1 Then the Lord said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.

Exodus Chapters 6 and 7 are a little bit of a puzzle. At the end of Chapter 5, Moses was asking the Lord why he came to deliver his message to Pharaoh, seeing that it had only stirred up more trouble from the Israelites, and at first Chapter 6 seems to be the Lord’s response to that question, reassuring and reinforcing His promise that the Israelites will soon be freed. However, as we continue read, certain things are brought up that have already been covered in the previous chapters, but they are being presented as if they were new information. We have God identifying Himself as Jehovah, His statement that He has seen the suffering of Israel and will deliver them, Moses being concerned that he cannot speak well, God assigning Aaron to be the spokesperson for Moses, and God giving the concept of divine investiture.

All of this sounds a lot like what was already covered in Chapters 3 through 5, where Moses met God at the burning bush, reunited with Aaron, and brought God’s message to the people in Egypt. It seems likely to me that Chapters 6 and 7 are actually a second account of the same events that transpired in Chapters 3 through 5, an account that keeps many things the same, but also varies in several details.

We must remember that the Bible is the product of many separate accountings, and interpretations, and split narratives. The Bible is the library that took all of these different accounts and combined or ordered them into one. Sometimes repeated accounts are obvious, such as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John covering the same ministry of Christ, but in some cases the repeating narratives aren’t so clearly announced.

In my study, I am going to operate under this assumption that Chapters 6 and 7 are a second account of what we already covered in Chapters 3 through 5. I am going to assume that the very next verses that we read are being given from the burning bush to Moses in Midian. I will take special note of the similarities and differences between this account and the one that preceded it. Of course, whether one believes that Chapters 6 and 7 are a rehashing of events or not, certainly all may agree that the record moves into entirely new material by the time we reach Chapter 8.