly with Egypt.
- The LORD said this was also so that Moses might recount the signs the LORD had placed among the Egyptians.
- The LORD said this was so that they would know that he is the LORD.
10:3
- Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh.
- Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh that this is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says.
- They asked on the LORD's behalf how long Pharaoh would refuse to humble himself before the LORD.
- The LORD commanded Pharaoh to let his people go.
- The LORD said the purpose was that his people might serve him.
10:4
- The LORD said that if Pharaoh refused to let his people go, the LORD would bring locusts into Pharaoh's territory tomorrow.
10:5
- The LORD said the locusts would cover the surface of the land.
- The LORD said no one would be able to see the ground.
- The LORD said the locusts would eat the remainder of what escaped and was left to them from the hail.
- The LORD said the locusts would eat every tree growing for them out of the field.
10:6
- The LORD said the locusts would fill Pharaoh's houses.
- The LORD said the locusts would fill the houses of all Pharaoh's servants.
- The LORD said the locusts would fill the houses of all the Egyptians.
- The LORD said neither Pharaoh's fathers nor his fathers' fathers had seen such a thing from the day they were on the earth until that day.
- Moses turned and went out from Pharaoh.
10:7
- Pharaoh's servants spoke to Pharaoh.
- Pharaoh's servants asked how long this man would be a snare to them.
- Pharaoh's servants told Pharaoh to let the men go.
- Pharaoh's servants said the purpose was that the men might serve the LORD their God.
- Pharaoh's servants asked whether Pharaoh did not yet know that Egypt was destroyed.
10:8
- Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh.
- Pharaoh told them to go and serve the LORD their God.
- Pharaoh asked who exactly would be going.
10:9
- Moses answered Pharaoh.
- Moses said they would go with their young and with their old.
- Moses said they would go with their sons and their daughters.
- Moses said they would go with their flocks and their herds.
- Moses said the reason was that they had a feast of the LORD to hold.
10:10
- Pharaoh spoke to Moses and Aaron.
- Pharaoh said, let the LORD be with you in the same way that I would let you and your little ones go.
- Pharaoh told them to look, because evil was before their faces.
10:11
- Pharaoh said it would not be so.
- Pharaoh said the grown men should go and serve the LORD.
- Pharaoh said that was what they were seeking.
- Moses and Aaron were driven out from Pharaoh's presence.
10:12
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD told Moses to stretch out his hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts.
- The LORD said the locusts would come up over the land of Egypt.
- The LORD said the locusts would eat every plant of the land.
- The LORD said the locusts would eat everything the hail had left.
10:13
- Moses stretched out his rod over the land of Egypt.
- The LORD drove an east wind over the land all that day and all that night.
- Morning came.
- The east wind carried in the locusts.
10:14
- The locusts came up over all the land of Egypt.
- The locusts settled in all the territory of Egypt.
- The locusts were very heavy in number.
- There had never before been such a locust swarm as this.
- There would never again be such a locust swarm as this.
10:15
- The locusts covered the surface of the whole land.
- The land was darkened.
- The locusts ate every plant of the land.
- The locusts ate all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left.
- No green thing remained on any tree or plant of the field in all the land of Egypt.
10:16
- Pharaoh hurried to summon Moses and Aaron.
- Pharaoh said he had sinned against the LORD their God.
- Pharaoh said he had sinned against Moses and Aaron.
10:17
- Pharaoh asked them to forgive his sin just this once.
- Pharaoh asked them to entreat the LORD their God.
- Pharaoh asked that the LORD take away only this death from him.
10:18
- Moses went out from Pharaoh.
- Moses entreated the LORD.
10:19
- The LORD turned the wind into a very strong sea wind, from the west.
- The wind lifted up the locusts.
- The wind drove the locusts into the Sea of Reeds.
- Not one locust remained in all the territory of Egypt.
10:20
- The LORD strengthened Pharaoh's heart.
- Pharaoh did not let the children of Israel go.
10:21
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD told Moses to stretch out his hand toward the heavens.
- The LORD said darkness would come over the land of Egypt.
- The LORD said the darkness would be such that it could be felt.
10:22
- Moses stretched out his hand toward the heavens.
- There was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.
10:23
- No one could see his brother.
- No one rose from his place for three days.
- All the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.
10:24
- Pharaoh summoned Moses.
- Pharaoh told them to go and serve the LORD.
- Pharaoh said only their flocks and herds must stay behind.
- Pharaoh said their little ones could also go with them.
10:25
- Moses answered Pharaoh.
- Moses said Pharaoh must also put sacrifices and burnt offerings into their hands.
- Moses said they would offer them to the LORD their God.
10:26
- Moses said their livestock would also go with them.
- Moses said not a hoof would be left behind.
- Moses said they would take some of the livestock to serve the LORD their God.
- Moses said they did not know with what they must serve the LORD until they arrived there.
10:27
- The LORD strengthened Pharaoh's heart.
- Pharaoh was unwilling to let them go.
10:28
- Pharaoh told Moses to get away from him.
- Pharaoh told Moses to take heed to himself.
- Pharaoh told Moses never to see his face again.
- Pharaoh said that on the day Moses saw his face, Moses would die.
10:29
- Moses answered Pharaoh.
- Moses said Pharaoh had spoken rightly.
- Moses said he would never see Pharaoh's face again.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1: Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters, it stands in for the personal name of God in Hebrew, four consonants usually written YHWH. Ancient Jewish practice was to say "the Lord" rather than pronounce the name aloud, and English translations have followed that custom ever since. "Hardened his heart": in Hebrew the heart is the seat of thinking, willing and deciding rather than of feeling, so the phrase describes a mind set immovably, not a cold or unfeeling personality.
10:2: The Hebrew verb behind "what things I have wrought" can mean to deal severely with someone or to make sport of them; both senses are live here, and translations split between them. "Signs" renders a word for a display meant to be read as evidence (something that proves who is acting), rather than simply a marvel.
10:3: "Hebrews" is the term outsiders use for the Israelites in these stories; Egyptians and Philistines call them that, and they mostly call themselves Israel. The word translated "serve" covers both forced labor and religious service: it is the same word used for the slave work the Israelites do for Pharaoh. The demand is that they be released from serving one master in order to serve another.
10:4: "Coast" in 1611 English meant border or territory, with no connection to the sea. Locusts are migratory grasshoppers which, under the right conditions, breed into swarms of many millions and strip a whole region of vegetation within hours; such swarms were a known and dreaded catastrophe across the ancient Near East.
10:5: The hail was the plague immediately before this one (chapter 9). It destroyed the flax and barley, which were ripe, but the wheat and spelt were still young in the ground and survived. Those surviving crops are what the locusts are now promised.
10:6: The Hebrew reads literally "from the day they were upon the ground until this day," which can be understood either as "since they were born" or as "since they came to be in this land." Translations divide between the two.
10:7: The word translated "snare" means a bird trap, properly the baited stick that springs it. The officials are saying Moses has become the thing that keeps catching them.
10:9: "Feast" here does not mean a large meal. The Hebrew word means a pilgrimage festival: a journey to a particular place, with sacrifices, lasting several days. That is why Moses claims the whole population and all the animals are required.
10:10: Pharaoh is being sarcastic: may the LORD be with you exactly as much as I will let you go with your children: that is, not at all. "Little ones" translates a Hebrew word covering dependants generally, young children and often the women with them, not merely infants. "Evil is before you" is genuinely ambiguous: it can mean "you are plainly up to no good," or it can be a threat, "trouble lies ahead of you."
10:11: The word used here means adult males specifically. The effect of Pharaoh's counter-offer would be to keep the families and livestock in Egypt, which guarantees the men come back.
10:12: "Herb" in the King James means any green growing plant, not a cooking herb.
10:13: The "rod" is a shepherd's staff, a walking-length wooden stick, not a rod for striking. The east wind blows off the deserts of Sinai and Arabia; it is hot and dry, and it is in fact the wind that carries locust swarms into Egypt from their breeding grounds.
10:14: "Grievous" in the King James here means heavy or massive in quantity, not distressing. "Coasts" again means borders or territory.
10:15: "The land was darkened" is literal. A swarm dense enough to cover the ground also fills the air, and eyewitnesses of modern locust plagues describe the daylight going brown or nearly dark while the swarm passes overhead.
10:17: "Intreat" in the King James means to plead with someone on another person's behalf. Pharaoh asks for the removal of "this death": in Hebrew he names the plague itself as death rather than describing what it is doing.
10:19: The Hebrew calls this a "sea wind." The Mediterranean lies to Egypt's north and west, so a wind off the sea comes from that direction. "Red sea" translates the Hebrew yam suph, which means something more like "sea of reeds"; which stretch of water it names (the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf of Aqaba, or a reedy lake in the eastern Nile delta) is disputed.
10:20: Hebrew uses two different verbs across these chapters for what happens to Pharaoh's heart, one meaning to make heavy and one meaning to make strong or firm. The narrative alternates between saying Pharaoh hardened his own heart and saying the LORD hardened it, without ever remarking on the shift.
10:21: The Hebrew is deliberately odd, roughly "and let one feel darkness," darkness thick enough to grope at. Egypt's spring khamsin winds can carry enough sand to blot out the sun for days at a time, and the wording has often been connected with that.
10:23: "Neither rose any from his place" means ordinary life stopped completely. In a world lit by daylight and small oil lamps, darkness this total makes work, travel and even moving around inside a house impossible. The Israelites are unaffected partly because they lived together in one district of Egypt, Goshen, described in the earlier chapters.
10:24: This is Pharaoh's next concession, and it moves the hostage. Earlier he tried to keep the families; now he will let the children go but keep the herds, which are the wealth Israel would need to survive anywhere else and the animals the festival itself requires.
10:25: Two distinct things. A "sacrifice" was an animal killed at the altar and then largely eaten by the worshipers as a shared meal. A "burnt offering" was burned whole on the altar, with nothing kept back for anyone to eat. Moses is demanding that Pharaoh himself supply animals for both.
10:26: "Not a hoof shall be left behind" is a set expression meaning not one animal, down to the last. It is a flat refusal of the condition Pharaoh set in verse 24.
10:28: "To see the king's face" was court language for being admitted to the royal presence for an audience. Pharaoh is not forbidding eye contact; he is canceling Moses' right of access to him, and attaching the death penalty to it.

Read Exodus 10