Ten verses, and almost none of them are the event. This is the announcement: at the dividing of the night, every firstborn in Egypt from the throne to the mill. Nothing in it is new — the terms were given to Pharaoh in chapter 4, before any plague fell. What the chapter adds is scope, and a sound: the cry that will go up is named with the word used of Israel crying under the whip, and set against a silence in which no dog barks.