“Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die.”
Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die. The warning before the seventh plague is extraordinary in its compassion: God tells Egypt how to survive it. Any Egyptian who heeds the warning, who takes the word of the God of Israel seriously enough to bring their animals in, will be spared. The plague is announced in advance not just to authenticate the divine messenger but to preserve life. Jonah 3:4–10 records a similar dynamic: Nineveh hears the warning and responds. Some Egyptians will respond here too (verse 20). The warning before the hail is evidence that the goal of the plagues was never maximum casualties but maximum testimony, maximum opportunity to choose differently.
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