Exodus7chapter 7

Exodus 7:1-2

The arrangement of 4:16 is repeated here in stronger words, where Aaron was to be to Moses instead of a mouth and Moses to Aaron instead of God. The verse gives a working definition of a prophet, which is a man who speaks what he is given by another. Verse 2 spells the chain out, that Moses speaks all that he is commanded and Aaron carries it to Pharaoh.

Exodus 7:3

This is the second of two announcements that God will harden Pharaoh, the first at 4:21, and both stand before a single plague has fallen. Through the first five plagues the text then puts the act on Pharaoh or leaves it stative, at 7:13, 7:14, 7:22, 8:15, 8:19, 8:32 and 9:7, and 9:12 is the first place it says the LORD did it. Romans 9:17 quotes Exodus 9:16 and draws from it that whom he will he hardeneth. R. C. Sproul reads the sequence as one act with two true descriptions, holding that divine sovereignty and human responsibility are both real, and the free will reading takes the order of the statements as God confirming a man in the direction he had already taken.

Exodus 7:4-5

The purpose given for the refusal is that Egypt shall know who the LORD is, which answers the question Pharaoh asked at 5:2, who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice. Genesis 15:14 had promised of Egypt that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge, and the great judgments named here are the discharge of that promise. The people are called mine armies, a word for a body drawn up in order rather than a crowd, and it returns at 12:41 and 12:51 for the same people walking out.

Exodus 7:6-7

The obedience is stated twice in one verse, and Gill takes the repetition as the report that from here on the two of them never argued again, after five chapters in which Moses raised objection after objection. Their ages are given at the moment they walk in, fourscore and fourscore and three. Acts 7:23 and 7:30 divide Moses' life into forty years in Egypt and forty in Midian, so the errand begins when four fifths of it is already spent.

Exodus 7:8-10

The first sign given at the bush comes back. At 4:2-4 the rod became a serpent and Moses fled from it, and here Aaron casts it down before Pharaoh on command, though the Hebrew noun is not the one used at the bush. Exodus 4:3 has nachash, the ordinary word for a snake, while 7:9, 7:10 and 7:12 have tannin, a word used elsewhere of a great creature of the water. The same rod turns the river at verse 20, divides the sea at 14:16 and strikes the rock at 17:6.

Exodus 7:11-12

Egypt's own experts match the sign, and this is the first of three stages the magicians pass through in the book. They duplicate the rod here, the blood at verse 22 and the frogs at 8:7, then they fail at the lice and tell Pharaoh This is the finger of God at 8:19, and by the boils at 9:11 they cannot stand before Moses because the boils are upon them. Aaron's rod swallows their rods, so the first scene is decided by which serpent eats the others. Spurgeon preached this verse as the power of Aaron's rod and refused to settle whether the magicians used sleight of hand or something worse, on the ground that the outcome is the same either way.

Exodus 7:13

The KJV reads And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, which leaves the subject of the verb open, and the ASV renders the same clause And Pharaoh's heart was hardened. Adam Clarke argued that the Hebrew here is the identical construction the KJV translates as was hardened at verse 22, and that it should have been put the same way in both places. Any reading of the chapter that leans on this verse has to say that the translations differ. The closing clause, as the LORD had said, points back to the refusal foretold at verse 4.

Exodus 7:14

The Hebrew word behind the English harden changes here. Verse 13 has chazaq and this verse has kabed, which carries the sense of heavy or dull, and qashah stands behind the same English elsewhere in the book, so no single Hebrew word runs through the nineteen statements. Clarke reads the heaviness as the condition of a man who takes no conviction from evidence however clear the light on it.

Exodus 7:15-16

Plague one opens the first of three triads, and the opening line is where the pattern shows: the first plague of each set is warned at the river in the morning, at 7:15, 8:20 and 9:13, the second is warned inside the palace, at 8:1, 9:1 and 10:1, and the third falls with no warning at all, at 8:16, 9:8 and 10:21. Verse 16 gives the demand in the form it keeps for the rest of the book, Let my people go, that they may serve me, which is release for a purpose rather than release on its own. That purpose clause is attached seven times, at 4:23, 7:16, 8:1, 8:20, 9:1, 9:13 and 10:3, and the Hebrew root inside it is the one Exodus 1:13 and 1:14 used five times over for the bondage.

Exodus 7:17-18

The sign is aimed at Pharaoh's own question. He asked at 5:2 who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice, and the answer given here is in this thou shalt know that I am the LORD. What is struck is the Nile, which is where the Hebrew boys were ordered drowned at 1:22 and where the ark of bulrushes was laid at 2:3. Clarke gathers the traveller accounts of how good the water of the Nile was held to be, and that is what gives the loathing of verse 18 its weight.

Exodus 7:19

The stroke is widened past the river to the streams, the rivers, the ponds and the pools, and then to the blood standing in vessels of wood and vessels of stone. Aaron holds the rod through the first three plagues as he held it for the serpent, and from the boils at 9:10 onward Moses acts himself. Egypt lived on that water, and the verse leaves nothing holding water untouched.

Exodus 7:20-21

The third sign given at the bush arrives as the first plague. At 4:9 Moses was told to pour water from the river on the dry land and it would become blood, which was given then as a sign to Israel and is done now to the river itself in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants. Commentators divide over whether the water became blood or the appearance of blood, with Clarke holding the change real because the fish died and the river stank, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown leaving the question open on the ground that either was within God's power. The text reports the dead fish, the stench and the water no one could drink, and says nothing about the substance.

Exodus 7:22-23

The magicians match the plague, and Wesley notes what the match costs Egypt, since turning more water into blood while water is scarce helps nobody and proves only that they can do it. Undoing the plague would have answered Moses, and they do not undo it. The hardening is put in the plain passive here, Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and verse 23 adds that he turned and went into his house and did not set his heart to this also.

Exodus 7:24-25

Egypt digs beside the Nile for water it can drink, and Henry reads the digging as mercy inside the judgment, since the people were not left to die of thirst for their king's obstinacy. The plague is given a length, seven days, which the text does for only one other of the nine, the three days of darkness at 10:22. Pharaoh has a week in which to answer and spends it in his house.