Exodus 4

¹And Moses answered and said, But look — they will not believe me and will not hear my voice, for they will say, The Lord has not appeared to you.

²And the Lord said to him, What is this in your hand? And he said, A staff.

³And he said, Throw it on the ground. And he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it.

⁴And the Lord said to Moses, Reach out your hand and grasp it by the tail. And he reached out his hand and grasped it, and it became a staff in his palm.

⁵So that they may believe that the Lord has appeared to you — the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

⁶And the Lord said to him further, Now put your hand into your bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom, and he drew it out, and look — his hand was diseased, white as snow.

⁷He said: Put your hand back into your bosom. So he put his hand back into his bosom, and when he drew it out from his bosom — behold, it had returned like his flesh.

⁸And it shall be, if they do not believe you and do not listen to the voice of the first sign, then they will believe the voice of the last sign.

⁹And it will be, if they do not believe even these two signs, and do not listen to your voice, you shall take some of the water of the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry land.

¹⁰And Moses said to YHWH: Please, my Lord, I am not a man of words, neither since yesterday nor since the day before, nor since you have spoken to your servant, for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue.

¹¹The Lord said to him: Who made a mouth for man, or who makes one mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?

¹²And now go, and I myself will be with your mouth and I will teach you what you shall speak.

¹³Moses said: Please, my Lord, send by the hand of whomever you will send.

¹⁴And the anger of YHWH was kindled against Moses, and he said: Is not Aaron your brother, the Levite? I know that he will indeed speak, and also look — he is going out to meet you, and when he sees you he will rejoice in his heart.

¹⁵And you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I — I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do.

¹⁶And he shall speak for you to the people; and it shall be that he shall be a mouth for you, and you shall be as God to him.

¹⁷And this staff you shall take in your hand, with which you shall do the signs.

¹⁸And Moses went and returned to Jether his father-in-law and said to him, Let me go now and return to my brothers who are in Egypt and see whether they are still alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace.

¹⁹And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, Go, return to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life have died.

²⁰And Moses took his wife and his sons and mounted them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt; and Moses took the staff of God in his hand.

²¹And the Lord said to Moses, When you go to return to Egypt, see — all the wonders that I have put in your hand, and do them before Pharaoh; and I will harden his heart, and he will not send the people out.

²²And you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord: Israel is my son, my firstborn.

²³And I have said to you, Send out my son that he may serve me; but you have refused to send him out — look, I am killing your son, your firstborn.

²⁴And it came to pass on the way, at the lodging place, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him.

²⁵And Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched it to his feet, and said, 'Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.'

²⁶So He let him alone. At that time she said, ‘A bridegroom of blood,’ because of the circumcision.

²⁷The Lord said to Aaron: Go to meet Moses in the wilderness. So he went and met him at the mountain of God, and he kissed him.

²⁸And Moses told Aaron all the words of YHWH with which he had sent him, and all the signs that he had commanded him.

²⁹Moses and Aaron went and gathered all the elders of the sons of Israel.

³⁰And Aaron spoke all the words that YHWH had spoken to Moses, and he performed the signs before the eyes of the people.

³¹And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had attended to the sons of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed down and worshiped.