Before the first plague falls, God speaks in future tense. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the warning with striking physicality: I have sent forth the stroke of My power, and have smitten Mizraee with all My wonders. The Hebrew says God will stretch out His hand. The Aramaic intensifies it — this is not a gesture but a stroke, a blow, the deliberate strike of a sovereign hand.
The paraphrase also specifies: all My wonders, that I will do among them. The plagues are not random damage. They are a curated display — ten precisely chosen signs aimed at the heart of Egyptian certainty, each one dismantling a different pillar of Pharaoh's worldview.
Why Israel Must Be Hindered First
The verse opens with a strange detail: ye will be hindered there. Before the deliverance, the slavery will get worse. The Targumic tradition reads this as compassionate realism — Moses must not expect an immediate softening. The first demand for release will tighten the chains, not loosen them.
And only afterward he will release you. The word afterward carries the entire theology of redemption: there is a before, a gauntlet of worsening suffering, and then an after, when the same hand that struck Egypt escorts Israel out. The takeaway: the darkest stretch of slavery comes just before the Exodus begins, and this is not a sign that God has forgotten, but a sign that the countdown has started.