Study Desk

And they came to Reuel, their father, and he said, "Why have you come so quickly today?"

And they said, "An Egyptian man delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and he even drew water for us and watered the flock."

And then during those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the work, and they cried out, and their cry for help because of the work went up to God.

But Moses said to God, "Look, if I go to the Israelites and I say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they say to me, ‘What is his name?' then what shall I say to them?"

And they will listen to your voice, and you will go, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt, and you will say to him, ‘Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews has met with us, and now let us please go on a journey of three days into the desert, and let us sacrifice to Yahweh our God.'

And Moses answered, and he said, "And if they do not believe me and they do not listen to my voice, but they say, ‘Yahweh did not appear to you?'"

"so that they may believe that Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, appeared to you, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

"And if they do not believe you and they will not listen to the voice of the former sign, then they will believe the voice of the latter sign.

And if they also do not believe the second of these signs and they will not listen to your voice, then you must take water from the Nile and pour it onto the dry ground, and the water that you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground."

And Moses went, and he returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and he said to him, "Please let me go, and let me return to my brothers who are in Egypt, and let me see whether they are yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, "Go in peace."

And Moses and Aaron went, and they gathered all of the elders of the Israelites.

And the people believed when they heard that Yahweh had attended to the Israelites and that he had seen their misery, and they knelt down and they worshiped.

And afterward, Moses and Aaron went, and they said to Pharaoh, "Thus says Yahweh the God of Israel, ‘Release my people so that they may hold a festival for me in the desert.'"

And they said, "The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go on a three-day journey into the desert, and let us sacrifice to Yahweh our God, lest he strike us with plague or with sword."

But the quota of the bricks that they were making before you must require of them. You must not reduce from it, because they are lazy. Therefore they are crying out, saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'

Let the work be heavier on the men so that they will do it and not pay attention to words of deception."

And the slave drivers of the people and their foremen went out, and they spoke to the people, saying, "Thus says Pharaoh, ‘I am not giving you straw.

Straw is not being given to your servants, but they are saying to us, ‘Make bricks!' and, look, your servants are being beaten, but it is the fault of your people."

And the foremen of the Israelites saw they were in trouble with the saying, "You will not reduce from your bricks for each day on its day."

And they met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting to meet them when they were going out from Pharaoh.