Exodus 10:12

10:12 The Lord said to Moses, “Extend your hand over the land of Egypt for ¹  the locusts, that they may come up over the land of Egypt and eat everything that grows ²  in the ground, everything that the hail has left.”

Exodus 10:15

10:15 They covered ³  the surface ⁴  of all the ground, so that the ground became dark with them, ⁵  and they ate all the vegetation of the ground and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Nothing green remained on the trees or on anything that grew in the fields throughout the whole land of Egypt.

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¹ tn The preposition בְּ (bet) is unexpected here. BDB 91 s.v. (the note at the end of the entry) says that in this case it can only be read as “with the locusts,” meaning that the locusts were thought to be implicit in Moses’ lifting up of his hand. However, BDB prefers to change the preposition to לְ (lamed).

² tn The noun עֵשֶּׂב (’esev) normally would indicate cultivated grains, but in this context seems to indicate plants in general.

³ tn Heb “and they covered.”

⁴ tn Heb “eye,” an unusual expression (see v. 5; Num 22:5, 11).

⁵ tn The verb is וַתֶּחְשַׁךְ (vattekhshakh, “and it became dark”). The idea is that the ground had the color of the swarms of locusts that covered it.