Exodus 10:13

13 So Moses raised his staff over Egypt, and the LORD caused an east wind to blow over the land all that day and through the night. When morning arrived, 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 Never! Only the men may go and worship the LORD, since that is what you requested.” And Pharaoh threw them out of the palace.

12 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Raise your hand over the land of Egypt to bring on the locusts. Let them cover the land and devour every plant that survived the hailstorm.”

13 So Moses raised his staff over Egypt, and the LORD caused an east wind to blow over the land all that day and through the night. When morning arrived, the east wind had brought the locusts.

14 And the locusts swarmed over the whole land of Egypt, settling in dense swarms from one end of the country to the other. It was the worst locust plague in Egyptian history, and there has never been another one like it.

15 For the locusts covered the whole country and darkened the land. They devoured every plant in the fields and all the fruit on the trees that had survived the hailstorm. Not a single leaf was left on the trees and plants throughout the land of Egypt.