Why Egypt Was Stripped Until Nothing Green Remained

Most people remember the plagues as separate blows. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads them as a sequence with memory. The hail does not finish Egypt because the locusts are waiting. The locusts do not merely arrive because the hail left something for them to eat.

In Midrash Aggadah, with 6,284 texts in the database and 510 from Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus, the western Aramaic Torah tradition makes destruction precise. Sefaria lists an early layer in Talmudic Israel, c. 30-70 CE, while noting that the final composition date is disputed. These 7 passages move from the seventh plague in Exodus 9 through the eighth plague in Exodus 10 and into the Song at the Sea in Exodus 15.

Fire Leapt Inside the Hail

When the hail falls, the Targum does not describe ordinary weather. Fire darts among the hail with exceeding force, and Egypt has never seen anything like it since becoming a nation and kingdom (Exodus 9:24).

The miracle is contradiction made visible. Ice should smother fire. Fire should melt ice. Instead they travel together, each preserving the other long enough to strike. Egypt's learned people can chart stars and seasons, but this storm breaks the categories. The plague is not only stronger than Egyptian power. It is stranger than Egyptian explanation. The sky itself becomes a witness that the God of Israel is not bound by the habits Egypt mistakes for law.

The Trees Were Uprooted, Not Merely Broken

The next verse counts the damage with terrible care. The hail strikes people, animals, herbs of the field, and every tree of the field. The Targum adds that the trees are shattered and uprooted (Exodus 9:25).

That detail matters because uprooting attacks tomorrow. A broken branch may grow again. A tree torn from the soil leaves a wound where future fruit was supposed to stand. The plague does not only punish a moment of refusal. It shakes the economy Pharaoh built around Israel's captivity. Fields, herds, orchards, and exposed workers all become part of the same testimony: a kingdom that treats people as tools will watch its own tools fail.

Why Did the Locusts Come After the Hail?

Before the locusts arrive, God tells Moses exactly what they will do. They will cover the face of the ground so the ground cannot be seen, and they will consume what the hail spared (Exodus 10:5).

This is measured judgment, not random excess. The seventh plague did not erase every crop. Some growth remained. The eighth plague is announced as the finishing of that remnant. What ice and fire leave behind, teeth will take. The Targum wants readers to see the sequence: Egypt is not struck by disconnected disasters, but by a judgment that remembers its own previous movement. The land is being stripped layer by layer until Pharaoh can no longer hide behind partial survival.

The Swarm Became a Living Darkness

When the locusts come, the Targum says no swarm like it had ever appeared before and none like it would appear after. This is not a normal infestation intensified. It is a singular plague with no twin in Egypt's past or future (Exodus 10:14).

Then the swarm covers the land until the land is darkened. Nothing green remains on tree or herb in all the field (Exodus 10:15). Darkness has not officially arrived as the ninth plague, but the eighth plague already rehearses it. Wings turn daylight black. Hunger becomes shadow. The color green disappears from Egypt's surface, and the land looks like Pharaoh's heart has finally spread outward into the fields.

Even the Stored Locusts Were Taken

When Pharaoh asks Moses to pray, the west wind carries the locusts to the Sea of Reeds. The Targum adds a startling detail: even the salted locusts stored in vessels for food are swept away (Exodus 10:19).

That detail turns removal into judgment. Egypt cannot convert the plague into a pantry. It cannot profit from what came to expose it. Even what has been collected, salted, sealed, and saved is taken. The miracle enters the jars. No locust remains in Egypt's borders, not in the field and not in the cupboard. The land is cleared so completely that Pharaoh cannot turn disaster into inventory.

The Sea Finished What the Fields Began

At the Sea, the Targum hears Israel sing about walls consumed like stubble in fire. Egypt's armies are not only defeated soldiers. They are walls, the architecture of oppression, burned like dry stalks after harvest (Exodus 15:7).

That image gathers the plagues backward. Hail shattered trees. Locusts stripped fields. Wind emptied jars. Sea swallowed chariots. By the time Israel sings, Egypt's power looks like stubble: something that seemed abundant before harvest and worthless after judgment.

That is why Egypt was stripped until nothing green remained. The Targum does not delight in ruin. It shows a kingdom being made legible. The fields, trees, jars, sky, wind, and sea all testify against Pharaoh's refusal. What looked permanent was uprooted. What looked useful was carried away. What looked like a wall burned like dry grass before the God who remembered Israel.