And Pharaoh's servants said unto him, How long shall this man be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Pharaoh's servants said. Many of his courtiers must have suffered serious losses from the late visitations, and the prospect of such a calamity as that which was threatened, and the magnitude of which former experience enabled them to realize, led them to make a strong remonstrance with the king. Finding himself not seconded by his counselors in his continued resistance, he recalled Moses and Aaron, and having expressed his consent to their departure, inquired 'who were to go.' The prompt and decisive reply, 'all:' neither man nor beast shall remain raised a storm of indignant fury in the breast of the proud king: he would permit the grown up men to go away. But no other terms would be listened to.
Verse 11. They were driven out ... The ungovernable rage of Pharaoh drove him in this reply to assume a contemptuous tone, not only toward Moses and Aaron, but toward the Lord. He declared that he penetrated their secret, and, being convinced that their real motive was rebellion, now broke off all negotiations with them. In the East, when a person of authority and rank feels annoyed by a petition which he is unwilling to grant, he makes a signal to his attendants, who rush forward, and, seizing the obnoxious suppliant by the neck, drag him out of the chamber with violent haste. Of such a character was the impassioned scene in the court of Egypt when the king had worked himself up into such a fit of uncontrolable fury as to treat ignominiously the two venerable representatives of the Hebrew people.