Глава 10

1–15. The eighth plague is the locust. 16–20. Pharaoh's repentance and bitterness. 21–23. The ninth plague is darkness. 24–29. Pharaoh's consent to the removal of the Jews on the condition that the livestock be left in Egypt. Ex.10:1. And the Lord said to Moses, Go in to Pharaoh, for I have made his heart heavy and the heart of his servants heavy, to show these signs of Mine among them, Moses should not be embarrassed by the manifestations of Pharaoh's stubbornness, leading to new plagues; the hardening of his heart is the work of God, completely consistent with the predictions (Ex. 7:3-5). Exodus 10:2. and that you may tell your son and your son's son what I did in Egypt, and my signs that I showed in it, and that you may know that I am the Lord. Inevitable in view of the mood of Pharaoh, the coming disasters can bring great benefit to both the modern generation and its descendants, once the latter are familiar with them (Ps. 43:2, 70:17–18, 77:4, 104:1). On the basis of them, everyone will understand the omnipotence of Jehovah and His faithfulness to His promises. Exodus 10:3. Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: How long will you not humble yourself before Me?” Let My people go, that they may serve Me; Exodus 10:4. and if you do not let My people go, then behold, tomorrow [at this very time] I will bring locusts over [all] your region: Exodus 10:5. it will cover the face of the earth so that it will be impossible to see the earth, and it will eat up from you [everything] left [on the earth] that survived the hail; He will also eat all the trees growing in your field, Exodus 10:6. and he will fill your houses, and the houses of all your servants, and [all] the houses of all the Egyptians, such as your fathers have not seen, nor the fathers of your fathers, since the day they lived on the earth, even to this day. [Moses] turned and left Pharaoh. Pharaoh's resistance cannot continue indefinitely, for who can resist the will of God (Rom. 9:19)? It will only cause a new measure of punishment on the part of the almighty Lord - an invasion of wandering (arbe) locusts in unprecedented proportions (Exodus 10:6, Joel 2:3-4). It will complete the disaster caused by the hail. Exodus 10:7. Тогда рабы фараоновы сказали ему: долго ли он будет мучить нас? let these people go, let them serve the Lord their God; Do you not yet see that Egypt is perishing? Due to the failure of Moses' words, the courtiers try to influence Pharaoh. According to them, Egypt will perish from the future execution. And indeed, after the destruction of the first part of the harvest by hail (Exodus 9:21), the Egyptians could hope to save the second (Exodus 9:32), but now, by the Lord’s determination, this last one must also perish (Exodus 10:5), as a result of which the country faces a terrible famine. To save himself from him, the courtiers offer the pharaoh to release “these people”, i.e. all the people Exodus 10:8. And they brought Moses and Aaron back to Pharaoh, and [Pharaoh] said to them: Go, serve the Lord your God; кто же и кто пойдет? While generally agreeing with the proposal of his nobles, the pharaoh cannot allow the removal of the entire people. This is what his question indicates: “Who and who will go?” Exodus 10:9. And Moses said, Let us go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, with our sheep and with our oxen, for we have a feast of the Lord [our God]. All people, without exception, must take part in the holiday in honor of the Almighty; livestock is needed for sacrifices (Ex. 10:26). In addition, with the departure of the people, there is no one to leave the herds to; they must go too. Exodus 10:10. [Pharaoh] said to them: So be it, the Lord is with you! I’m ready to let you go: but why with children? you see, you have a bad intention! Exodus 10:11. no: go alone men and serve the Lord, as you asked. And they drove them out from Pharaoh. Seeing a bad intention in Moses’ answer, i.e. desire to completely leave Egypt, Pharaoh turns to him with an ironic remark: “The Lord be with you as I am... let you and your children go.” If God can help you in your intention to leave all, just as I can let you go with your children, old people and daughters, then, of course, you will leave. But I cannot let you all go, and your Almighty cannot help you with this; So go, as I permit, go only men - “gattebarim” - men as opposed to women and children, men excluding women and children (Ex. 12:37). By releasing only the men and keeping the children, the pharaoh apparently wants the latter to remain as a guarantee of the return of their fathers. Exodus 10:12. Then the Lord said to Moses: Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt, and let the locusts attack the land of Egypt and eat all the grass of the earth [and all the fruit of the trees], everything that was left from the hail. Exodus 10:13. And Moses stretched out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind over the land, which continued all that day and all night. Morning came and the east wind brought down the locusts. The expulsion of Moses and Aaron, as an expression of contempt for them, the messengers of God, and together for Himself, caused a new act of divine judgment over Egypt - the appearance of locusts caused by the eastern wind (ruach kadim), according to which the wind that carried them into the Red Sea is called raised from the opposite side, western ("ruach yam", Ex. 10:19)). Since, according to travelers, locusts are brought to Egypt by the southwest wind from the Libyan Desert, in the remark of the Hebrew text about the east wind they see a direct error resulting from the unfamiliarity of the author of the book. Exodus with the nature of Egypt. This view was expressed, by the way, by LXX translators, who put in their text: “ὁ ἄνεμος ὁ νότος” - south wind. But reading the original text does not contradict the factual data. According to the testimony of some, for example, Denon, Ebers and others, locusts are carried into Egypt and from the east. Baumgarten asserts the same thing, seeing in the relatively unusual appearance of locusts from the east in Egypt a manifestation of the omnipotence of Jehovah, extending beyond the borders of Egypt, the omnipotence of the Omnipresent. Exodus 10:14. And the locusts fell upon all the land of Egypt and lay throughout the whole land of Egypt in great multitudes: there had never been such locusts before, and there will never be such after this; Exodus 10:15. it covered the face of the whole earth, so that the earth was not visible, and it ate up all the grass of the earth and all the fruit of the trees that had survived the hail, and there was no greenery left on the trees or on the grass of the field in all the land of Egypt. The appearance of locusts in enormous numbers is quite consistent with other biblical evidence (Jer. 46:23, Nahum. 3:15), and the remark about their greed and the darkness caused by their appearance is confirmed by Deut. 28:38, Isa. 33:4, Joel. 2:2, 10. Exodus 10:16. Pharaoh hastily called Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you; Exodus 10:17. Now forgive my sin once again and pray to the Lord your God that He will only turn this death away from me. Pharaoh’s request to pray reflects both the consciousness of personal powerlessness and the powerlessness of their gods, who were unable to protect the gardens and fields they, according to the Egyptians, protected from locusts. Exodus 10:18. [Moses] left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. Exodus 10:19. And the Lord raised up a very strong wind from the west, and it carried the locusts and threw them into the Red Sea: there was not a single locust left in all the land of Egypt. Exodus 10:20. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go. With the passing of the disaster, the feeling of humility and the consciousness of his guilt disappears in Pharaoh’s soul (Ex. 10:17). Exodus 10:21. And the Lord said to Moses: Stretch out your hand to heaven, and there will be darkness in the land of Egypt, tangible darkness. Exodus 10:22. Moses stretched out his hand to heaven, and there was thick darkness throughout all the land of Egypt for three days; Exodus 10:23. they did not see each other, and no one rose from his place for three days; And all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. The description of the ninth plague notes, first of all, the symbolic action accompanying it - Moses raising his hands to the sky, which caused the onset of darkness; then the density of darkness (tangible darkness), reaching the point that no one could do anything, the three-day duration of the execution and, finally, the miraculous liberation of the land of Goshen from it. According to the first and last sign, the new execution is a supernatural phenomenon. But since one of its elements, thick darkness, is observed during the southwest wind khamsin, the entire ninth plague is identified with a phenomenon common to Egypt. The beginning of this understanding was laid by the text of the LXX, which, when describing the ninth plague, speaks of “darkness, gloom and storm” - the latter is a constant companion of the khamsin, and the author of the book of the Wisdom of Solomon (Wisdom 17). But while the ninth plague is similar to the khamsin, there is, however, a significant difference between them. The essence is first placed in darkness; There is no mention of suffocating air and hot sand - the main elements of khamsin in the Bible. The LXX text speaks about the storm, but the Vulgate, Targum Onkelos, and the Syriac, Arabic and Samaritan translations coincide with the Masoretic reading. Then although the khamsin blows for two, three, four days, it does not blow continuously. At most it lasts 12 hours, since it does not blow at night. Therefore, with khamsin there cannot be continuous three-day darkness. The three-day darkness that enveloped Egypt served as obvious proof of the powerlessness of the supreme god Ra, the sun god, who had now submitted to the will of the Almighty and was unable to give his admirers even a particle of light. Exodus 10:24. Pharaoh called Moses [and Aaron] and said: Go, serve the Lord [your God], only let your flocks and herds remain, and let your children go with you. If leaving Egypt and traveling through the desert is impossible without livestock, then leaving it in the land of Goshen serves as a reliable guarantee of the Jews returning to their place of residence. Previously, such a pledge was the abandonment of children (Exodus 10:10–11). Exodus 10:25. But Moses said: [no,] give also into our hands sacrifices and burnt offerings to offer to the Lord our God; Exodus 10:26. let our herds go with us, not a hoof will remain; for we will take some of them as a sacrifice to the Lord our God; but until we get there, we do not know what to sacrifice to the Lord [our God]. You, as Moses says to Pharaoh, demand that we leave our livestock. In fact, you not only cannot insist on this, but, as someone who has recognized his sinfulness (Ex. 10:16), you would be obliged to give animals for sacrifice to the Almighty. This, of course, you will not do; in this case, only our herds will go with us. And since it is now unknown which animals and how many of them will be sacrificed, it is necessary to go with all the herds: “not a hoof will remain.” Exodus 10:27. And the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not want to let them go. Exodus 10:28. And Pharaoh said to him: Get away from me; Beware, do not appear before my face again; on the day you see my face you will die. The special force of Pharaoh's bitterness was reflected in the threat to kill Moses. Exodus 10:29. And Moses said: As thou hast said, so it shall be; I will never see your face again. “I will see your face no more” seems to contradict the testimony of Exodus 12:31 and Exodus 11:4–8. But as for the first place, it does not yet say with certainty that Moses saw the face of Pharaoh this time. He was called to the king at night, after the death of his firstborn, i.e. at such a time when the father, as a sign of sadness for his dead son, had, according to the custom of the ancients, to cover his face (2 Sam. 19:4). According to others, the expression: “I will not see your face again” means I will not come unless circumstances change, I will not come of my own free will and desire. The speech of Exodus 11:4–8 is a direct continuation of the words of Exodus 10:29, pronounced by Moses before leaving the royal palace. A direct indication of this is in the words of Exodus 11:8: “[Moses] went out from Pharaoh in anger.” The irritation of the messenger of God is quite understandable in view of the stubbornness shown by Pharaoh (Exodus 10:27) and the promise to kill him (Exodus 10:28) and completely inexplicable given the assumption that the speech of Exodus 11:4–8 was delivered at a new appearance; There is no sign that Pharaoh did or said anything that could anger Moses. You might be interested in: