What Does Exodus 10:4 Mean in the King James?
Else, if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast:
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
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 Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,THE THREAD
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break 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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