What Does Exodus 10:11 Mean?

"No! Go, the men among you, and serve the LORD, for that is what you are asking." And they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence. Pharaoh's final offer in the Locust negotiation is "men only": adult male religious observance without the families.

His framing, "that is what you are asking", is a reinterpretation of the demand in minimizing terms: you asked for a religious feast, men can go do a religious feast, done. The gap between "men go" and "all of Israel goes with their flocks and herds" is the gap between partial compliance and the total exodus YHWH has demanded. Pharaoh closes the negotiation by imposing his own definition of the demand and acting as if the modified version satisfies it.

The "and they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence" is the only time in the plague narrative that Moses and Aaron are expelled from the royal court. Moses has walked out voluntarily (Exodus 10:6); now Pharaoh has them forcibly removed. The physicality of the expulsion marks the breakdown of the negotiation: Pharaoh has made his offer ("men only"), Moses has rejected it, and Pharaoh responds with force rather than further discussion. The expulsion signals that the locust plague will now proceed without further negotiation: there is no more to discuss.

The pattern of the locust plague negotiation follows the fly-plague pattern exactly: initial concession (go, serve the LORD) followed by a limiting condition (but not with your little ones / but not too far). The negotiations reveal Pharaoh's consistent strategy: offer what sounds like compliance, then negotiate the scope down to something that preserves Egypt's interests. Moses will not accept any partial compliance; the divine demand is total. The negotiation impasse is structurally guaranteed because Pharaoh will never offer what Moses will accept.