For Teaching

Exodus 6: What the Passage Says

80 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Exodus 6 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

God answers Moses after his complaint, promising that Pharaoh will drive Israel out, and repeating the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: he will free the Israelites from slavery, take them as his people, and bring them into the land of Canaan. Moses carries the message, but the people do not listen because of their broken spirit and hard labor, and Moses objects that he is a poor speaker. The chapter then breaks off into a family list of Reuben, Simeon, and especially Levi, tracing the line down to Moses and Aaron and their descendants, before returning to God's command that Moses speak to Pharaoh and to Moses' same objection.

Claim by Claim

6:1
- The LORD said to Moses that he would now see what the LORD would do to Pharaoh.
- The LORD said that by a strong hand Pharaoh would let them go.
- The LORD said that by a strong hand Pharaoh would drive them out of his land.
- The text does not specify whether the strong hand is God's or Pharaoh's.
6:2
- God spoke to Moses.
- God said to Moses, I am the LORD.
6:3
- God said he appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty.
- God said that by his name the LORD he was not known to them.
6:4
- God said he also established his covenant with them.
- God said the covenant was to give them the land of Canaan.
- God said Canaan was the land where they lived as foreigners.
6:5
- God said he has also heard the groaning of the children of Israel.
- God said the Egyptians are holding the children of Israel in forced labor.
- God said he has remembered his covenant.
6:6
- God told Moses to say to the children of Israel that he is the LORD.
- God said he will bring them out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
- God said he will deliver them from the Egyptians' slavery.
- God said he will redeem them with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.
6:7
- God said he will take them to himself as a people.
- God said he will be a God to them.
- God said they will know that he is the LORD their God.
- God said he is the one bringing them out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
6:8
- God said he will bring them into the land.
- God said he swore with uplifted hand to give that land to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
- God said he will give the land to them as a possession.
- God said, I am the LORD.
6:9
- Moses spoke this to the children of Israel.
- They did not listen to Moses.
- They did not listen because of shortness of spirit.
- They did not listen because of harsh slavery.
6:10
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
6:11
- The LORD told Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt.
- The LORD told Moses to tell Pharaoh to let the children of Israel go out of his land.
6:12
- Moses spoke before the LORD.
- Moses said the children of Israel have not listened to him.
- Moses asked how Pharaoh would then listen to him.
- Moses said he is of uncircumcised lips.
6:13
- The LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron.
- The LORD gave them a charge concerning the children of Israel and concerning Pharaoh king of Egypt.
- The charge was to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
6:14
- These are the heads of their fathers' houses.
- Reuben was the firstborn of Israel.
- The sons of Reuben were Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi.
- These were the families of Reuben.
6:15
- The sons of Simeon were Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shaul.
- Shaul was the son of a Canaanite woman.
- These were the families of Simeon.
6:16
- These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations.
- The sons of Levi were Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.
- Levi lived 137 years.
6:17
- The sons of Gershon were Libni and Shimi, according to their families.
6:18
- The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel.
- Kohath lived 133 years.
6:19
- The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi.
- These were the families of Levi according to their generations.
6:20
- Amram took Jochebed his father's sister as his wife.
- She bore him Aaron and Moses.
- Amram lived 137 years.
6:21
- The sons of Izhar were Korah, Nepheg, and Zichri.
6:22
- The sons of Uzziel were Mishael, Elzaphan, and Zithri.
6:23
- Aaron took Elisheba as his wife.
- Elisheba was the daughter of Amminadab.
- Elisheba was the sister of Nahshon.
- She bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.
6:24
- The sons of Korah were Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph.
- These were the families of the Korahites.
6:25
- Eleazar the son of Aaron took one of the daughters of Putiel as his wife.
- She bore him Phinehas.
- These were the heads of the fathers' houses of the Levites according to their families.
6:26
- This is the Aaron and Moses to whom the LORD spoke.
- The LORD told them to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their divisions.
6:27
- These are the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt.
- They spoke in order to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt.
- This is the Moses and Aaron.
6:28
- There was a day when the LORD spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt.
6:29
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD said, I am the LORD.
- The LORD told Moses to speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt everything the LORD says to him.
6:30
- Moses said before the LORD that he is of uncircumcised lips.
- Moses asked how Pharaoh would listen to him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1: The Hebrew phrase translated "with a strong hand" does not say whose hand. It can mean that God's power will force Pharaoh's decision, or that Pharaoh will use a strong hand of his own in driving Israel out. Both readings are old; the King James leaves the ambiguity standing, while most modern versions resolve it in favor of God's hand.
6:2: Where English Bibles print "LORD" in capitals, the Hebrew has the personal name of God, written with four consonants (roughly YHWH). Ancient Jewish practice avoided pronouncing it and substituted the ordinary word for "Lord" when reading aloud; English translations mark this by the capitals. The King James "JEHOVAH" in the next verse is an attempt to sound out those four consonants using the vowels of the substitute word.
6:3: "God Almighty" renders El Shaddai, the title used of God in the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the sense of Shaddai is uncertain, perhaps "of the mountain" or "the mighty one". The claim that the name YHWH was not known to them is much debated, since the ancestors use that name in Genesis. The Hebrew can mean either that they never heard the name, or that they never knew it in its full force, what it would prove to mean.
6:4: The Hebrew word is berit, a formal sworn agreement of the kind rulers made with rulers or with subject peoples: binding, permanent, and carrying stated obligations. "Living as foreigners" translates a term for a resident outsider, someone allowed to live in a land he did not own and where he held no ancestral rights.
6:5: In Hebrew, for God to "remember" a promise does not mean he had forgotten it and it came back to him. Remembering is about acting: it means turning attention to the promise and beginning to do something about it.
6:6: "Redeem" translates a Hebrew word taken from family law: the duty of a relative to buy back a kinsman who had been sold into slavery, or to recover land the family had lost. It is a word about paying a price to get one's own back. "Arm stretched out" is a stock idiom, used in Egyptian as well as Hebrew, for a ruler's power visibly in action.
6:7: "I will take you as my people, and I will be your God" is a set legal formula. Comparable wording appears in ancient marriage contracts and adoption documents, where it declared a permanent change of standing between two parties.
6:8: "Swear" means to bind yourself by an oath, calling down consequences on yourself if you break it. "Heritage" is an old word for inheritance: property handed down within a family permanently, not lent or rented.
6:9: The Hebrew behind "crushed spirits" is literally "shortness of spirit" or "shortness of breath", the ordinary idiom for having no reserve left, whether from exhaustion, grief or impatience.
6:12: The King James "uncircumcised lips" is a Hebrew idiom. Something uncircumcised was unfit for use or blocked, and the word was applied to ears that will not hear and hearts that will not respond as well as to mouths. Whether Moses means a physical speech difficulty or simply a lack of persuasive skill is not specified.
6:13: "Gave them a charge" translates a formal term: a commission issued with authority, laying a defined task on the person who receives it.
6:14: A "father's house" was the smallest unit of Israelite society: an extended household of several generations living together. Several of these made up a "family" or clan, and clans made up a tribe. The list begins with Reuben, Simeon and Levi because those are Jacob's first three sons in birth order, and it stops at Levi because its purpose is to fix Moses and Aaron in the tribe of Levi. The remaining nine tribes are simply not listed.
6:15: Mothers are almost never named in lists like this, which trace descent through fathers only. The note that Shaul's mother was Canaanite was kept because it marked something distinctive about the origin of that particular clan.
6:16: Gershon, Kohath and Merari head the three great divisions of the tribe of Levi, which later had separate duties in carrying and caring for the portable sanctuary. Lifespans are recorded in this list only for Levi, Kohath and Amram, the direct line running down to Moses and Aaron.
6:20: Marriage to a father's sister is expressly forbidden by the later law in Leviticus 18:12; the tradition kept this older account unaltered. The ancient Greek and Samaritan versions read instead that Jochebed was his father's brother's daughter, that is, his cousin.
6:21: This Korah is the same Korah who later leads a revolt against Moses and Aaron's authority (Numbers 16). Naming him here quietly plants a family connection the reader will need later.
6:23: Amminadab and Naashon belong to the tribe of Judah, where Naashon appears elsewhere as the tribe's leader in the wilderness; the note ties Aaron's household by marriage to that tribe. Of Aaron's four sons, Nadab and Abihu die in the incident recorded in Leviticus 10, and the priestly line continues through Eleazar and Ithamar.
6:24: "Korahites" is a clan name formed from Korah, in the usual way of naming a descent group after its ancestor. The same Korah leads the revolt against Moses in Numbers 16, and a guild of temple singers later bore the clan's name, which stands in the heading of several psalms.
6:25: Phinehas is an Egyptian name in origin, meaning roughly "the dark-skinned one" or "the Nubian"; several names in the Levite line, including Moses' own, are Egyptian rather than Hebrew. Putiel is not mentioned anywhere else, and his name also looks part-Egyptian.
6:26: "Organized groups" translates a Hebrew word used of troops drawn up in ranks for a march or a campaign. The picture is of a people leaving Egypt in ordered divisions rather than as a crowd.
6:27: The repeated "this is that Moses and Aaron" is the writer's way of pinning the genealogy just given to the two men of the story. The names are deliberately given in both orders, Aaron first in verse 26, Moses first in verse 27.
6:28: The narrative, which broke off at verse 13 for the family list, resumes here. Verses 29 and 30 repeat verses 11 and 12 almost word for word, a normal way in Hebrew writing of picking up a thread after a long insertion.
6:29: The narrative now picks up where it broke off at verse 12, restating the situation before continuing. Repeating the last point after a long insertion was a normal way of getting a reader back on track in a scroll, where you could not simply glance back up the page.
6:30: Moses repeats his objection from verse 12 word for word, so the story resumes at the exact point of his refusal. On "uncircumcised lips," see the note on verse 12.

Read Exodus 6