The plague arrives as promised. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 8:20 is terse and terrifying: the Lord did so; and sent the mixed multitude of wild beasts in strength to the house of Pharoh, and to the house of his servants and in all the land of Mizraim the inhabitants of the land were devastated from the swarm of wild beasts.
Notice the order. Palace first. Senior servants next. Then the whole country. The plague is rank-aware. It begins at the top — the ruling house that had ordered Hebrew infants thrown into the Nile — and spreads downward. By the end of the sentence, the inhabitants of the land were devastated.
The Aramaic word the meturgeman uses for devastated is istakhdash — a term that implies structural collapse. Fields trampled. Livestock scattered. Roads impassable. Egypt is no longer functioning as a state. A lion in the palace garden cannot be ignored the way a lice infestation can. The fourth plague is the first one that brings the machinery of the empire to a full stop.
And yet, the text does not gloat. There is no description of screams or blood. The meturgeman restrains himself. God's judgment is depicted with the dignity of a ledger entry — the Lord did so. That restraint is itself a teaching. The tyrant has earned this, and the chronicler does not need to add commentary.
The takeaway: when divine justice arrives, it enters the palace before it reaches the peasant. Hierarchy is reversed the moment the gates open.