Exodus
7:1 ¶ And the LORD said unto Moses, See,
I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.
2 Thou shalt speak all that I command
thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children
of Israel out of his land. 3 And I will
harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of
Egypt. 4 But Pharaoh shall not hearken
unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and
my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.
5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am
the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children
of Israel from among them. 6 And Moses
and Aaron did as the LORD commanded them, so did they. 7 And Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron
fourscore and three years old, when they spake unto Pharaoh.
Moses
is 80 years old when these events take place and Aaron is 83, old men by our
measurement in a world where lifespans were decreasing from the hundreds of
years before the Flood due to the judgment on mankind, in part, made possible
by the change in environment after the Flood.
Pharaoh
is already stubborn, obstinate, prideful and a type of not only Satan but the
Beast of Revelation, popularly called The Antichrist. God will use that pride
and harden his heart for an occasion to perform signs and wonders. The Hebrew
people are born in signs and wonders.
Deuteronomy
4:34 Or hath God assayed to go and take
him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by
wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by
great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt
before your eyes?
The
condition of the ancient world was such that each nation, each tribe even,
claimed its very own deities and, as we have seen, even individual families had
their own gods of familial spirits of ancestors. The understanding that the God
of the Hebrews is real and powerful will not save the Egyptians because they
will regard Him as only the God of the Hebrews. Mankind has degenerated to the
point where he worships national gods he has invented who represent people
groups and real devils as layers upon layers of spiritual beings preventing
them from seeing the God who created him, as we do today with the theoretical
entities of science like the Higgs-Boson particle that have explanatory power
but no other reality. Now, the God who created them all is announcing Himself
to the world using the people He has prepared as a vehicle.
The question begs
itself, has He made Himself known to you?
Exodus
7:8 ¶ And the LORD spake unto Moses and
unto Aaron, saying, 9 When Pharaoh shall
speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you: then thou shalt say unto Aaron,
Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent.
10 And Moses and Aaron went in unto
Pharaoh, and they did so as the LORD had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod
before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent. 11 Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the
sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their
enchantments. 12 For they cast down
every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their
rods. 13 And he hardened Pharaoh’s
heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.
Here
is the disconcerting evidence that heathen worshippers of false gods and devils
are permitted their own minor miracles. Of course, the Lord’s work overcomes
anything they have to offer as it was He who gave permission for their little
show of power in the first place. This was clearly allowed to create the stage
for God’s power to be displayed, even in this small way.
For those lovers of the
original languages I’m going to repeat part of my comments that were said on
the passage in Exodus 4:1-9 because they bear repeating. If I make any mistakes
please let me know.
“The
Holy Spirit, through Moses, uses the Hebrew word, naw-khawsh, for serpent, the same word used for the
serpent who is Satan in the garden. But, in 7:9 & 10 serpent will be translated from tan-neem, which also is used in
other places for a dragon or even a whale. But in 7:15 we come back to
naw-khawsh again for serpent. As we
have seen in Greek from our study of books in the New Testament it is pointless
to look at a Hebrew or a Greek word and state that this or that is its exact
meaning when the context determines meaning and while one word can be used for
different ideas, more than one word can be used for the same idea. A study of
the word, love, in the Greek text of the New Testament will produce little
understanding if one runs off on a rabbit trail trying to use those words to
delineate different kinds of love. The kind of love the Holy Spirit is explaining
will depend on the context, not on the Greek word.
For
instance, in the following passage different words for love are used and a
great many mental gymnastics with the original Greek will take you off the road
of understanding into the mire of the meaning of Greek words. For instance,
several different Greek words are used for love in the New Testament but they
all, in context, mean what we think of as love, not, though, the erotic or
romantic kind.
After the resurrection, in John
21:15-17 Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves
Him, which calls into sharp, painful memory that Peter had denied His Lord
three times as Jesus predicted He would. And there are many other great sermons
from that passage, I'm sure.
Here, a person who pretends to be a Greek
expert is about to burst. He excitedly points out that the first and second
time Jesus asks the question He uses the word Agape' for to love someone from
esteem or respect and also used for divine love. Each of those times Peter
responds with Phileo, the love that comes from friendship or brotherly love.
The last time Jesus Himself uses Phileo and once again Peter responds with the same.
The pseudo-scholar will say that this lends much more meaning to the
conversation because Jesus is asking for a different kind of love, a divine
love, which Peter is not capable of and this reflects a fundamental failure in
mankind's capacity or willingness to love God in the right way blah, blah,
blah.
What the person who likes to think he is more
intelligent and knowledgeable than a Christian janitor who can read English has
done is to reveal his own ignorance. Agape' and Phileo are words for love that
are used interchangeably. No extra insight into these verses is gained by
playing ping pong with them. In Matthew 6:5 hypocrites Phileo to pray standing
in the synagogues, in Matthew 19:19 you are told to Agape' your neighbor as
yourself, John 15:19 says the world won't Phileo the disciples, 1 Corinthians
16:22 says that if any man Phileo not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema
Maranatha, and when we are repeatedly told to love our neighbor as ourselves
with Agape' the Scriptures in no way imply that this is superior to our
brotherly love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. I doubt anyone would
imply that the kind of love Jesus says we are to have for each other, which
distinguishes us as His followers, is inferior to the love we are supposed to
have for a stranger who is in need.
Titus 3:4 doesn't have the love of God our
Saviour toward man as Agape'. Paul's admonition in Titus 3:15 isn't Agape'. 1
Peter 1:22 uses both words for the same thought with Phileo first and then Agape'.
Does knowing this change your understanding of the text? Does it help you know
what you are to do? Is your lack of access or availability of access to the
Greek a determinant of your ability to understand God's words? Finally, in
Revelation 3:19 does it matter to you that Jesus Phileos here?
So,
trust your English Bible and don’t be concerned about unbelieving preachers
choking on nuances of meanings, offering “nuggets” of wisdom from the original
languages that simply aren’t there.
Serpent is a
serpent whichever Hebrew word for such a creature serpent comes from.”
In
verse 11 we see that wise men, sorcerers,
and magicians are all references to
the same type of person in this context. Jewish tradition, accepted by the Holy
Spirit in the following case, named two of the magicians.
2Timothy 3:8 Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so
do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the
faith.
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