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Exodus 9: What the Passage Says

124 claims across 35 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Exodus 9 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD sends three more plagues on Egypt through Moses: a deadly disease that kills Egypt's livestock, boils that break out on people and animals, and a storm of hail and fire that destroys crops, trees, and anyone left outdoors. Israel's livestock are spared, and no hail falls in Goshen where the Israelites live. Pharaoh admits he has sinned and promises to let Israel go, but once Moses stops the storm he changes his mind again, just as the LORD had said.

Claim by Claim

  1. 9:1
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to go in to Pharaoh.
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to Pharaoh.
    • The LORD gave Moses these words to say: thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews.
    • The message was: let my people go.
    • The purpose of letting them go was that they might serve the LORD.
  2. 9:2
    • The message continued: if you refuse to let them go.
    • The message continued: and you still hold them fast.
  3. 9:3
    • The hand of the LORD will come upon your livestock that is in the field.
    • The livestock affected are the horses.
    • The livestock affected are the donkeys.
    • The livestock affected are the camels.
    • The livestock affected are the cattle.
    • The livestock affected are the flocks.
    • There will be a very severe plague on the livestock.
  4. 9:4
    • The LORD will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt.
    • Nothing belonging to the children of Israel will die.
  5. 9:5
    • The LORD set an appointed time.
    • The LORD said that tomorrow the LORD would do this thing in the land.
  6. 9:6
    • The LORD did this thing on the next day.
    • All the livestock of Egypt died.
    • Not one of the livestock of the children of Israel died.
  7. 9:7
    • Pharaoh sent to inquire.
    • Not even one of the livestock of Israel was dead.
    • Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
    • Pharaoh did not let the people go.
  8. 9:8
    • The LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron.
    • The LORD told them to take handfuls of soot from a furnace.
    • The LORD said Moses was to scatter the soot toward the heavens.
    • The scattering was to be done in the sight of Pharaoh.
  9. 9:9
    • The soot will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt.
    • It will become a boil breaking out in sores on man.
    • It will become a boil breaking out in sores on beast.
    • This will happen throughout all the land of Egypt.
  10. 9:10
    • They took soot from the furnace.
    • They stood before Pharaoh.
    • Moses scattered it toward the heavens.
    • It became a boil breaking out in sores on man and on beast.
  11. 9:11
    • The magicians could not stand before Moses.
    • The reason they could not stand was the boils.
    • The boil was on the magicians.
    • The boil was on all the Egyptians.
  12. 9:12
    • The LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart.
    • Pharaoh did not listen to Moses and Aaron.
    • This happened as the LORD had spoken to Moses.
  13. 9:13
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to rise early in the morning.
    • The LORD told Moses to stand before Pharaoh.
    • The LORD told Moses to say to Pharaoh: thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews.
    • The message was: let my people go.
    • The purpose of letting them go was that they might serve the LORD.
  14. 9:14
    • The LORD said that this time he would send all his plagues upon Pharaoh's heart.
    • The LORD said he would send them upon Pharaoh's servants.
    • The LORD said he would send them upon Pharaoh's people.
    • The purpose was that Pharaoh might know there is none like the LORD in all the earth.
  15. 9:15
    • The LORD said he could have stretched out his hand.
    • The LORD said he could have struck Pharaoh and his people with pestilence.
    • The LORD said Pharaoh would then have been wiped out from the earth.
    • The Hebrew is ambiguous whether this states what the LORD has already done or what he could have done but did not; the King James renders it as a future intention to stretch out his hand and smite.
  16. 9:16
    • The LORD said that for this reason he had kept Pharaoh standing.
    • The reason was to show Pharaoh the LORD's power.
    • The reason was so that the LORD's name might be declared in all the earth.
  17. 9:17
    • The LORD said Pharaoh was still exalting himself against the LORD's people.
    • The LORD said Pharaoh was doing this by not letting them go.
    • The King James puts this as a question.
  18. 9:18
    • The LORD said that tomorrow at this time he would rain down very severe hail.
    • The LORD said there had been no hail like it in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.
  19. 9:19
    • The LORD told Pharaoh to send and bring his livestock to shelter.
    • The command covered all that Pharaoh had in the field.
    • Every man and beast found in the field and not gathered home would have the hail come down on them.
    • Those left in the field would die.
  20. 9:20
    • Some of Pharaoh's servants feared the word of the LORD.
    • Those who feared it made their servants and their livestock flee into the houses.
  21. 9:21
    • Some did not set their heart on the word of the LORD.
    • Those who disregarded it left their servants and their livestock in the field.
  22. 9:22
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to stretch out his hand toward the heavens.
    • The purpose was that hail would fall in all the land of Egypt.
    • The hail would fall on man.
    • The hail would fall on beast.
    • The hail would fall on every plant of the field in the land of Egypt.
  23. 9:23
    • Moses stretched out his staff toward the heavens.
    • The LORD sent thunder and hail.
    • Fire ran down to the earth.
    • The LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt.
  24. 9:24
    • There was hail.
    • Fire was flashing in the midst of the hail.
    • The hail was very severe.
    • There had been none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
  25. 9:25
    • The hail struck everything that was in the field throughout all the land of Egypt.
    • What it struck included man and beast.
    • The hail struck every plant of the field.
    • The hail broke every tree of the field.
  26. 9:26
    • There was no hail only in the land of Goshen.
    • The children of Israel were in the land of Goshen.
  27. 9:27
    • Pharaoh sent and called for Moses and Aaron.
    • Pharaoh said to them that he had sinned this time.
    • Pharaoh said the LORD is righteous.
    • Pharaoh said that he and his people are wicked.
  28. 9:28
    • Pharaoh told them to entreat the LORD.
    • Pharaoh said there had been enough of God's thunder and hail.
    • Pharaoh said he would let them go.
    • Pharaoh said they would not stay any longer.
  29. 9:29
    • Moses said to Pharaoh that when he had gone out of the city he would spread out his hands to the LORD.
    • Moses said the thunder would cease.
    • Moses said there would be no more hail.
    • Moses said the purpose was that Pharaoh might know that the earth belongs to the LORD.
  30. 9:30
    • Moses said that as for Pharaoh and his servants, he knew they did not yet fear the LORD God.
  31. 9:31
    • The flax and the barley were struck down.
    • The barley was in the ear.
    • The flax was in bud.
  32. 9:32
    • The wheat and the spelt were not struck down.
    • The reason was that they are late crops.
  33. 9:33
    • Moses went out from Pharaoh out of the city.
    • Moses spread out his hands to the LORD.
    • The thunder and the hail ceased.
    • The rain was no longer poured out on the earth.
  34. 9:34
    • Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased.
    • Pharaoh sinned again.
    • Pharaoh hardened his heart.
    • Pharaoh's servants hardened their hearts with him.
  35. 9:35
    • Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
    • Pharaoh did not let the children of Israel go.
    • This happened as the LORD had spoken by the hand of Moses.

Words Worth Explaining

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

9:1
The Hebrew verb rendered "worship" is the ordinary word for serving or working for a master, the same word used of Israel's forced labor for Egypt. The demand is that they stop serving Pharaoh in order to serve the LORD. "Hebrews" is the term outsiders and foreign rulers use for the Israelites in these chapters.
9:3
"The hand of the LORD" is a standard Hebrew idiom for power in action, especially power to strike. It does not picture a visible hand.
9:4
"Sever between" in the King James means make a distinction between, not cut apart. The point is that the disease sorts the animals by their owners.
9:6
Hebrew uses "all" the way spoken English uses "everything", of the whole group in view, here the animals left out in the open fields (v. 3). Egyptian livestock appear again in verses 19–25 and in later chapters.
9:7
In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thought and decision, not of feeling. A "hard" or "heavy" heart means a mind made up and unwilling to change, not a lack of pity.
9:8
The furnace is a kiln, the kind used for firing bricks or lime, the work Israelite slaves did. Moses throws the soot upward in front of Pharaoh so the act is done publicly and in his sight.
9:9
"Blains" is an old English word for blisters. The phrase describes boils that swell and then burst open into raw sores. Skin disease also had a religious cost in Egypt: priests were required to be physically unblemished to perform rituals.
9:11
The magicians are the Egyptian court's ritual experts, scribe-priests trained in spells, omens and healing arts. They had matched the first signs (7:11, 7:22, 8:7) and failed at the gnats (8:18). "Could not stand before Moses" means they could not present themselves at all; Egyptian ritual specialists were expected to be physically unblemished.
9:12
This chapter uses more than one Hebrew expression for the same thing: Pharaoh's heart being "heavy," Pharaoh "making it strong" himself, and, here for the first time in the narrative, the LORD making it strong. Earlier plagues say only that Pharaoh's heart was hardened or that he hardened it.
9:13
"Thus saith the LORD" was the standard opening of a royal messenger delivering a king's words. It means: these are not my words, they are his.
9:14
"Plagues" translates a word meaning blows or strikes; it does not mean disease specifically. "Straight at you yourself" renders a Hebrew phrase that runs literally "to your heart", aimed at you personally, at the center of you.
9:15
The Hebrew here is compressed and can be read two ways: as what the LORD could have done by now but chose not to do, or as a threat of what he is about to do. Translations differ, and the wording does not settle it.
9:16
"Raised you up" translates a verb meaning "caused you to stand." It can mean brought you to power, kept you standing (that is, spared you so far), or set you in place for these events. The Hebrew does not choose between them.
9:17
The Hebrew verb is rare and its root appears to be connected with a raised road or embankment, giving a picture of setting yourself up as a barrier in the way of my people. The precise sense is uncertain.
9:18
Egypt gets almost no rain, and hail there is very rare. A storm of this kind would have been an extraordinary event rather than a seasonal hazard, which is why the threat carries the weight it does.
9:19
This warning is the point of the verse: Pharaoh's officials are given a full day's notice and a way to save their people and animals. What follows tests who believes the warning.
9:20
"Feared the word of the LORD" here means took it seriously enough to act on it, closer to respect backed by alarm than to terror.
9:23
The staff is Moses' shepherd's staff, the same one used for the earlier signs. A staff was also a normal emblem of authority. "Fire ran along upon the ground" in the King James is literally "fire walked earthward", lightning striking the ground.
9:24
"Fire mingled with the hail" is the way the writer describes lightning flashing through the storm again and again.
9:26
Goshen is the district in the eastern Nile delta where Jacob's family had been settled generations earlier (Genesis 47), grazing land somewhat apart from the Egyptian heartland.
9:27
"In the right" and "in the wrong" (King James "righteous" and "wicked") are courtroom words: the LORD has the just case, Pharaoh and his people are the guilty party. "This time I have sinned" can be read as admitting fault on this occasion in particular.
9:28
Hebrew has no separate word for thunder; it says "voices." The phrase here is "voices of God," which can mean either God's own thunder or simply overwhelming thunder, since "of God" sometimes works in Hebrew as a way of saying "enormous."
9:29
Spreading or lifting the hands with palms open toward the sky was the ordinary posture for prayer. The gesture itself, not any spoken formula, is what marks Moses as praying. The text does not say why he waits until he is outside the city.
9:30
To "fear the LORD" does not mean being scared of him. It means taking him seriously and treating him with respect.
9:31
Flax is the plant linen is made from, and linen was Egypt's cloth. Barley was the cheaper bread grain and the fodder for animals. "Ripe in the head" means the seed heads had formed and the stalks were brittle and nearly ready for harvest; flax "in bud" was flowering. Both stages are easily destroyed by hail, and the detail places the storm around January or February.
9:32
The King James "rie" is not rye, which was not grown in Egypt; the grain is spelt, or emmer, a relative of wheat. Wheat and spelt ripen roughly a month later than barley, so they were still short and green and bent under the hail instead of breaking.
9:35
"As the LORD had spoken by Moses" means through Moses, who is the messenger rather than the author of the message.

Read Exodus 9