Exodus 10

Exodus 10:4

Isidore of Seville: In the eighth place locusts are mentioned. Some interpreters think that this sort of plague confutes the inconstancy of the human race, filled with dissent and discord. In another sense, the locusts can be interpreted as representing flittering mobility, like the pleasures of this world in a restless and skittish soul. — QUESTIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT, Exodus 14:14

Exodus 10:7

Origen of Alexandria: And the briefly recorded fact that the heart of Pharaoh experienced a kind of softening when he said, “But you shall not proceed far; you shall go a three days’ journey and leave your wives behind,” and whatever else he spoke when yielding before the marvelous works makes it clear that these signs had some effect even on him, though they did not entirely accomplish their object. Yet not even this would have happened if the idea held by most people about the words, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,” rightly represented what was wrought by him, that is, by God. — ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 3.1.11

Exodus 10:12

Ambrose of Milan: Even the locust, by divine grace, penetrates everywhere, and when it has filled the width of each region with its dense swarm, it first strikes without harm, and feeds on the barren land only after receiving the divine signal of permission. Indeed, just as we read in Exodus, it also acts as the celestial executor of righteous vengeance. — The Six Days of Creation 5.23.82

Exodus 10:22

Isidore of Seville: In the ninth plague, darkness fell. Either it means the blindness of their minds or that they should realize that the workings of the divine economy and of providence are most obscure. For God made darkness his hiding place. But they desired boldly and rashly to investigate it and, drawing one conclusion after another, fell into the dense and palpable darkness of ignorance. — QUESTIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT, Exodus 14:15

Origen of Alexandria: We say, lest perhaps also the “palpable darkness” in Egypt was made in this manner for “three days”, not from an eclipse of the sun, but either because dark clouds ran together into one, or because the air there then became thicker over the Egyptians only — for “to all the sons of Israel”, as the scripture testifies, “there was light in all the places in which they were dwelling”.

For it is also impossible in an eclipse of the sun, which happens from the coming together of the moon to the sun, for darkness to be made for “three” continuous “days”; and it would be believed that there was some other cause of the darkness in Egypt, if the sun had even been named, or as though darkened at that time. But now the scripture of Exodus says nothing else except that “Moses stretched out his hand to heaven, and there was darkness and gloom and the rest over the whole land of Egypt for three days; and no one saw his brother, nor did anyone rise from his bed for three days”.

And just as, when Moses stretched out his hand “to heaven”, “darkness was made over the Egyptians”, who held the servants of God in servitude, an image of the future darkness which was to seize the Egyptians, similarly also when Christ at the sixth hour stretched out his hands on the cross to heaven over the people who had cried out: “take this man from the earth”, and “crucify, crucify him”, darkness was made, and they were deprived of all light. Likewise under Moses “there was darkness and gloom over the whole land of Egypt for three days; and no one saw his brother, nor did anyone rise from his bed for three days; but to all the sons of Israel there was light in all the places in which they were dwelling”. But under Christ darkness fell over the whole earth of Judea for three hours, but there was light over all the rest of the earth. Which everywhere illumines the whole Church of God in Christ. — COMMENTARY ON Matthew 134