Exodus 10:26, commentary and pictures

Moses rejected Pharaoh's compromise that would let the people go, first the men alone and then the children and wives, while keeping the flocks, herds and cattle in Egypt, and insisted instead that all the livestock must go with Israel with every sheep and every hoof removed from Egypt. The whole herd had to go because Israel needed animals from it to serve and worship the Lord with sacrifices and burnt offerings. Israel could not know beforehand what service would be required, what offerings or other requirements worship would involve, or which particular animals would be needed, until coming to the place of worship that God would choose.

The unyielding demand showed firm courage, strong faith, unshaken confidence and trust in God grown from witnessing God's wonderful works, lifting Moses above fear in the king's presence as God fitted him to stand at the head of Israel's armies and lead them out as a shepherd. The demand followed Pharaoh's pattern of yielding only a little while under grievous affliction and only as compelled by God's wrath, first permitting sacrifice inside Egypt, then permitting the men alone to go, then permitting children and wives to go while still holding the cattle. The bold stand angered Pharaoh's haughty pride and drew his threat to kill God's servants if they appeared before him again, while in blindness he failed to see he was contending not only against Moses and Aaron but against the mighty Jehovah, Maker of heaven and earth, who can save or destroy and would preserve the lives of His chosen servants.

The full demand for nothing to be left behind was opposed to the last by the king and his idolatrous priests, even while the Egyptian people wanted the Hebrews to leave Egypt. The demand stands after Egypt was nearly destroyed by locusts and after the darkness over Egypt, including three days of darkness in which the Egyptians lost light and breathed with difficulty in an oppressive atmosphere while the Hebrews had light and pure air in their dwellings. That darkness displayed Jehovah's supremacy over the Egyptian gods of the sun, moon, light and natural elements and helped secure Israel's deliverance. When Pharaoh still withheld the cattle, Moses answered with warning that the angel of God would slay the firstborn, so rejection of the demand brings one more dreadful plague more severe than any before it, on whose night, terrible to the Egyptians and glorious to God's people, the solemn ordinance of the Passover is instituted.

Pharaoh had to consent to the demand for every head of cattle and every sheep to go, after the prosperity of all Egypt had to be destroyed to force release, when after the death of the firstborn he told Israel to go quickly. The verse belongs to the account of the final demand before the tenth plague, and beyond its setting it leaves the specific statement about taking the cattle to worship God unexplained.