Exodus 10:1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may do these miraculous signs of Mine among them, 2 and so that you may tell your son and grandson how severely I dealt with the Egyptians and performed miraculous signs among them, and you will know that I am Yahweh.”
Here God says that the signs are so that Moses can tell his son and grandson how severely God punished the Egyptian. It is for the Israelites to tell their children and grandchildren of the wondrous might of their God and how he delivered them, through his power and signs, from the oppression of the Egyptians.
Exodus 10:3 So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and told him, “This is what Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, says: How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go, that they may worship Me. 4 But if you refuse to let My people go, then tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory. 5 They will cover the surface of the land so that no one will be able to see the land. They will eat the remainder left to you that escaped the hail; they will eat every tree you have growing in the fields.
Do you remember in the last post I mentioned that it seemed that God had some mercy on the Egyptians by leaving them some grain (the later harvest) so they could survive? Well, the locust may have wiped that harvest out as well. We do not know how much time passed between the hail and the locust, but it may have been enough time for the wheat and spelt to have been planted.
Exodus 10:6 They will fill your houses, all your officials’ houses, and the houses of all the Egyptians—something your fathers and ancestors never saw since the time they occupied the land until today.” Then he turned and left Pharaoh’s presence.
7 Pharaoh’s officials asked him, “How long must this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, so that they may worship Yahweh their God. Don’t you realize yet that Egypt is devastated?”
8 So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. “Go, worship Yahweh your God,” Pharaoh said. “But exactly who will be going?”
Here Pharaoh wants another deal. Remember the first one was you can go, but not too far, now he wants to see who is going, because Pharaoh knows that if only the men go, then they will come back for their wives and children.
Exodus 10:9 Moses replied, “We will go with our young and our old; we will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds because we must hold Yahweh’s festival.”
10 He said to them, “May Yahweh be with you if I ever let you and your families go! Look out—you are planning evil. 11 No, only the men may go and worship Yahweh, for that is what you have been asking for.” And they were driven from Pharaoh’s presence.
I have not looked at the Hebrew, nor would I really know where to look at that, but, from an English translation, Moses said "people" not "men" when referring to leaving to worship. Pharaoh may have assumed he meant just the men?
Exodus 10:12 The Lord then said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt and the locusts will come up over it and eat every plant in the land, everything that the hail left.”13 So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and the Lord sent an east wind over the land all that day and through the night. By morning the east wind had brought in the locusts. 14 The locusts went up over the entire land of Egypt and settled on the whole territory of Egypt. Never before had there been such a large number of locusts, and there never will be again. 15 They covered the surface of the whole land so that the land was black, and they consumed all the plants on the ground and all the fruit on the trees that the hail had left. Nothing green was left on the trees or the plants in the field throughout the land of Egypt.
16 Pharaoh urgently sent for Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against Yahweh your God and against you. 17 Please forgive my sin once more and make an appeal to Yahweh your God, so that He will take this death away from me.” 18 Moses left Pharaoh’s presence and appealed to the Lord. 19 Then the Lord changed the wind to a strong west wind, and it carried off the locusts and blew them into the Red Sea. Not a single locust was left in all the territory of Egypt. 20 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the Israelites go.
Again Pharaoh asked Moses to remove the hardship and again Pharaoh refused to keep his promise. He hardened his heart as soon as the hardship was over. Once things got easy again, Pharaoh would not keep his word.
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