Exodus 10:12-20 - The east wind had brought the locusts

10:12,13

The scene follows the usual pattern. Moses now stretches his hand with the staff over the land and the plague of locusts appears. The locusts eat everything that is left. Locust swarms were not unknown, but this swarm was much worse than anything that had been experienced before. Note that it says “the east wind had brought the locusts”. Sometimes signs involve natural events. We may ask did God not cause the wind to blow? The answer is of course yes. However, our Western mind sets tend to separate everything out into either “natural” or “miraculous”. This is not a Biblical approach. The Bible certainly sees miracles, but in the Biblical mindset everything is caused by God.

10:14-20

The locusts came in their infinite numbers and covered the land. There were so many of them that the darkness also covered the land. And they stripped all the vegetation bare. Pharaoh then enters his faux repentance routine. He “confesses” his sins and pleads with Moses to pray to God. Moses does pray to the Lord, the plague stops and Pharaoh immediately hardens his heart again. This pattern we see in Pharaoh is a very human pattern, repeated in many lives, though not on such a grand scale.