Exodus 10:13

13 And Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and Yahweh drove an east wind into the land all that day and all night. The morning came, and the east wind had brought the locusts.

Exodus 10:13 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 10:13

And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt
His hand, with his rod in it:

and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land,
all that day and all that night; all that day after he had been driven from Pharaoh, and after he had stretched out his hand with his rod in it over Egypt, which was the seventh of the month Abib, and all the night following. This Jehovah did, who holds the winds in his fist, and brings them out of his treasures, whose will they obey, and whose word they fulfil:

and when it was morning;
the morrow was come, ( Exodus 10:4 ) the eighth day of the month Abib:

the east wind brought the locusts;
it was usual for these creatures to be taken up and carried with the wind, and brought into countries, as Pliny ^F7 and other writers attest. In the year 1527, a strong wind brought vast troops of locusts out of Turkey into Poland, which did much mischief; and in the year 1536 a wind from the Euxine Pontus brought such vast numbers of them into Podolia, as that for twenty miles round they devoured everything ^F8. The word here used commonly signifies the east wind, and so the Jewish writers unanimously interpret it; and if those locusts were brought from the Red sea, into which they were carried, it must be by an east wind, since the Red sea was east of Egypt; but the Septuagint version renders it the "south wind", and which is approved of by De Dieu on the place, and by Bochart {i}; and the latter supposes these locusts were brought by a south wind out of Ethiopia, which lay to the south of Egypt, and where in the spring of the year, as it now was, were usually great numbers of locusts, and where were a people that lived upon them, as Diodorus Siculus ^F11 and Strabo ^F12 relate; who both say that at the vernal equinox, or in the spring, the west and southwest winds blowing strongly brought locusts into those parts; and the south wind being warm might contribute to the production, cherishing, and increasing of these creatures, and which are sometimes brought by a south wind. Dr. Shaw says ^F13, the locusts he saw in Barbary, An. 1724 and 1725, were much bigger than our common grasshoppers, and had brown spotted wings, with legs and bodies of a bright yellow; their first appearance was toward the latter end of March, the wind having been for some time from the south.

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FOOTNOTES:

F7 Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 29.
F8 Frantzii Hist. Animal. Sacr. par. 5. c. 4. p. 794.
F9 Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 1. c. 15. col. 101, 102, & l. 4. c. 3. col. 463. Vid. Jablonski de Terra Goshen, Dissertat. 5. sect. 5.
F11 Bibliothec, l. 3. p. 162.
F12 Geograph. l. 16. p. 531.
F13 Travels, p. 187. Edit. 2.

Exodus 10:13 In-Context

11 {No indeed}; [just] the men go and serve Yahweh, since this [is what] you [are] seeking." And he drove them out from the presence of Pharaoh.

12 And Yahweh said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt with the locusts so that they may come up over the land of Egypt, and let them eat all the vegetation of the land, all that the hail left behind."

13 And Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and Yahweh drove an east wind into the land all that day and all night. The morning came, and the east wind had brought the locusts.

14 And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and they settled in all the territory of Egypt, very {severe}. Before it there were not locusts like them, nor will there be after it.

15 And they covered the surface of all the land, and the land was dark [with them], and they ate all the vegetation of the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left, and no green was left in the trees nor in the vegetation of the field in all the land of Egypt.