For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them,
2. But if thou refuse. God again urges him to obedience through fear of punishment, as He usually deals with the froward. Yet he permits him a short space of time for repentance, (as before,) if perchance he may lay aside his perverse determination to refuse.
Here is, I. Warning given of another plague, namely, the murrain of beasts. When Pharaoh's heart was hardened, after he had seemed to relent under the former plague, then Moses is sent to tell him there is another coming, to try what that would do towards reviving the impressions of the former plagues.
Commenting on Exodus 9:1-7
For if thou refuse to let them go,.... Continue to refuse, as he had done: and wilt hold them still; in the land, and under his dominion and oppression.