Thread by @JoelBaden

#Exodus 7:8-13

The first wonder

The first encounter between Moses/Aaron and Pharaoh in the plagues/wonders cycle, and, alas, the source of much interpretive and compositional confusion - but a reasonable example of how P does this sort of thing.

YHWH instructs Moses and Aaron. The instructions are for Moses to tell Aaron to do something, to bring about a wonder. They do so, and then we hear about whether Pharaoh’s magicians can do the same. If they can, Pharaoh doesn’t care. That’s the basic structure here.

The confusion here comes in the content of the wonder itself. It is often assumed that this casting down of a staff and it turning into a snake is the “real” version of the “practice” one that Moses did back in Exodus 4. But it’s not, on multiple levels.

First, as we noted there, the signs Moses got in Exod 4 weren’t meant for Pharaoh, but for the Israelites - and he did them for the Israelites already. Second, the staff used for that was explicitly Moses’s staff, as YHWH directly instructed. This is Aaron’s staff.

Third, and perhaps most notably, Aaron’s staff in this story, despite every translation you’ve read and every movie you’ve seen, doesn’t turn into a snake - it turns into a crocodile.

Long story short, this and the Exodus 4 sign aren’t the same.

Are they related? Probably on a traditional level, sure: there’s lots of overlap between J and P in the plagues and signs and wonders, and it’s totally reasonable to assume that the staff turning into an animal was a traditional (Egyptian?) magic trick that got taken up in both.

But on the level of the narrative, they’re configured differently, and importantly they function differently.

Remember that in P the idea isn’t to try and get Pharaoh to let Israel go. Good thing too, because a staff turning into a crocodile may be neat, but it isn’t particularly likely to scare Pharaoh into doing anything. It doesn’t hurt in any way.

It’s the very first in an increasing series of signs and wonders intended to demonstrate YHWH’s existence and power. It’s like the first trick in a magic show. Looks easy, and might be. But by the time the show is over, you couldn’t dream of repeating the trick at home.