8. So Moses and Aaron were brought to Pharaoh again. “Go, serve Adonai your God,” he said. “But who will be going?”
9. Moses answered, “We will go with our young and our elderly, our sons and our daughters. We will go with our flocks and our herds—for we must have Adonai’s feast for Him.”
10. But he said to them, “So may Adonai be with you, if I ever do let you go, with your little ones. See clearly now! Evil is in your face.
11. Not so! Go now—the men—and serve Adonai! For that’s what you were seeking.” Then they were driven out from Pharaoh’s presence.
12. Then Adonai said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, so they may come up onto Egypt and eat every plant in the land—everything the hail has left.”
13. So Moses stretched out his staff over the land of Egypt, and Adonai brought an east wind over the land all that day and all night. When it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.
14. The locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and rested on the entire territory of Egypt. So dense—there was nothing like it before them, nor will there ever be again.
15. For they covered the face of the whole earth so that the land was darkened, and they ate every plant in the land and all the fruit from the trees that the hail had left. No green thing remained, not a tree or a plant of the field throughout all the land of Egypt.
16. Then Pharaoh quickly called for Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against Adonai your God and against you.
17. Now forgive my sin, only this once, please! So pray to Adonai your God—just so He would take this death away from me!”
18. So he went out from Pharaoh and prayed to Adonai.
19. Then Adonai turned the wind from the west, very strong, and it carried off the locusts and drove them into the Sea of Reeds. Not one locust remained in all the territory of Egypt.
20. But Adonai hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let Bnei-Yisrael go.
21. Then Adonai said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, and there will be darkness over the land of Egypt—a darkness that may be felt.”
22. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.
23. They could not see one another, nor could anyone rise from his place for three days. Yet all Bnei-Yisrael had light within their dwellings.