Exodus 10:3–6

Exodus 10:3 — "How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?" The opening question is not rhetorical decoration but a precisely aimed theological challenge. The Hebrew verb underlying "humble yourself" (כָּנַע, kānaʿ) carries the sense of bowing down, being subdued, brought low — the same posture demanded of a vassal before a sovereign king. Yahweh here is not merely asking Pharaoh to comply with a request; he is demanding that Pharaoh recognize the proper order of reality: that the God of the Hebrews is the supreme Lord of history, before whom every earthly power must bow. This is the eighth time the confrontation has been renewed, and the cumulative phrase "how long?" (עַד-מָתַי, ʿad-mātay) signals that divine patience, while profound, is not unconditional. Pharaoh's problem is not ignorance — he has witnessed seven plagues — but willful pride. The command "Let my people go, that they may serve me" reappears almost verbatim from prior encounters (cf. Ex 7:16; 8:1; 9:1), forming a liturgical refrain throughout the plague narrative. Israel's liberation is not an end in itself; it is ordered toward worship (ʿābad, which means both "to serve" and "to worship"). Freedom from slavery is given so that a higher servitude — to God — may be embraced.

Exodus 10:4 — "Tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country" The precision of "tomorrow" is characteristic of the plague narratives: God acts within a declared timeframe, giving Pharaoh a final window for repentance. This is an act of mercy embedded within judgment. The locusts are not arbitrary punishment; they are the logical consequence of a land already traumatized by hail (Ex 9:25). What the hail spared, the locusts will consume. The escalating nature of the plagues reveals a divine pedagogy: each judgment is calibrated, with space for conversion at every stage.

Exodus 10:5 — "They shall cover the surface of the earth" The description of locusts obscuring the very ground evokes near-total cosmic reversal. In creation, the earth was made visible, ordered, fruitful (Gen 1:9–12); locusts undo that ordering by covering and consuming. What the hail "left as a remnant" (the Hebrew שְׁאֵרִית, sheʾerît, the same word used for the "remnant" of Israel in prophetic literature) will be annihilated. The irony cuts deep: Egypt's land, once the breadbasket of the ancient world, a source of pride and imperial power, will be stripped bare. Every tree "which grows for you out of the field" — the phrase "for you" underlines that these are Egypt's own productive resources — will be devoured.

Exodus 10:6 — "As neither your fathers nor your fathers' fathers have seen" The appeal to generational memory gives the warning historical gravity. In Israelite and ancient Near Eastern rhetoric, invoking the fathers is to invoke the deepest measure of lived experience. This catastrophe will exceed all that tradition can recall — a way of saying it is sui generis, outside the normal range of earthly calamity, and thus unmistakably divine in origin. Moses then "turns and goes out from Pharaoh" — a gesture of prophetic finality. He does not wait for an answer; the ultimatum stands. This dramatic exit mirrors the prophetic boldness of later figures like Elijah and Jeremiah, who deliver God's word without seeking human validation.

Typological and Spiritual Senses: The Church Fathers read the plagues typologically as figures of spiritual realities. Origen (Homilies on Exodus) sees Pharaoh as the archetype of the soul enslaved to sin, repeatedly offered liberation yet refusing to surrender its pride. The locusts, stripping away all earthly abundance, prefigure the stripping away of all false securities before God's judgment. In the spiritual life, the question "how long will you refuse to humble yourself?" is perennially asked of every soul that clings to self-will. The "remnant" spared from the hail but consumed by locusts also speaks to a spiritual truth: partial repentance, which leaves sin's roots intact, is ultimately insufficient.

Catholic tradition reads this passage within the great drama of salvation history, in which the Exodus serves as the foundational type of redemption. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1334) identifies the Exodus as a prefiguration of Christian liberation — Christ is the new and greater Moses, and Baptism is the new passage through the sea, into freedom for the worship of the true God.

The central theological question of verse 3 — "How long will you refuse to humble yourself?" — resonates deeply with the Catholic doctrine of free will and the mystery of hardness of heart. The Church teaches (CCC §1859–1864) that mortal sin and final impenitence involve a deliberate refusal of God's grace, a turning away that becomes increasingly self-entrenched. Pharaoh's progressive hardening is a chilling illustration of what the tradition calls obduratio — the hardening of the heart through repeated rejection of grace. St. Augustine (City of God, Book I) and St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 79, a. 3) both carefully distinguish between God permitting hardness and God being its cause: God does not harden by positive act, but by withholding the softening grace that pride has forfeited.

The plague of locusts also carries eschatological resonance. The Book of Revelation (9:3–11) draws directly on the locust imagery of Joel and Exodus to describe the spiritual devastation of the last days, when all earthly props are removed and only one's relationship with God remains. Pope Benedict XVI (Verbum Domini, §43) noted that the Old Testament judgments are not merely historical events but "words of God that illuminate human history" and call every generation to conversion.

The phrase "Let my people go, that they may serve me" encapsulates a foundational principle of Catholic social teaching: authentic human freedom is ordered toward God. Freedom is not autonomy from God but the capacity to choose rightly — for God. This is developed in Gaudium et Spes (§17) and Veritatis Splendor (§34–35).

The question God poses to Pharaoh — "How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?" — is one that every Catholic must be willing to hear addressed to themselves. Pride is the root sin, and it manifests not in dramatic defiance but in the quiet, habitual preference of our own will, our own comfort, our own plans over God's. The examination of conscience before Confession is precisely the moment to ask: in what area of my life am I playing Pharaoh? Where have I witnessed God's action — perhaps through suffering, a homily, a spiritual director, a nagging conscience — and still refused to yield?

Pharaoh's failure is also instructive pastorally: he repeatedly negotiates partial concessions (Ex 8:25; 10:11) rather than giving God everything. Catholics can recognize this pattern in themselves — willing to "give up something for Lent" but not willing to surrender the deeper attachment God is asking for. The locusts consuming the remnant left by the hail is a warning that partial surrender leaves us vulnerable. True conversion, as the tradition teaches, demands humility that is total, not merely tactical.