And Pharaoh sent, and called for Moses and Aaron, and said unto them, I have sinned this time: the LORD is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.
Pharaoh ... I have sinned. This awful display of divine displeasure did seriously impress the mind of Pharaoh, and, under the weight of his convictions, he humbled himself to confess he had done wrong in opposing the divine will. At the same time he called for Moses to intercede for a cessation of the calamity.
Verse 30. As for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord God. Pharaoh and his courtiers already acknowledged Yahweh as the God of the Hebrews; but the grand truth which the remarkable judgments brought upon Egypt were designed to teach was, that Yahweh was 'Elohiym (H430) - the Lord was the true and only God. A full and abiding conviction of this truth had been so imperfectly attained, that in every instance, as soon as the cause of present alarm was removed, they returned to the old distinction between Yahweh and God, and clung to the hope that they would find in their tutelary divinities a protection from the Deity of the Hebrews (Hengstenberg, 'Christol.;' Macdonald 'Pent.,' 1:, p. 181.