"Lift up thy hand over the land of Mizraim for the locust, that he may come up over the land of Mizraim, and destroy every herb of the earth, whatsoever the hail hath left" (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 10:12).
The Aramaic paraphrase, preserved in the Targum attributed to Yonatan ben Uzziel, uses a telling phrase: kol yat mah d'sha'ar barada — everything that the hail left. This is the second wave of a two-part assault. The hail had taken the early crop. The locust would take the late crop. Together, the two plagues erased an entire agricultural year.
And notice what Moses is asked to do. Not throw ash. Not strike water. Not lift a rod at the sky. Simply lift his hand. By this point in the story, Moses's outstretched hand has become a kind of sacred telegraph. The Holy One has trained the world to recognize the gesture — when this prophet's hand goes up, heaven answers.
The Maggid teaches: Moses's prophetic authority has grown across the plague sequence. The rod, the staff, the ash, the handfuls — the external props have gradually faded. By the eighth plague, a hand is enough. By the ninth, even less. The farther into the Exodus we travel, the closer the prophet stands to the unmediated word of God.
Egypt was still hearing the plagues. Moses was learning to speak them.