Exodus 10:1, commentary and pictures

The verse records God sending Moses back in to Pharaoh after the hardening of the heart of Pharaoh and his servants, having suffered Pharaoh to resist Moses and borne with continual rebellion and stubbornness. The signs and wonders Moses carried would harden Pharaoh because Pharaoh would not receive them, so God would multiply His signs. Every rejected punishment would bring the next chastisement closer and more severe until his proud heart was humbled to acknowledge the Maker of heaven and earth as the living and all-powerful God. The purpose was to show God's great signs, wonders, power, authority and supremacy before Pharaoh and before Israel.

In that deliverance the feeble wisdom of Egypt's mighty men was exhibited and the power of its gods was arrayed in opposition to the God of heaven. The plagues exposed the impotence of Egypt's idols and turned objects of worship into sources of distress. By Moses it was shown that the Maker of heaven and earth is above all gods, that His strength is mightier than the strongest, and that only the Lord could protect and deliver Israel with a high hand and outstretched arm.

For Israel the display was to confirm faith in the Lord as the only true and living God, giving clearer and more exalted views of Him, causing all Israel to fear Him, and making them willing and anxious to leave Egypt and choose the service of the true and merciful God. Without these manifestations many would have been satisfied to remain in Egypt rather than journey through the wilderness. The signs gave unmistakable evidence of the difference God placed between the Egyptians and His people, placing Israel under His protection and showing that though Israel had been bound down by hard labor and despised, He had chosen them as His peculiar people and would work wonderfully for their deliverance.

The works would also cause all nations to know that He had chosen Israel and that He rules the whole earth. What God wrought in Egypt was to be told in the ears of sons and sons' sons, of children and grandchildren, so that they would know that He is the Lord. The verse warns against the stubbornness of refusing to be admonished by heaven's judgments and pressing on in a wrong course instead of closely searching the heart and humbling before God. God bears long with human perversity by sending decided reproofs and clear light, but those who disregard such lessons and persist in following their own will and impulses reveal Pharaoh's stubbornness and, unless they repent, the Lord will repeat His judgments upon them as He repeated them to the king of Egypt and will not pardon persistent determination to be like the people of the world.