Exodus 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses that he has made him like God to Pharaoh, with Aaron as his spokesman, and warns in advance that he will harden Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh will not listen. Aaron throws down his staff and it becomes a serpent; Egypt's magicians do the same, but Aaron's staff swallows theirs, and Pharaoh still refuses to listen. Moses and Aaron then strike the Nile and its water turns to blood, killing the fish and leaving the Egyptians digging near the river for something to drink. The magicians copy this too, Pharaoh goes back into his house unmoved, and seven days pass after the river is struck.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD said he had made Moses a god to Pharaoh.
   • The LORD said Aaron, Moses' brother, would be Moses' prophet.
2. 7:2
   • The LORD told Moses he must speak everything the LORD commanded him.
   • The LORD said Aaron would speak to Pharaoh.
   • The purpose was that Pharaoh send the children of Israel out of his land.
3. 7:3
   • The LORD said he would harden Pharaoh's heart.
   • The LORD said he would multiply his signs and his wonders in the land of Egypt.
4. 7:4
   • The LORD said Pharaoh would not listen to Moses and Aaron.
   • The LORD said he would lay his hand upon Egypt.
   • The LORD said he would bring his hosts, his people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt.
   • The LORD said this would be done by great judgments.
5. 7:5
   • The LORD said the Egyptians would know that he is the LORD.
   • The LORD said he would stretch out his hand upon Egypt.
   • The LORD said he would bring the children of Israel out from among the Egyptians.
6. 7:6
   • Moses and Aaron did as the LORD commanded them.
   • They did exactly so.
7. 7:7
   • Moses was eighty years old when they spoke to Pharaoh.
   • Aaron was eighty-three years old when they spoke to Pharaoh.
8. 7:8
   • The LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron.
9. 7:9
   • The LORD said that Pharaoh would speak to them.
   • The LORD said Pharaoh would demand that they produce a wonder to prove themselves.
   • The LORD said Moses was then to tell Aaron to take his staff.
   • The LORD said Aaron was to throw the staff down before Pharaoh.
   • The LORD said the staff would become a serpent.
10. 7:10
    • Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh.
    • They did as the LORD had commanded.
    • Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and before Pharaoh's servants.
    • The staff became a serpent.
11. 7:11
    • Pharaoh called the wise men and the sorcerers.
    • The magicians of Egypt also did the same thing by their secret arts.
12. 7:12
    • Each man threw down his staff.
    • The staffs became serpents.
    • Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.
13. 7:13
    • Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
    • Pharaoh did not listen to them.
    • This was as the LORD had said.
14. 7:14
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD said Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
    • The LORD said Pharaoh refused to let the people go.
15. 7:15
    • The LORD told Moses to go to Pharaoh in the morning.
    • The LORD said Pharaoh goes out to the water.
    • The LORD told Moses to stand on the bank of the river to meet him.
    • The LORD told Moses to take in his hand the staff that had been turned into a snake.
16. 7:16
    • The LORD told Moses to say to Pharaoh that the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, had sent him to Pharaoh.
    • The message was to let the LORD's people go.
    • The purpose was that they might serve the LORD in the wilderness.
    • Moses was to say that Pharaoh had not listened up to this point.
17. 7:17
    • Moses was to say that this is what the LORD says.
    • The LORD said that by this Pharaoh would know that he is the LORD.
    • The LORD said he would strike the waters of the river with the staff in his hand.
    • The LORD said the waters would be turned to blood.
18. 7:18
    • The LORD said the fish in the river would die.
    • The LORD said the river would stink.
    • The LORD said the Egyptians would be unable to bear drinking water from the river.
19. 7:19
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to tell Aaron to take his staff.
    • The LORD told Aaron to stretch out his hand over the waters of Egypt.
    • This included their streams, their canals, their ponds, and all their reservoirs of water.
    • The purpose was that the waters become blood.
    • The LORD said there would be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.
20. 7:20
    • Moses and Aaron did as the LORD commanded.
    • He lifted up the staff.
    • He struck the waters in the river.
    • This was done in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants.
    • All the waters in the river were turned to blood.
21. 7:21
    • The fish in the river died.
    • The river stank.
    • The Egyptians could not drink the water of the river.
    • There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.
22. 7:22
    • The magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts.
    • Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
    • Pharaoh did not listen to them.
    • This was as the LORD had said.
23. 7:23
    • Pharaoh turned and went into his house.
    • Pharaoh did not take this to heart either.
24. 7:24
    • All the Egyptians dug around the river for water to drink.
    • They did so because they could not drink the water of the river.
25. 7:25
    • Seven days were completed after the LORD struck the river.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

"I have made you like God to Pharaoh" is a comparison drawn from how prophecy worked: a god supplies the words, a prophet delivers them. In the Hebrew Bible a prophet is first of all a spokesman, someone who carries another's message, rather than someone who predicts the future. So Moses will supply the words and Aaron will speak them, the same relation Moses himself has to the LORD.

7:2

The "children of Israel" were the descendants of a man named Israel, also called Jacob. By this time his family had grown into a whole nation, and the Egyptians had made them slaves.

7:3

In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thinking, willing and deciding, not of feeling as in modern English. To "harden" or "strengthen" a heart is to make a person unyielding or fixed in a decision. The plague narrative uses three different Hebrew verbs for this (make strong, make heavy, make hard) and sometimes God is the one who does it, sometimes Pharaoh himself, and sometimes the Hebrew simply says his heart was hard without naming who made it so.

7:4

"Lay my hand on" is a standard idiom for bringing force to bear, as "stretch out my hand" is in the next verse; no physical hand is meant. "My divisions" (King James "mine armies") translates a military word for organized ranks or companies, the Israelites are pictured leaving not as a crowd of refugees but as a mustered force marching out in order.

7:5

Where the King James prints LORD in small capitals it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH. "Know that I am the LORD" is not asking Pharaoh to learn a fact about religion in general; it is about recognizing whose name this is and what that name can do.

7:7

"Fourscore" is eighty. A score is twenty, so fourscore and three is eighty-three.

7:9

The word translated "serpent" here is not the ordinary word for snake. It is the term used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible for a large reptile or sea monster, a crocodile-like or dragon-like creature. Verse 15 uses the ordinary snake word when referring back to this same event, so the two terms are being used loosely for the same thing.

7:10

"His servants" means the royal court: officials, ministers and advisers who served the king, not household slaves. This is a formal audience with witnesses, not a private conversation.

7:11

Egyptian courts kept professional ritual specialists, often lector-priests, the men who read and performed the sacred texts. "Wise men," "sorcerers" and "magicians" are three overlapping terms for this class of official. The phrase rendered "secret arts" comes from a root meaning hidden or concealed, referring to their guarded professional techniques.

7:12

A staff was a working tool but also a badge of office; a ruler's or an official's staff stood for his authority. Aaron's staff swallowing the others is a contest of authorities acted out in front of the court, and Pharaoh's experts lose the props of their own office.

7:15

"The river" without further description means the Nile throughout Exodus; Egypt had only one river worth naming. Why Pharaoh went out to the water each morning is not stated: it may have been a routine inspection of the river's level, on which the whole country's harvest depended, or a ceremonial visit.

7:16

"Hebrews" is the label outsiders use for this people in Exodus; Egyptians call them that, and Israelites use it when speaking to Egyptians. The verb translated "worship" is the ordinary Hebrew word for serving (the same word used of the forced labor they are doing for Pharaoh) and it covers sacrifice and religious service as well. The request is pointed: they will serve one master or the other. "Wilderness" means open, uncultivated grazing country, not necessarily sand desert.

7:17

The Hebrew shifts speakers mid-sentence here and the ambiguity is in the original: the LORD is quoted saying "the staff in my hand," though the staff is the one Moses and Aaron carry. Ancient and modern readers have taken it either as God speaking of the staff as his own instrument, or as the words Moses is to say in his own voice.

7:18

"Lothe" is the old spelling of loathe. The sense is not moral disgust but physical revulsion: they will not be able to stomach the water.

7:19

The four terms cover the whole Egyptian water system: the Nile's branches, the man-made irrigation canals that carried water to the fields, standing ponds, and any collected pool or reservoir. "Containers of wood and stone" means the household jars and basins in which drawn water was stored, the point being that even water already taken from the river is included.

7:23

"He did not take this to heart" is the same Hebrew word for heart used of Pharaoh's hardening, here in an ordinary idiom meaning he gave it no thought or attention. "Either" points back to the staff that became a serpent: this is the second sign he has brushed aside.

7:24

Digging beside the Nile taps water that has seeped through the sand and gravel of the bank, which filters it. This was ordinary Egyptian practice for getting cleaner drinking water, not an act of desperation invented for the occasion.

7:25

The Hebrew says only that seven days were filled up after the LORD struck the river. It does not specify whether the plague itself lasted seven days or whether seven days simply passed before the next confrontation.