“One more blow.” The word is nega — a strike or a plague-touch, and the singular is deliberate: nine have been signs and arguments; the tenth is the blow that ends the matter. And the sending will not be grudging: “when he sends you away, it will be COMPLETE — he will DRIVE you out.” The king who would not release them will expel them.

⚠ Then the most-argued sentence in the chapter: let every man and woman ASK of their neighbors articles of silver and gold. The Hebrew verb is sha’al, to ASK or request. But the KJV rendered it “borrow” — and for three centuries that single word made the exodus look like a confidence trick, Israel walking off with goods it had promised to return. The verb does not say that. Modern versions have corrected it: the ESV, NIV and NWT all read “ask.” ⚠ This is worth knowing as a case study: an old objection to the Bible’s morality here rests on a translator’s choice, not on the text.

What the asking IS, though, is a fair question, and the readings differ. • Back wages. Israel has built store-cities for generations without pay, and Deuteronomy will later command that a freed slave never be sent away empty-handed but “furnished liberally” (15:13-14) — the law’s own principle, applied to Israel first. • The spoil of a defeated power, the ordinary aftermath of a war Egypt has lost. • The promise kept. Jehovah told Abraham his offspring would be afflicted, and then “afterward they shall come out with great possessions” (Genesis 15:14); he told Moses the same at the burning bush (3:21-22). The library lays the readings out; they are not exclusive.

⚠ And note what this silver and gold becomes. It is melted twice: once into the golden calf at the mountain (32:2-4), and once into the tabernacle (35:22). The same metal funds the worst apostasy and the dwelling place of God.

“The man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt” is a startling aside — the fugitive shepherd of chapter 2 is now a figure of weight in Pharaoh’s own court, in the eyes of the officials who told their king Egypt was destroyed.

⚠ This is the sentence announced seven chapters ago. At the very beginning Jehovah told Moses what to say: “Israel is my son, my FIRSTBORN… let my son go that he may serve me. But if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn” (4:22-23). Everything since has been the delay before that word is carried out. The contest was never mainly about labor; from the start it was a contest over SONS, and it is settled at midnight.

“From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the slave girl behind the millstones.” The merism names the top and bottom of Egyptian society and means everyone in between. No rank exempts and no obscurity hides. And the first name on the list is the heir to a throne held by a man worshiped as divine — the dynasty struck at its succession. KJV “behind the mill”; the ESV “behind the handmill,” the lowest work in the house.

⚠ «A great OUTCRY in all the land of Egypt.» The word is tze’akah — and it is the word this book opened with. “The sons of Israel groaned because of the bondage and CRIED OUT, and their OUTCRY went up to God” (2:23); “I have heard their OUTCRY” (3:7, 3:9). The cry that started the story is about to be heard in the other house. Exodus does not comment on the symmetry; it simply uses the same word.

“Not a dog shall sharpen its tongue.” An idiom for absolute stillness — not so much as a growl. Set beside the great outcry of the previous verse it is the whole distinction in two sounds: wailing on one side of the line, silence so complete that the dogs do not stir on the other. KJV “shall not a dog move his tongue”; the ESV “not a dog shall growl.” The verb for the dividing is hiflah, the same one used at the swarms (8:18) and the livestock (9:4) — the line drawn again, for the last time before the blood.

⚠ «All these your servants shall come down to me and BOW DOWN to me.» Moses is speaking to Pharaoh but points past him to the officials in the room — the men who already asked “do you not yet know that Egypt is destroyed?” (10:7). They will prostrate themselves to a Hebrew and beg him to leave. Then Moses walks out “in BURNING ANGER” (chori-af, literally the burning of the nose) — the only time in the plague cycle the narrator reports Moses angry. ⚠ Note that this exit reads like the end of the audience of chapter 10, which closed with Pharaoh’s “you shall die” and Moses’ “I will not see your face again”; on that reading these verses are the last thing Moses says in that room, and the two men indeed never meet again.

The last two verses are a summary, not a scene — the narrator stepping back to close the account before the Passover chapter begins. They restate the two things the cycle has held together without reconciling: Pharaoh would not listen, “SO THAT my wonders may be multiplied,” and Jehovah made strong his heart. The refusal is the man’s and it serves a purpose not his own.

“Wonders” is mofet — the word for a sign meant to be read, first used of the staff before Pharaoh (7:9). The plagues have been arguments from the beginning, and the ledger closes by calling them that.

And nothing has changed at the palace. Ten chapters, nine plagues, two confessions and four bargains later, the last clause is the same clause as the first: “he did not send the sons of Israel out of his land.” The next chapter does not open with another argument. It opens with a calendar, a lamb, and a door.