Exodus 10:3-6 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? (The Lord is about to punish Pharaoh and Egypt with the eighth plague as He confronts Pharaoh with the truth of the man's lack of submission. Pharaoh is a picture of our arrogance as even believers still discover places in our lives where we fail to humble ourselves before the Lord, where we fail to obey His Word, and, by so doing, fail to worship Him in the fullness and truth that He requires.) Let My people go, so that they may worship Me. (Here is the Lord's pronouncement to us, first, that we are His people, that we do not belong to the world or its powers, but that we belong to Him and to Him only. Second, that He calls us, as His people, to worship Him and to worship Him, not in our own ways, or the way we design, but in the fullness of the ways He requires.) If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. (When our rebellion continues, the Lord's recourse is to allow us to experience the breadth of our disobedience. Pharaoh is also a picture of the effect that one person's actions has on others. The results of our sin do not affect us only, but also are destructive to those around us.) They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields. They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians —something neither your parents nor your ancestors have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now.'" (The word locust occurs several times in the Bible. Here its meaning is a reference to multitudinous, that so many insects will invade that they will fill every corner of their lives and will cause complete devastation of any foliage or crops that remained from the earlier hailstorm. This swarm of insects is thought generally, though known, not to be very common in Egypt, but to be an invasion from outside Egypt's borders. Again, when our rebellion continues, we open ourselves to outside influences from the world that bring complete destruction and that fill our lives with emptiness.)
