Exodus 9:32 Meaning: Why Were the Wheat and Spelt Spared?

Three words anchor this verse in the land of Egypt. Wheat (chittah) and spelt (cussemet, sometimes translated as rye or fitches) are the two grains that escaped. These were not merely different plants; they were the slower crops, planted and harvested later in the season. The key word is late (aphilot), which literally means “dark” or “hidden”, the grain was still underground, its head not yet formed. The old translations catch this: “not grown up,” “not come out into ear.” The verb struck (nakah) appears in the passive form, showing that the destruction came from outside, not by accident. God’s hand was in the hail, and His hand was also in the timing. The very word for “late” carries a sense of being sheltered, waiting in the dark for the right moment. That hiddenness was not weakness; it was protection.

Christians across traditions have noticed the precision here. Matthew Henry saw it as God’s mercy, He did not destroy everything at once, giving Pharaoh another chance to repent. The Cambridge Bible notes that the detail matches Egyptian agriculture exactly, arguing it shows the biblical record’s reliability. Jewish commentators like Rashi read the sparing as a lesson in proportional judgment: God held back so that the next plague could finish what this one began. Some Reformed teachers point out that even in judgment, God orders events to display His power over nature’s calendar. Both the literal reading and the symbolic reading agree on the main point: nothing in the plague was random. God knew which crops were above ground and which were still hidden, and He acted accordingly.

A common misreading is to dismiss this verse as a trivial agricultural aside with no spiritual meaning. Some think it suggests the hail was just a natural storm that happened to hit the right crops. In fact, the verse is there to show God’s exact control over the plague. He timed the hail to strike what was ready and spare what was not. The spared crops were not lucky; they were preserved for a purpose, to be destroyed later by locusts if Pharaoh refused to let Israel go. This small detail magnifies the sovereignty of God over every stalk of grain.

This week, you may face a situation where something you feared did not happen, a financial loss narrowly avoided, a relationship that survived a crisis. It is easy to call that luck or coincidence. But this verse invites you to pause and wonder: is God working in the timing? Perhaps He spared that thing because the moment was not right. Perhaps He is holding something back until you are ready to receive it, or until a later lesson needs to be learned. Trust that He sees what is hidden under the soil of your life. He knows what is still growing and what is ripe. His timing is not random. You can rest in that.