Study Desk

And Moses said to God, When I come to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you: and they say to me, What is his name? what am I to say to them?

And they will give ear to your voice: and you, with the chiefs of Israel, will go to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and say to him, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has come to us: let us then go three days' journey into the waste land to make an offering to the Lord our God.

And Moses, answering, said, It is certain that they will not have faith in me or give ear to my voice; for they will say, You have not seen the Lord.

So that they may be certain that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has been seen by you.

And if they do not have faith in you or give ear to the voice of the first sign, they will have faith in the second sign.

And if they have no faith even in these two signs and will not give ear to your voice, then you are to take the water of the Nile and put it on the dry land: and the water you take out of the river will become blood on the dry land.

And Moses went back to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, Let me go back now to my relations in Egypt and see if they are still living. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace.

And the people had faith in them; and hearing that the Lord had taken up the cause of the children of Israel and had seen their troubles, with bent heads they gave him worship.

And after that, Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, and said, The Lord, the God of Israel, says, Let my people go so that they may keep a feast to me in the waste land.

And they said, The God of the Hebrews has come to us: let us then go three days' journey into the waste land to make an offering to the Lord our God, so that he may not send death on us by disease or the sword.

But see that they make the same number of bricks as before, and no less: for they have no love for work; and so they are crying out and saying, Let us go and make an offering to our God.

Give the men harder work, and see that they do it; let them not give attention to false words.

And the responsible men of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's overseers had put over them, were given blows, and they said to them, Why have you not done your regular work, in making bricks as before?

They give us no dry stems and they say to us, Make bricks: and they give your servants blows; but it is your people who are in the wrong.

And they came face to face with Moses and Aaron, who were in their way when they came out from Pharaoh:

And they said to them, May the Lord take note of you and be your judge; for you have given Pharaoh and his servants a bad opinion of us, putting a sword in their hands for our destruction.

I let myself be seen by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God, the Ruler of all; but they had no knowledge of my name Yahweh.

And Moses said these words to the children of Israel, but they gave no attention to him, because of the grief of their spirit and the cruel weight of their work.

And Moses and Aaron did so: as the Lord gave them orders, so they did.

And Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they gave the Lord's word to Pharaoh.