For now will I stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence,.... Which yet we never find was done; for though this by many is referred to the slaying of the firstborn, yet it is not certain that this was done by the pestilence: besides, Pharaoh was not then smitten, nor his people, only their firstborn; wherefore these words are to be rendered, not in the future, but in the imperfect or preterpluperfect tense, thus; "for when now I stretched out my hand, or if now I had stretched out my hand to smite thee and thy people with pestilence" a; that is, at the time when he smote the cattle with the murrain or pestilence, when he could as well have smote him and his people with it; there was no want of power in God to do it, and had he done it, it would have been all over with him and them:
and thou shall be cut off from the earth; or "thou hadst been, or wouldest have been cut off from the earth" b must have perished out of it, and been no more in the land of the living.
a כי עתה שלחתי "modo enim cum extendi", Junius Tremellius, Piscator, Drusius, "vel si extendissem", Fagius, Cocceius so Jarchi, Gersom, Targ. Onk. & Jon. b ותכחד "sic fuisses excisus", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Drusius, Cocceius.