הנה יד ה' הויה, “here the hand of Hashem will be active;” according to normal logic there is a reason for people to believe and to say that neither the plague of hail or the plague of pestilence could have lasted for a week each. (death of the afflicted would have occurred immediately)

במקנך אשר בשדה, “against your livestock that are out in the fields;” even the beasts that had been saved by their shepherds during the plague of the free roaming beasts could not stand up against the plague that follows next.

והפלה, “He will make a distinction;” [the word is spelled with the letter ה at the end, not the letter א. Ed.]

וימת כל מקנה מצרים, “all the domesticated livestock of Egypt died.” The Torah means to emphasize that all the livestock which died belonged to the Egyptians. The verse does not mean that all the livestock in Egypt died, as it states specifically in our verse that of the livestock owned by Israelites not a single animal died. This is why the Torah could write in verse 20 that the livestock of G-d fearing Egyptians who had brought their beasts into shelter did not die.

וישלח פרעה והנה לא מת, “Pharaoh dispatched people to check on the livestock of the Israelites, and not a single one had died.” The reason for this was Moses’ prediction in verse 4 that G-d will make this distinction between Egyptian and Israelite owned beasts.

ויכבד לבו; “but his heart remained obstinate;” he did not ask Moses to pray, as the dead beasts could not be brought back to life. The beasts that had survived did not need to be prayed for.

מלא חפניכם, “your handfuls,” this would not be enough soot to bring the plague on the entire land of Egypt; this is why the Torah does not attribute this plague as resulting from the fire that the soot was taken from. G-d did not want to change natural law at this point, and that is why He commanded Moses and Aaron to perform a symbolic act.

פיח, remnants of coal, cinders. Compare Isaiah 54,16.

וזרקו משה השמימה, “and let Moses throw it heavenwards.” This is one of many occasions when the term שמים, usually translated as “heaven,” is used as meaning simply: “air, or atmosphere.” Seeing that what is thrown into the air subsequently falls to earth, just like rain or lightning, the description is not that inaccurate.

לאבק “into dust;” the letter ל has the semi vowel sheva, whereas the letter א has the vowel kametz.

אדם ובבהמה “Upon man and upon cattle” – Rashi asked how it was possible that there were still animals around when it had already been stated in v.6 “And all the cattle of Egypt died”? Rashi answered this question by citing v.3 that only the animals in the fields were killed while everyone who feared the Lord had taken his cattle in-doors. But this is Rashi’s language since it does not say so in v.3.

ולא שמע אליהם, “but he paid no heed to them.” [This was also a plague that had not been announced beforehand to Pharaoh. Ed.] An additional reason why Pharaoh paid no heed to this plague was that the boils proved responsive to medical treatment.

את כל מגפותי, “all My plagues;” according to Rashi what we are to learn from this verse (“all My plagues”) is that the plague of killing the Egyptians’ firstborns is considered as equivalent to all the plagues. [There are different errors in different manuscripts of Rashi, as a result of which it is not clear whether Rashi spoke about the plague of hail, or the last group of plagues commencing with hail and concluding with the slaying of the firstborn. I will not speculate, therefore [I omit speculations quoted by the author also. Ed.]

אל לבך, “against your heart;” not only trees can be broken, but hearts can also be “broken.” This occurs when the heart is overwhelmed by fear. The letter ב in לבך has a dot, dagesh.

ולמען ספר את שמי בכל הארץ, “and in order to spread My fame in the whole country, (or on the whole earth).” G-d continues to respond “tit for tat,” seeing that Pharaoh had denied His existence, not to acknowledge His power, G-d will make sure that he will see how wrong he had been, and he would have to do so publicly.

. עודך מסתולל, “seeing that you still brag about being able to thwart My people,” boasting that you can prevent them from leaving;” The word סולל reminds us of Psalms 68,5, where G-d is extolled as riding the clouds.

למן היום הוסדה, “from the day it was founded;” the letter ה at the end is “weak,” i.e. does not have a dot. [which would have made it a pronoun. Ed.]

ועתה שלח העז וגו, “and now hasten to send word to bring your cattle under cover;” this was an advice Moses had not given Pharaoh before the onset of the plague of pestilence. It is possible that the “advice” to Pharaoh to have his people gather in their remaining livestock is not a concession, but on the contrary, is an additional hardship. People failing to take this “advice,” would experience also the death of their livestock, not only the destruction of their crops. Another interpretation: our verse proves that the plague of hail was aimed not only at trees and crops but also at living creatures, including human beings.

“and whoever did not take the word of G-d to heart” – even those who did not fear G-d had cattle if they did not take their animals unto the fields on the day of the plague of the Epidemic.

וה' נתן קולות, “and the Lord had unleashed thunder, etc.,” against Pharaoh and his counselors.

ותהלך אש ארצה, “and fire streamed to the ground.” From the words: ואש מתלקחת we know there was fire. Fire is mentioned because fire usually rises but this fire descended from heaven.

ואש מתלקחת בתוך הברד, “and fire was contained within the hail stones,” it is clear that after the hail had hit the ground, that this fire started conflagrations. [Otherwise who would have known that there was fire inside the hail stones? Ed.]

ה' הצדיק, it is Hashem who is righteous. During all of the plagues, the only one which resulted in Pharaoh acknowledging that G-d was righteous, hail was the only one. What prompted Pharaoh to make such a confession? When someone is at war with someone else and wants to liquidate him, he arranges to do this when his adversary does not suspect it, and he jumps him suddenly. Here, G-d, instead of bringing on the plague without warning, gives His creatures a chance to escape with their lives. He Himself urged them to take shelter.

קולות אלוהים, heavenly thunder; he acknowledged that there is a G-d (in heaven). Seeing that he had not acknowledged the existence of Hashem, Moses stressed that when he would pray for the plague to end, he would not address his prayer to elohim, but to the tetragram, i.e. to Hashem. (compare verse 30) When Moses, at the end of verse 30, combines the two names of G-d, he wants Pharaoh to know that these two attributes are not two separate deities, but that there is only one “elohim,” i.e. Hashem. You cannot argue by citing Avraham, who in Genesis 15,2 had asked: ה׳ אלוהים מה תתן לי, “o Lord, G-d what can You give me?” and a few more such examples, that there appear to be two separate deities. In all such examples the reading of the word for elohim is the word adonay.

כצאתי את העיר, “as soon as I leave the boundaries of the city;” seeing that earlier the Torah had written (verse 19) that anyone who will still be found outdoors will become a target for the hail, now, at the time when the plague was in full swing, the people might say that Moses was afraid to venture outside on account of that hail, Moses announces that he will open his hands in prayer as soon as he is beyond the borders of the city, and that the hail will not stop him from leaving the city. An alternate explanation for this phrase: Moses announces that as soon as he leaves the palace to go into the city, he will spread out his hands in prayer while inside the city. This is also what the Torah reports in verse 33: ויצא משה מעם פרעה את העיר וגו', “as soon as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh and went into the city, etc;”Yet another explanation: according to the plain meaning of the text the plague of hail was far stronger in the fields than in the city, [as there were no trees and grain fields inside the city to destroy, Ed.]. Moses said that he would leave the city to observe the damage caused by the hail and will then begin his prayer as necessary.

ידעתי כי טרם, “I am well aware that before you have even dismissed me you will start to really be afraid, תיראון, much more so than now; An alternate explanation: I am well aware that you are still not sufficiently afraid because the hail did not destroy two major crops, i.e. the wheat and the spelt, so that you still will have what to eat;

נוכתה, “had been ruined;” the word is in the plural mode, as we also find in Exodus 17,12: ויהי ידיו אמונה “his hands were steadfast;” not ויהיו [as we might have expected; Ed.] or Samuel I 4,15 where after Eli’s sudden inability to see, his eyes are described as: עיניו קמה, not קמו or similar examples.

כי השעורה אביב, “for barley grows in spring;” what is missing here are words referring to the linking together the flax and the barley as the Torah linked the wheat and the spelt. The reason is that the farmers’ crops no matter when they were planted, will not ripen until later in the season. This is why the flax is mentioned separately. When wheat and spelt were sown at the same time, they will also ripen at the same time.

והפשתה גבעול, “but the flax ripens later; if not for that fact it would have been ruined by the hail also. The Torah needed to spell this out as it had written that the hail struck “ail the grass in the field.” (verse 25)

והחטה והכוסמת לא נוכו, “but the wheat and the spelt had not been ruined;” this is emphasized because later on (10,5) the Torah writes that the locusts will devour anything that the hail had not ruined. Somebody might have argued that what is written here has already been included in the words describing all the grass in the field as having been destroyed; in order to forestall such an interpretation, the Torah first exempts the wheat and the spelt by explaining why these species of plants had not been ruined by the hail; they had been too small and soft to be affected. Basically speaking, hail destroys hard plants and locusts consume soft plants.

The word אפילות, derived from אופל, “darkness,” means that the plants under discussion are as yet invisible, not have broken through to the air above the ground as yet.

כי חדל המטר, “for the rain had ceased;” seeing that Moses had only promised that the hail and the thunder would cease, Pharaoh said to himself that now he had proof that Moses was only a charlatan. Hence he continued to sin.

ויכבד לבו הוא ועבדיו, “both he and his servants hardened their hearts,” arguing that the G-d of the Hebrews will not bring on the same plague a second time. הוא ועבדיו, we do not find this expression anywhere else in the Bible. The only reason that it has been used here is, that the Torah had written in verse 30: אתה ועבדיך, “you and your servants,” so that here it had to match that expression when reporting on how correct Moses had been when he had said that Pharaoh and his servants were still not in awe of the Lord. It was especially important to contrast this with Pharaoh’s previous statement in verse 27: חטאתי הפעם, “this time 1 have sinned.” It is the usual way of confirmed sinners if due to extreme distress they have been forced to pay lip service to a confession, that as soon as the emergency has passed they revert to their accustomed attitudes. We know from their own words that they had felt hard pressed, when the Torah referred to such people by writing that they took their beast indoors to escape the plague. (Verse 20) Now that relief had come, they reverted to “business as usual.”

כאשר דבר ה, “as the Lord had said.” G-d had said in Exodus 3,19: “I know that the King of Egypt will not permit you to leave.”

ביד משה, by means of his prophecy that he had been instructed to proclaim. This is the meaning of the expression ביד משה, wherever it occurs