Exodus 10:1-6

PLAGUE VIII

"And Jehovah said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I may show these my signs in the midst of them, and that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son's sons, what things I have wrought upon Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them,' that ye may know that I am Jehovah. And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and said unto him, Thus saith Jehovah the God of the Hebrews, How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? Let my people go, that they may serve me. Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow will I bring locusts into thy border: and they shall cover the face of the earth, so that one shall not be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remained unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree that which groweth for you out of the field: and thy house shall be filled, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; as neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers' fathers have seen since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day. And he turned and went out from Pharaoh."

"I have hardened his heart ..." See under Exodus 4:21, above.

"What things I have wrought upon Egypt ..." The RSV has rendered Exodus 10:2 thus:

"And that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son's son how I have made sport of the Egyptians and what things I have done among them; that you may know that I am the Lord."

This must qualify as one of the most ridiculous and reprehensible translations in the entire RSV. Yes, it is true that the clause here rendered "I have made sport of them can have the bad meaning of immoral wantonness (See Judges 19:25), but here it pinpoints the sovereign power of the Lord, before which the Egyptian Pharaoh and his servants are mere playthings. It does not, of course, ascribe wantonness or thoughtless cruelty to God."[1] This is another glaring example of the critical scholars' continual efforts to discredit and destroy the Word of God by their false renditions. It is a standard procedure with them, in the case of a clause with multiple meanings, to deliberately choose the worst possible meaning, and we cannot allow for one moment that there is uprightness of intention in such procedures. This clause is just as well, in fact much better translated in the rendition before us, and in practically all of the great versions of history, including KJV, the Douay, and even the Good News Bible. Johnson's comment was that: "God was not amusing himself, but there was divine irony in the fact that the antagonism of Pharaoh was simply leading to the greater manifestation of the glory of Jehovah."[2]

"In the ears of thy son, and thy son's son ..." "Moses was not the only one who was to tell all these wonders ... We ourselves still also exult in God's triumphs in Egypt."[3]; Psalms 78 and Psalms 105 extol those wonders, and they have been celebrated in song and story throughout all time since they occurred.

"How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me ...?" "This question shows that Pharaoh was responsible for hardening his heart,"[4] "We may rest assured that there was always a time when he might have relented; and it was because he hardened his heart at such times, that God is said to harden him."[5]

"Behold, tomorrow will I bring locusts into thy border ..." There is no more dreadful scourge in nature than that of locusts. Repeatedly, during recent years, the National Geographic Magazine has given extensive coverage to this disaster. When climatic and soil conditions are exactly right, there is a relatively common type of grasshopper that multiplies fantastically into millions, or billions, or trillions of locusts. In this explosion, they change color, with red, yellow, and black markings, and increase fantastically in size and appetite! They have been known to obscure the sun in their flight. "In Angola, July 1031, swarms of locusts completely obscured the sun for some hours."

National Geographic Magazines which have carried articles on this plague are to be found in December, 1915, April, 1953, and August, 1969.

Although the Egyptians doubtless knew by hearsay about the devastating nature of a locust plague, their country was relatively free of such visitations.

Just as this mighty locust plague was the harbinger of the ultimate judgment and destruction of Pharaoh, "It is also a type of the plagues which will precede the last judgment."[6] The prophet Joel (Joel 1 and Joel 2) thus interpreted a severe locust plague that struck Judah. Keil's further comment on this, we feel, is true:

"The locust plague forms the groundwork for the description in Revelation 9:3-10, just as Joel discerned it as the day of the Lord, of the Great Day of Judgment, which is advancing step by step in all the great judgments of history, or rather of the conflict between the kingdom of God and the powers of this world, and will be finally accomplished in the last general judgment."[7]

There are historical instances of areas of 1,600 to 1,800 square miles being covered with locusts to a depth of four or five inches.[8]

"And they shall cover the face of the earth.,." The Hebrew here has, "cover the eye of the land."[9] There are two ideas as to what this means. Dobson thought that, as the Egyptians regarded the sun and the moon as the eyes of the earth, "It meant to obscure the light of the sun."[10] Keil was of the opinion that, "It came from the ancient and truly poetic idea that the earth, with its covering of plants, looks up to man ... It was in the swarms that actually hid the ground that the fearful character of the plague consisted."[11] It appears to us that either of these explanations is acceptable, since the plague probably obscured the sun and hid the earth with a thick carpet of locusts also.