Midrasch zu Schemot 10:24

"And it was in the middle of the night" (Exodus 12:29) - this is [the meaning of] what is written (Isaiah 44:26), "He fulfills the word of His servant and completes the counsel of His messengers:" Rabbi Abahu said, "'He fulfills the word of His servant' - this [refers to] Moshe as it is stated (Numbers 12:7), 'Not so My servant Moshe.'" And how is it that He fulfilled it? Rather, when He brought the plague of darkness upon them, Pharaoh began to cry out (Exodus 10:24), "Go and serve the Lord, but your sheep and cattle must stay." Moshe said to him, "Upon your life! 'And also our livestock we will take, not one hoof will remain' (Ibid. 26)." What is [meant by] a hoof? Even an animal that belongs completely to an Egyptian and has one hoof that belongs to a Jew, [Moshe] will not leave. "Since from them shall we take" (Ibid.) - after he said, "from them shall we take," he went back and said "and we do not know with what we will serve the Lord." He said to him, "If with you, who are flesh and blood, [and] people die if they transgress your commands; [nonetheless] if you put out a proclamation in front of you and you say, collect this and that for me, the world can stand in front of you [and fulfill your proclamation]; but with us, perhaps God will say to us, 'sacrifice a sacrifice [that includes all of the sacrifices] of two hundred and ten years.'" That is [what is meant by] "and we do not know." Pharaoh said to him, "Until when will you enter here? 'Go away from me; guard yourself, do not see my face again!' (Ibid. 28)" Moshe said [back] to him, "you have spoken well; 'I will not see your face again.'" The Holy One, blessed be He, said, "What is still required for me? To inform Pharaoh of one plague." Immediately, He went into the palace of Pharaoh for Moshe - who said to [Pharaoh], "I will not see your face again" - so that he would not be found to be a fabricator. And you find that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not speak with Moshe in the house of Pharaoh except for that time. From where [do we know this]? As it is stated (Exodus 9:29), "When I leave the city, I will raise my hands to the Lord;" and now the Holy One, blessed be He, hastened and spoke with Moshe, as it is stated (Exodus 11:1), "still one plague will I bring upon Pharaoh, etc." Once Moshe heard [this], he rejoiced and became great, as it is stated, (Ibid. 3) "and also the man, Moshe, was very great." He begin to cry out in public (Ibid. 4), "'so did the Lord say, "at the middle of the night."' You have spoken well, 'I will not see your face again.' I, myself, will not come again to you, but rather you will come to me; and your general that is standing with you - and he is your head officer - and all of these [in] your palace retinue will come to me with you and request of me - and bow down to me - that we should leave from here;" as it is written (Ibid. 8), "And all of your servants will come down to me and bow down to me saying" - he did not want to say, 'and you will bow down to me' because of the honor of the king. When the middle of the night arrived, as Moshe said; immediately, "And it was the middle of the night and the Lord smote every firstborn." Hence, "He fulfills the word of his servant. And completes the counsel of His messengers" - that He made a counsel (agreement) with Avraham because of this thing. When? When the kings came and he pursued them. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, "It is enough for you until the middle of the night - come, let us split the night, you and I;" as it is stated, "And he divided against them at night (understood here as 'and He divided the night for them')." When the time came, he completed his counsel. That is [the meaning of] "And it was in the middle of the night." Thus is it written, "And completes the counsel of His messengers."

And when the days of darkness were over, the Lord sent Moses to the children of Israel, ‎saying: Celebrate ye your feast and prepare your passover, for behold I will come at midnight ‎in the midst of the Egyptians, and I will slay all their first born, from the first born of man to the ‎first born of beast, and when I will see your passover I will pass over you; and the children of ‎Israel did according to all that the Lord had commanded unto Moses. And at midnight the Lord ‎passed through Egypt, and he slew all the first born of the Egyptians, from the first born of ‎man to the first born of beast; and Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all ‎the Egyptians, and there was a great crying in Egypt; for there was not one house where there ‎was not one dead; and even the likenesses of the first born, which were engraved upon the ‎walls of their houses, fell broken to the ground, and the bones of their first born, which had ‎died before and lay buried in their houses, were raked up by the dogs of Egypt in that night, ‎and dragged about before the eyesight of the Egyptians. And when the Egyptians saw the ‎great evil which had befallen them so suddenly, they cried with a loud voice, so that all the ‎families of Egypt were weeping in that night, one for his son and one for his daughter, their ‎first born, and the consternation and noise of Egypt resounded in the distance on that night. ‎And Bathia, Pharaoh’s daughter, went forth with the king in search of Moses, and they found ‎him eating and drinking and rejoicing with all the Israelites, and Bathia said unto Moses: Shall ‎this be the reward for my kindness towards thee, for raising and elevating thee, that thou ‎bringest now upon me and upon the house of my father this evil? And Moses answered unto ‎her: Behold the Lord hath brought ten plagues over Egypt, and hath ever one annoyed thee? ‎And she said: No. And Moses said: Behold, although thou art the first born of thy mother thou ‎shalt not die, neither shall any evil befall thee. And she replied: Of what good is that to me ‎after I see my brother, the king, and all the household of my father, and all his servants in that ‎great evil, for their first born perish with all the first born of Egypt? And Moses said unto her: ‎Surely, thy brother and his household and his servants, the families of Egypt refused to listen ‎to the words of God and therefore this evil hath come over them. ‎

And they rose up in the morning, all the princes of Pharaoh with their people, about seven ‎hundred thousand men, and the Egyptians went forth on that day, and they came to the place ‎where the children of Israel were encamped, and all the Egyptians saw, and behold Moses and ‎Aaron and all the children of Israel sat before Pi-hachiroth eating and drinking and celebrating ‎the feast of the Lord. And all the Egyptians said unto the children of Israel: Have ye not said: ‎We will go a three days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to our God and then we will ‎return? And now it is four days since your going away, and why do you not return unto your ‎masters? And Moses and Aaron said unto them: Because the Lord our God hath instructed us ‎saying: Ye shall return no more unto Egypt; but we will go unto a land flowing with milk and ‎honey, as the Lord our God had sworn to our fathers to give it unto us. And when the princes ‎of Egypt saw that the children of Israel would not listen unto them to return, they assembled ‎to fight with the children of Israel. But the Lord strengthened the hearts of the children of ‎Israel over the Egyptians, and they smote them a great smiting, and the battle was very ‎disastrous upon the Egyptians, and they fled from before the children of Israel for many of ‎them were slain by the hand of Israel. And the princes of Pharaoh went to Egypt unto ‎Pharaoh, and they spoke unto Pharaoh saying: The children of Israel have fled and refuse to ‎return to Egypt, and thus did Moses and Aaron speak unto us. And when Pharaoh heard this ‎thing his heart turned against Israel, and also the hearts of all his servants, and they repented ‎having sent away the Israelites, and all the Egyptians counseled Pharaoh to pursue the children ‎of Israel, and to force them to return to their servitude; and they said to each other: Why have ‎we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us? And the Lord hardened the hearts of ‎the Egyptians to pursue the children of Israel, for it was the pleasure of the Lord to cast all the ‎Egyptians into the Red Sea. And Pharaoh made ready his chariot, and he commanded and they ‎assembled all Egypt, not one man remained, save the children and women. And all Egypt went ‎forth with Pharaoh to pursue the children of Israel, and the army of Egypt was exceedingly ‎large, about one million of men, and this entire army moved on in pursuit of the children of ‎Israel and overtook them encamped by the Red Sea. ‎