Exodus 10:16-20

"Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste; and he said, I have sinned against Jehovah your God, and against you. Now therefore forgive. I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat Jehovah your God, that he may take away from me this death only. And he went out from Pharaoh, and entreated Jehovah. And Jehovah turned an exceeding strong west wind, which took up the locusts, and drove them into the Red Sea; there remained not one locust in all the border of Egypt. But Jehovah hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go."

"In haste ..." Pharaoh had called for Moses and Aaron previously, but never before with the haste indicated here. This could have been due to the fact that Pharaoh considered this plague worse than any that had preceded it, which is another indication of the gradation and progression in the narrative, as further proved by Pharaoh's actually asking to be forgiven (Exodus 10:17).

"This death ..." was a reference by Pharaoh to the locust plague which had brought the death of every green thing in Egypt.

"Therefore forgive ..." Pharaoh was making real progress at this point, but, alas, his stubborn will would remain supreme until, finally, his destruction concluded the contest.

"Exceeding strong west wind ..." This destroyed the locusts by casting them into the Red Sea, the same place where God would dispose of Pharaoh and his army. One of the very greatest wonders in this whole series of visitations against Egypt lies in the common, ordinary instruments by which they came. Wind, frogs, lice, flies, locusts, hail, murrain of cattle, etc., such things were as ordinary as sunrise and frost, or rain and swallows. This amazing fact is the principal basis for the conclusion that the "darkness" about to be inflicted was also a dust storm. Nevertheless, the divine and miraculous nature of these plagues is just as evident as God's use of simple and ordinary things to accomplish them.

"The Red Sea ..." Some scholars make a big thing out of the double meaning of the word "Red," which is also capable of being translated "Reed," the purpose of this emphasis being that of rationalizing the Red-Sea crossing by Israel, making it merely a stroll through marshland covered with reeds! The answer to this not only lies in the Biblical account itself, but appears also in the fact that the meaning of "Red Sea" is absolutely "uncertain."[21] It may not mean "Reed Sea" at all. Scholars do not agree on why this word is featured in the name of that arm of the ocean. It has been supposed that the name came from "large quantities of seaweed in it,"[22] or because of the name of an ancient city at its northwest extremity,[23] or to large quantities of a red coral found along its shores, or from some other source; but the significant truth is that, "No commentator doubts that the Red Sea is here meant."[24] "This is the same sea that we now refer to as the Red Sea."[25] It should be remembered that an entire army was drowned in it.