Exodus 11:1

One more heavy blow must fall on this hard-hearted king and his land. Nothing less will force him to let go the people the Lord had favoured in His sovereign grace.

In the nine earlier plagues God used things He had created, and punished Egypt through them. But now He, the Creator, was going to step in personally: "About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt."

The Lord gave this warning before Pharaoh made his final threat to Moses. Verses 1-3 form a parenthesis, and verse 1 should read, "And the Lord had said to Moses" (Numerical Bible). These three verses record what the Lord had already said to Moses. He assures Moses that He will bring only one more plague on Egypt. Then Pharaoh would not only let them go, but would drive them out.

God's chastening hand lay heavy on the land. Each new blow bore witness to His irresistible might and majesty. Pharaoh's small hand could not stop those acts of divine power or lessen them in any degree. So he pretends to agree to God's repeated requests to let His people go. But he takes it back whenever relief comes. This shows his heart to be as stubborn and unbending as at the start.

If a man resists the light of divine testimony, he is shut up to judicial blindness and hardness of heart. God leaves him to himself, and then Satan comes in and carries him headlong to ruin. There was plenty of light for Pharaoh. It showed him the extreme folly of trying to hold back those whom God had commanded him to let go. But the real bent of his heart was to act against God, and so God left him to himself.

The Egyptians, at first so eager to keep them, were at last, after their punishment, just as anxious to be rid of them. "When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely." "They were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait."

There was no meeting-place in Egypt for the Lord and His redeemed people. For them, redemption and separation from Egypt were one and the same thing. God had said, "I have come down to deliver them," and nothing short of this could either satisfy or glorify Him. A salvation that would have left them still in Egypt could not possibly be God's salvation.

In truth their wages were long overdue, and had never been paid. It is mere folly to think there was any breach, even the smallest, of what was right and fitting… They were to plunder their oppressors by divine authority. There was no question at all of deceit or dishonesty. The impression of "borrowing" given in the Authorised Version is not needed at all, and the context does not justify it.