At this point, Moses and Pharaoh have seen a lot of each other. They’ve talked in Pharaoh’s palace, they’ve talked by the Nile River, and they’ve exchanged plenty of “emotional” words.
It’s time for those conversations to come to an end.
The intensity of the last several meetings has continued to ratchet up. Pharaoh seems like he’s inching closer to accepting a full understanding of who God is, but his stubbornness and “hardness of heart” prevent him from letting Israel go.
That’s all going to change. The death of the firstborn is a tragedy that the world hadn’t seen by this point, and I would argue, has never seen since. Even the Holocaust, as horrific as it was, didn’t target only the firstborns. It was in-discriminatory in its discrimination. The death of the firstborn deliberately took the firstborn from every family. That’s personal.
Before that, Moses and Pharaoh have one final conversation. He tells Pharaoh exactly what will happen (the death of the firstborn), who it will happen to (humans and animals) and who will be exempt (Israel won’t be affected).
As a side note, he also tells Pharaoh when it will happen. Unlike most of the plagues that happen either immediately as he raises his staff, or soon the next day, Moses tells them that the tenth plague will happen that very night. And when it does, Pharaoh’s servants will come to tell Moses and the Israelites to leave immediately.
Once again, Pharaoh doesn’t listen. It has to be deeply distressing to everyone in the room to listen to another plague pronouncement from Moses and see their leader again refuse to acknowledge it. All of the other plagues have happened, why wouldn’t this one?
Perhaps this is why the Text says that Moses left the conversation “in hot anger” (Exodus 11:8). For his part, Moses was mostly conciliatory in his messages to Pharaoh. He had given Pharaoh numerous opportunities to change his mind, and was met with resistance every step of the way.
The anger from Moses was definitely personal; how could it not have been? But his anger is also spiritual. Moses would display great emotion at the sins of his own people during the Exodus story—at Mount Sinai, when they murmured, and getting water from the rock, among others. It’s completely in character for him to be incensed at Pharaoh’s refusal as well.
It’s also slightly hypocritical. After all, Moses spent two chapters arguing with God about why he was the worst possible candidate to lead the people out of Egypt. He was stubborn, too. He disobeyed God for a time, just like Pharaoh.
The difference was that Moses eventually wisened up and did what God told him to do. Pharaoh never came around to that way of thinking, eventually chasing Israel into the Red Sea that killed both him and his entire army.
