What Does Exodus 8:20 Mean?

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh, as he goes out to the water, and say to him, 'Thus says the LORD, "Let my people go, that they may serve me."'" The fourth plague (flies) begins with the same interception-at-the-Nile instruction as the first plague: Moses is to rise early and meet Pharaoh as he goes to the water.

The return to the Nile-interception pattern (used in plague 1, skipped for plagues 2-3) marks the beginning of the second triad (flies, livestock, boils) with the same confrontation-in-public format as the first triad's opening. The second triad begins in the same way the first triad began: a public confrontation at the Nile with the standard demand.

The instruction "rise up early" is a standard prophetic urgency marker: the divine commission is to be executed without delay, at the first available moment of the day. Moses is not to wait for the demands of the day to develop before acting on the divine commission; he is to go first, at dawn, to the place where Pharaoh will be. The early rising of Moses to carry out the divine word is the obedient counterpart to Pharaoh's dismissal: Pharaoh dismisses and goes home; Moses rises early and goes to where Pharaoh will be. The diligence of the prophetic obedience is the physical enactment of the urgency of the divine word.

The same demand, "let my people go, that they may serve me", is the opening word of every new plague cycle. Whatever happened in the previous plague (hardening, negotiation, removal) does not change the demand. The demand is the constant around which the varied responses of Pharaoh orbit: sometimes he temporizes, sometimes he negotiates, sometimes he concedes and then retracts, but the demand stays the same. The stability of the divine demand across the plague sequence is a theological statement about the divine word's persistence in the face of human resistance.