2. You are to speak all that I command you and Aaron your brother is to speak to Pharaoh, so that he will let Bnei-Yisrael go out of his land.
3. Yet I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.
4. But Pharaoh will not listen to you, so I will lay My hand upon Egypt, and bring forth My armies, My people Bnei-Yisrael, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.
5. The Egyptians will know that I am Adonai, when I stretch out My hand against Egypt, and bring out Bnei-Yisrael from among them.”
6. So Moses and Aaron did as Adonai commanded them.
7. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three years old when they spoke to Pharaoh.
8. Adonai told Moses and Aaron,
9. “When Pharaoh speaks to you saying, ‘Prove yourselves with a miracle,’ then you are to say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, so that it may become a serpent.’”
10. So Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and did as Adonai had commanded. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent.
11. Then Pharaoh called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they too, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts.
12. For each man threw down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.
13. Yet Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. So he did not listen to them— just as Adonai had said.
14. Then Adonai said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is stubborn; he refuses to let the people go.
15. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is coming out to the water, and stand ready to meet him by the bank of the Nile. Take the staff that was transformed into a serpent in your hand.
16. You are to say to him: Adonai, God of the Hebrews, has sent me to you, saying, ‘Let My people go, so they may serve Me in the wilderness,’ and behold, you have not listened.