10:12-20 God bids Moses stretch out his hand; locusts came at the call. An army might more easily have been resisted than this host of insects. Who then is able to stand before the great God? They covered the face of the earth, and ate up the fruit of it. Herbs grow for the service of man; yet when God pleases, insects shall plunder him, and eat the bread out of his mouth. Let our labour be, not for the habitation and meat thus exposed, but for those which endure to eternal life. Pharaoh employs Moses and Aaron to pray for him. There are those, who, in distress, seek the help of other people's prayers, but have no mind to pray for themselves. They show thereby that they have no true love to God, nor any delight in communion with him. Pharaoh desires only that this death might be taken away, not this sin. He wishes to get rid of the plague of locusts, not the plague of a hard heart, which was more dangerous. An east wind brought the locusts, a west wind carries them off. Whatever point the wind is in, it is fulfilling God's word, and turns by his counsel. The wind bloweth where it listeth, as to us; but not so as it respects God. It was also an argument for their repentance; for by this it appeared that God is ready to forgive, and swift to show mercy. If he does this upon the outward tokens of humiliation, what will he do if we are sincere! Oh that this goodness of God might lead us to repentance! Pharaoh returned to his resolution again, not to let the people go. Those who have often baffled their convictions, are justly given up to the lusts of their hearts.Evil is before you - i. e. "your intentions are evil." Great as the possible infliction might be, Pharaoh held it to be a less evil than the loss of so large a population. 11. they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence—In the East, when a person of authority and rank feels annoyed by a petition which he is unwilling to grant, he makes a signal to his attendants, who rush forward and, seizing the obnoxious suppliant by the neck, drag him out of the chamber with violent haste. Of such a character was the impassioned scene in the court of Egypt when the king had wrought himself into such a fit of uncontrollable fury as to treat ignominiously the two venerable representatives of the Hebrew people. This is no unusual plague in Africa and Arabia, where, when the harvest is ripe, they frequently come in vast numbers, and upon all their corn, and what they do not eat they infect with their touch, and the moisture coming from them, and afterwards dying in great numbers, they poison the air, and cause a pestilence. So that it is no wonder that Pharaoh and his servants were so concerned for this plague, so well known to them, especially considering that this was like to be far worse than all of the same kind which they had either seen or heard of.

And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand over the land of Egypt,.... First one way, and then another, towards every quarter, and every part of the land, to signify that the following plague would come upon the whole land:

for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of Egypt; the stretching out of his hand was to be the signal to them to come up and spread themselves over the land, which was brought about by the mighty power of God; for otherwise there was no such virtue in the hand or rod of Moses, to have produced so strange an event:

and eat every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath left; the wheat and the rye, or rice, the grass, herbs, and plants, it had beat down, but not utterly destroyed, as well as some boughs and branches of trees which were left unbroken by it.

And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of Egypt, and eat every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath left.