¹The Lord said:

⁶Moses and Aaron obeyed the Lord

⁷and spoke to the king. At the time, Moses was 80 years old, and Aaron was 83.

A Stick Turns into a Snake

^8-9The Lord said, “Moses, when the king asks you and Aaron to perform a miracle, command Aaron to throw his walking stick down in front of the king, and it will turn into a snake.”[#7.8,9 See the note at 1.11.]

¹⁰Moses and Aaron went to the king and his officials and did exactly as the Lord had commanded—Aaron threw the stick down, and it turned into a snake.

¹¹Then the king called in the wise men and the magicians, who used their secret powers to do the same thing—

¹²they threw down sticks that turned into snakes. But Aaron's snake swallowed theirs.

¹³The king behaved just as the Lord had said and stubbornly refused to listen.

The Nile River Turns into Blood

¹⁴The Lord said to Moses:[#Ws 11.6-8.]

²⁰Moses and Aaron obeyed the Lord . Aaron held out his stick, then struck the Nile, as the king and his officials watched. The river turned into blood,

²¹the fish died, and the water smelled so bad that none of the Egyptians could drink it. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.

²²But the Egyptian magicians used their secret powers to do the same thing. The king did just as the Lord had said—he stubbornly refused to listen.

²³Then he went back to his palace and never gave it a second thought.

²⁴The Egyptians had to dig holes along the banks of the Nile for drinking water, because water from the river was unfit to drink.

Frogs

²⁵Seven days after the Lord had struck the Nile,