What Does Exodus 10:4 Mean?
But if you refuse to let my people go, look, tomorrow I will bring the locusts into your border.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast:THE KEY
The Hebrew makes “let my people go” a command to send them outward, and the warning answers that blocked movement with a swarm crossing inward.
THE MEANING
You hear the demand for release and the threat together: if the people remain held, locusts will enter the refusing ruler’s territory tomorrow. The verse makes refusal unable to keep the threatened force outside the border.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that refusal keeps its consequences outside your boundary: the locusts are named as entering the very coast the ruler controls.
THE ROOT
לְשַׁלֵּחַ
ləshalleaḥ
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send forth, send away, or release.
“let my people go” in this verse is ləshalleaḥ. Here shalach is the verb for sending away or releasing; the English phrase “let … go” carries that outward motion. The warning sets the movement in reverse: the people are to be sent out, while locusts enter the ruler’s border.
ALSO GROWS
shilleaḥ: Sent away; released.
שִׁלֵּחַ
This form makes the command concrete: the people are to be sent out from the ruler’s hold.
shaliaḥ: Emissary; one who is sent.
שָׁלִיחַ
The branch carries the root’s sense of movement away from the sender, the motion demanded here for the people.
Shiloach: Shiloah; “Sent.”
שִׁלֹחַ
The name of the waters of Shiloah shares this root, and John 9:7 glosses Siloam as “Sent,” giving the idea of sending a tangible form.
THE PATTERN
Release is an outward movement that frees people from the hold that confines them.
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?“Let the oppressed go free” uses the same root, shalach, as “let my people go.” Here release is pictured as sending the oppressed out from restraint, making the command in Exodus a concrete movement out of the ruler’s grasp.
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