February 2: Exodus 4:18 – Exodus 7:13

Moses Returns to Egypt – Exodus 4:18–31

• Moses gets permission from Jethro and returns to Egypt with his wife Zipporah and their sons (all the men who wanted to take his life are now dead). God tells him to do before Pharaoh all the miracles He had put in his power, but that He will harden Pharaoh's heart. Moses is instructed to tell Pharaoh to let "God's firstborn"—the people of Israel—go, and that if Pharaoh refuses, God will kill his firstborn.
• As Moses travels to Egypt, God meets him and seeks to put him to death. Zipporah circumcises their son and touches Moses' feet with the foreskin, and God leaves Moses alone.
• God tells Aaron, Moses' brother, to go into the wilderness to meet Moses, and he does (this is about forty years after Moses fled Egypt). Moses tells Aaron what he will need to say for him. The brothers gather the elders of Israel, and Aaron speaks the words from God and does the miracles. The Hebrew elders believe and worship God.

Making Bricks Without Straw –Exodus 5

• Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and tell him to let the Hebrew people go so they can hold a feast in the wilderness. Pharaoh asks who the Lord is, that he should obey him. He refuses to let the people go.
• Moses and Aaron ask that the Hebrew people be allowed to journey three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to God, but Pharaoh refuses and then instructs his taskmasters to not provide the Hebrews with straw to make their bricks (making bricks is what they're enslaved to do). The people of Israel now have to gather their own straw but still have to meet their daily quota of bricks.
• The people of Israel are scattered throughout the land as they search for straw. When their work is not done, the Egyptian taskmasters beat the Hebrew foremen. The foremen go to Pharaoh to complain, and he tells them they are idle (because they want to go into the wilderness to sacrifice).
• When the foremen leave Pharaoh, they are met by Moses and Aaron, and they complain that Moses and Aaron have made them stink in Pharaoh's sight and that he will kill them.
• Moses questions God why he has done this evil to the Hebrew people and tells God that He has not delivered them at all.

God Promises Deliverance – Exodus 6

• God tells Moses that he will now see what He will do to Pharaoh. He instructs Moses to tell the Hebrew people that He will deliver them from slavery, and claims that He will take them to be His people and He will be their God.
• Moses tells this to the people, but they don't listen because of their broken spirit, God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh and again command him to let the Hebrew people go. Moses questions why Pharaoh will listen to him if even the Hebrew people will not.
• God gives Moses and Aaron a charge to bring the people of Israel out of Egypt.

Moses and Aaron Before Pharaoh – Exodus 7

• God tells Moses He has made him like God to Pharaoh and that Aaron will be his prophet. He instructs Moses to again tell Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go, but that Pharaoh will still not listen. God says that He will then strike Egypt, and the Egyptian people will know He is God.
• Moses and Aaron do as commanded, when they are eighty and eighty-three years old. Aaron casts down his staff and it becomes a snake. Pharaoh summons the Egyptian wise men and sorcerers, and they do the same. Aaron's snake swallows up the snakes of the sorcerers, but Pharaoh still refuses to let the Hebrew people go.