Exodus 7:1-7
God sends weak servants with His own authority, overrules hardened opposition, and acts in judgment and deliverance so that His name will be known.
1 Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, I have made you as God to Pharaoh; and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.
2 You shall speak all that I command you; and Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land.
3 I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
4 But Pharaoh will not listen to you, so I will lay my hand on Egypt, and bring out my armies, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.
5 The Egyptians shall know that I am Yahweh when I stretch out my hand on Egypt, and bring the children of Israel out from among them.”
6 Moses and Aaron did so. As Yahweh commanded them, so they did.
7 Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
God sends weak servants with his own authority, overrules hardened opposition, and acts in judgment and deliverance so that his name will be known.
Exodus 7:1-7 presents the LORD’s renewed commissioning of Moses and Aaron after Moses’ repeated objection, clarifying their assigned roles, announcing Pharaoh’s hardened resistance, and establishing that the coming judgments will reveal the LORD’s identity and power to Egypt.
This passage directly answers Exodus 6:28-30, where Moses asked how Pharaoh would listen to a man of uncircumcised lips. The Lord does not remove the mission or wait for Moses to feel eloquent. Instead, He establishes Moses and Aaron’s roles and frames the coming plague cycle. The passage bridges the commissioning material and the first sign before Pharaoh in Exodus 7:8-13, functioning as the theological overture to the judgments against Egypt.
The passage stands at the threshold of the plague narrative. Moses has already objected that he is of faltering lips, Israel has been too discouraged to listen, and Pharaoh has intensified Israel’s labor. The LORD now restates the mission in a way that prepares the reader for a prolonged confrontation, not an immediate diplomatic success.
The LORD Begins to Answer Pharaoh: Signs, Hardening, and the Nile Turned to Blood
The LORD begins to answer Pharaoh’s defiance by revealing His power over Egypt’s counterfeit signs, Pharaoh’s hardened heart, and the Nile itself.