Hail & Locusts - Exodus 9:13 - 10:20

9:13-35 - The seventh plague is the first of the last group of three and brings us back to Pharaoh being warned again. M&A go and tell him that God says, “Let my people go, that they may serve me,” and if not then the next day “I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail,” and even warns them to gather in their cattle and servants from the field for safety. Those who heeded the warning of God saved their cattle and their servants, but those who didn’t “left his servants and his cattle in the field,” and presumably they died. I don’t read here specifically if Pharaoh listened or not, and honestly I can’t even guess.

Moses “stretched forth his rod toward heaven,” and the thunder and hail that followed destroyed all the crops in the fields, any livestock or servants that were left in the field, and pretty much devastated the Egyptian crop yield for that season. While later verses point out that there would have been other crops grown at other times of the year so the Egyptian people woudn’t have starved to death, the loss of these animals, crops, and people would have caused immense suffering to the average people. Again, this only affected the Egyptians, because “in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were was there no hail.”

Interestingly, this was the point where Pharaoh started taking this Hebrew God seriously because he was the one who called M&A back and even apologized, acknowledging, “I have sinned this time: the Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.” He asks Moses to ask God to stop the hail and Moses agrees to do it right away, but calls Pharaoh out on his lies, saying, “I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord God.” And sure enough, when Moses goes out to stop the hail, Pharaoh “hardened his heart” and would not let the people go.

10:1-20 - God commands M&A to go back to Pharaoh and warn of the eighth plague that will visit them if he doesn’t let the Hebrew people go, which is locusts. If we remember Mormon history, there was an infestation of grasshoppers, which are locusts, which ate up all the crops of the early pioneers and caused huge problems for the people, and the purpose of these locusts here is the same thing, “and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you our of the field.” They are going to eat all the food that’s left after the hail storm.

Pharaoh apologized to get the last plague stopped but the servants and even government advisors are tired of all this mess at this point saying, “how long shall this man be a snare unto us? Let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God: knowest thou not that Egypt is destroyed?” So the servants are recommending that Pharaoh let the men go into the desert but when Pharaoh suggests that to M&A they decline saying, “We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go.” They are taking everybody and they aren’t coming back, this is when Pharaoh’s worst fears are realized, his free slave labor is over.

Pharaoh declines that offer so Moses stretched out his hand and brought up the locusts in “an east wind” and they ate EVERYTHING, herbs, fruit, “and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.” Pharaoh again panics and apologizes and begs them to “entreat the Lord your God that he may take away from me this death only,” and he did, “and the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red sea; there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt.”

After all this groveling, you’d think that Pharaoh would finally recognize that he was out matched, but the audacity of this man is baffling to me and he again hardened his heart “so that he would not let the children of Israel go.”