What Does Exodus 10:8 Mean?

So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. And he said to them, "Go, serve the LORD your God. But which ones are to go?" The court pressure of verse 7 produces an immediate reversal: Moses and Aaron are summoned back, and Pharaoh opens with apparent compliance: "Go, serve the LORD your God." But the compliance is immediately qualified by a negotiating question: "But which ones are to go?" The pattern of apparent concession followed by limiting qualification is Pharaoh's consistent negotiating strategy: he offers compliance, then shrinks its scope through conditions that make it less than the demand requires.

The question "which ones are to go?" is Pharaoh's attempt to reduce the scope of the demanded exodus from all of Israel to a subset. The Locust plague's threat has been sufficient to produce a stated willingness to comply; the compliance is now being narrowed through the "who exactly?" question. If Pharaoh can get Moses to define the departing group as a subset, some adult men, perhaps, he preserves the work force, the hostages (women, children) who guarantee return, and the animals. The negotiating question is more strategic than it appears: it is how Pharaoh attempts to convert the total exodus demand into a partial concession.

The "served back to Pharaoh" passive (Moses and Aaron were brought) after Pharaoh's pro-active courts shows that the initiative has shifted: the servants urged compliance and organized the recall. Pharaoh is no longer setting the terms of the confrontation from a position of secure authority; he is responding to his own court's urgent advice by a summoning rather than a God invitation. The shift in who initiates contact: from Pharaoh's original refusal ("who is the LORD?") to Pharaoh recalling Moses based on court pressure: narrates the progressive weakening of Pharaoh's position.