If you refuse, watch out! For tomorrow I will bring a swarm of locusts on your country.
Parallel translations
- WEB Or else, if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country,
- KJV Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast:
- BSB But if you refuse to let My people go, I will bring locusts into your territory tomorrow.
- NKJV Or else, if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory.
- NASB For if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your territory.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God warns that refusal will bring a plague of locusts upon Egypt. The eighth plague is announced in advance.
Overview
The conditional warning again gives Pharaoh genuine opportunity to relent before judgment falls. Locusts were a feared devastation in the ancient world, capable of stripping a land bare. The advance notice authenticates the plague as God's deliberate act, not a chance swarm. The escalating judgments press toward the climactic confrontation over the firstborn.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Rev 9:3Then out of the smoke came locusts on the earth, and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
- Joel 2:25I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the great locust, the grasshopper, and the caterpillar, my great army, which I sent among you.
- Exod 9:5Yahweh appointed a set time, saying, “Tomorrow Yahweh shall do this thing in the land.”
- Exod 11:4–5Moses said, “This is what Yahweh says: ‘About midnight I will go out into the middle of Egypt,
- Exod 9:18Behold, tomorrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as has not been in Egypt since the day it was founded even until now.
- Exod 8:23I will put a division between my people and your people: by tomorrow shall this sign be.”’”
- Joel 1:4–7What the swarming locust has left, the great locust has eaten. What the great locust has left, the grasshopper has eaten. What the grasshopper has left, the caterpillar has eaten.
- Prov 30:27The locusts have no king, yet they advance in ranks.
- Exod 8:10He said, “Tomorrow.” He said, “Be it according to your word, that you may know that there is no one like Yahweh our God.
- Joel 2:2–11A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn spreading on the mountains, a great and strong people; there has never been the like, neither will there be any more after them, even to the years of many generations.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Passover lamb whose blood turns away death, the exodus through the sea, the manna, the rock, and the tabernacle where God dwells with his people all foreshadow Jesus — our Passover, our redemption, the bread from heaven, and God-with-us in the flesh.
How Exodus 10:4 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.