Exodus 10:4

4 'For if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory.

Exodus 10:4 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 10:4

Else, if thou refuse to let my people go
He threatens him with the following plague, the plague of the locusts, which Pliny F24 calls "denrum irae pestis":

behold, tomorrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast;
according to Bishop Usher F25 this was about the seventh day of the month Abib, that this plague was threatened, and on the morrow, which was the eighth day, it was brought; but Aben Ezra relates it as an opinion of Japhet an Hebrew writer, that there were many days between the plague of the hail, and the plague of the locusts, that there might be time for the grass and plants to spring out of the field; but this seems not necessary, for these locusts only ate of what were left of the hail, as in the following verse.


FOOTNOTES:

F24 Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 29.
F25 Annales Vet. Test. p. 21.

Exodus 10:4 In-Context

2 and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the LORD ."
3 Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "Thus says the LORD , the God of the Hebrews, 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go, that they may serve Me.
4 'For if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory.
5 'They shall cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land. They will also eat the rest of what has escaped -what is left to you from the hail -and they will eat every tree which sprouts for you out of the field.
6 'Then your houses shall be filled and the houses of all your servants and the houses of all the Egyptians, something which neither your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen, from the day that they came upon the earth until this day.' " And he turned and went out from Pharaoh.
New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, California.  All rights reserved.