Three more plagues — livestock, boils, hail — and the chapter quietly changes the terms. At verse 12 the text says for the first time that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart; through the first five it had said Pharaoh hardened his own. Egypt’s magicians make their last appearance not as opponents but as patients. And a two-verse note about which crops were ripe dates the hailstorm to late January or February — accurately, for Lower Egypt.