The plague of locusts brings to view a new group of elements. Egypt had known something about locusts before: so when this scourge was announced, Pharaoh’s servants beg him to yield the contest. “How long shall this man” [Moses] “be a snare unto us? Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God. Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed”? (10: 7).――――Pharaoh yields to their entreaty only so far as to send for Moses and Aaron, and again try his hand upon bantering with them and with God over the conditions. “Go serve the Lord, said he; but _who are they that shall go_”? Moses answers, Every thing must go; we with our young and with our old; with sons and with daughters; with flocks and with herds――all, absolutely _all_ must go.――――No indeed, replies Pharaoh――with what we must take as his royal oath――with the most fearful threat he could make and the most solemn asseveration――he says, “_Not so_; go _ye that are men_ and serve the Lord, for that ye did desire.” That was all ye asked at first: it is the utmost I shall give! “And they were driven out of his presence.” Pharaoh is thoroughly mad! This allowing himself to banter them as to the terms of the arrangement helped him to a stronger feeling of his own importance. He seemed to himself to be yet more a king on his throne, and why should not he dictate the conditions?――――Soon the plague comes, and for the moment it quite changes the face of affairs. “Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste, and said” [again]――“I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. Now, therefore, forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat the Lord your God that he may take away from me this death only.” Apparently he remembers that once before he confessed, and more than once has begged their prayers, and more than once has promised to let the people go. So he labors to give a little more emphasis to his beseechings this time by confessing his sin against Moses, and especially by the limitation――“_for this once_”――once more _do_ hear me――this time only. But he has been through this very process once before; most of its points, many times before; and it is much more easy for him to turn back upon every promise and break every most solemn vow than it ever has been before. It is safe to predict that any sinner who has broken so many solemn vows of amendment will never do any thing better than break vows when God’s mercy lifts off the plague. So Pharaoh’s heart is hardened yet again. The statement is――“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”――yet the way he did it, here as before (9: 34), was by removing the plague; by hearing his prayer for relief and apparently trusting his sacred promise to let the people go. This was the way and these the agencies by which the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.