Exodus 10:9, commentary and pictures

Moses demanded that all go to hold a feast to the Lord, with the young and with the old, with sons and with daughters, with flocks and with herds, allowing no division of families or goods. Holding that feast required going together as families with possessions, because worship and service could not be separated from the people's families or possessions. Pharaoh had first asked who would go.

He opposed the full divine command by wanting to limit those going to serve to the men alone. Leaving the children behind would have left them as hostages to ensure Israel's return. He contemptuously refused to let the little ones, wives and children go, pretending tender care for their welfare on a dangerous wilderness expedition. He charged that a God who required families to go should not be obeyed, because He would only lead them out to destroy them and leave their bodies in the wilderness.

Pharaoh was very slow to yield to the requirement of the God of Heaven, yielding a little while under grievous affliction and taking back what he had granted when the affliction was removed, yielding no more than he was compelled to do by dreadful visitations of wrath. He offered successive partial permissions, first to sacrifice to God in the land of Egypt, then for the men alone to go, then for children and wives to go also but without the cattle, and Moses rejected these restrictions and held to the full demand. The concession that children and wives might go also came only after Egypt had been nearly destroyed by the plague of the locusts. When Moses held to the full demand, he told the king that the angel of God would slay their firstborn.