"Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel," Moses and Aaron declare, "How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before Me? Let My people go, that they may worship before Me" (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 10:3).
The Aramaic paraphrase, preserved in the Targum attributed to Yonatan ben Uzziel, preserves the sharp edge of the question. Ad emati sarivat l'itmak'cha m'n kodamai — how long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? This is not a courtroom question. This is a parent's question. A teacher's question. An exasperated Creator asking a finite king how much longer he plans to keep pretending he is bigger than he is.
Pride, in the Torah, is not merely a character flaw. It is a theological problem. Pharaoh had declared himself a god — his throne name meant "great house," and Egyptian ideology treated him as divine. To release Israel would mean admitting that a higher God existed. Every plague was, in effect, a request that Pharaoh stop being a god for five minutes and be a man.
He could not do it.
The Maggid teaches: humility is the key that unlocks every other virtue. Without it, repentance is impossible, wisdom is unreachable, and mercy cannot find a place to land. Pharaoh's tragedy was not that he lacked information. He had received eight lessons by the time of this verse. His tragedy was that he lacked the smallness of soul required to learn.