And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.
The Lord brought an east wind - the rod of Moses was again raised, and the locusts came. They are natives of the desert, and are commonly brought into Egypt, where they are not an unfrequent scourge, from Libya or Ethiopia, by a south or southwest wind [Septuagint, Anemos Notos]. But qaadiym (H6921), is commonly used in Scripture (Job 27:21; Isaiah 27:8; Jeremiah 18:17; Ezek. 29:26) to denote the East Wind, now called in Lower Egypt a Shurkiyeh wind; and hence, this invasion of locusts must have come from Arabia, the continued prevalence of so violent a gale for the whole of the previous day and night indicating that they came from a distant region. They sometimes come in sun-obscuring clouds, destroying in a few days every green blade in the track they traverse. Man, with all his contrivances, can do nothing to protect himself from the overwhelming invasion. Egypt has often suffered from locusts. But the one that followed the wave of the miraculous rod was altogether unexampled. Pharaoh, fearing irretrievable ruin to his country, sent in haste for Moses, and, confessing his sin, implored the intercession of the leader, who entreated the Lord; and a "mighty strong west wind took away the locusts." Assuming, as we have done, the scene to be laid [en pedioo Taneoos] in "the field of Zoan," lying close to the Tanitic branch of the Nile, a west wind-literally, a wind from the sea (namely, the Mediterranean) - would drive the locusts in the direction of the Red Sea.