4:1Answering, Moses said: "They will not believe me, nor will they hear my voice, but they will say: 'The Lord has not appeared to you.'" 4:2So he said to him: "What is it that you hold in your hand?" 4:2He answered: "A rod." 4:3And the Lord said: "Throw it onto the ground." 4:3He threw it, and it was turned into a snake, so that Moses fled. 4:4And the Lord said: "Stretch out your hand, and grasp its tail." 4:4He stretched it out, and held it, and it was turned into a rod. 4:5"So that they may believe," he said, "that the Lord, the God of their fathers, has appeared to you, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."
4:6And the Lord said again: "Put your hand into your bosom." 4:6And when he had put it into his bosom, he brought it out leprous, like snow. 4:7"Draw back," he said, "your hand into your bosom." 4:7He drew it back, and brought it out again, and it was like the rest of the flesh. 4:8"If they do not believe you," he said, "nor hear the speech of the first sign, they will believe the word of the following sign. 4:9But if they do not believe even these two signs, nor hear your voice: take water of the river, and pour it out upon the dry land, and whatever you have drawn from the river will be turned into blood."
4:10Moses said: "I beg you, Lord, I am not eloquent from yesterday and the day before: and since you have spoken to your servant, I am of a more hindered and slower tongue." 4:11The Lord said to him: "Who made the mouth of man? 4:11Or who fashioned the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? 4:11Is it not I? 4:12Go on, therefore, and I will be in your mouth: and I will teach you what you are to speak." 4:13But he: "I beg you," he said, "Lord, send whom you are going to send." 4:14The Lord, angry with Moses, said: "Aaron your brother, the Levite, I know that he is eloquent: look, he himself is coming out to meet you, and seeing you he will rejoice in his heart.
4:15Speak to him, and put my words in his mouth: and I will be in your mouth, and in his mouth, and I will show you what you ought to do. 4:16He will speak for you to the people, and will be your mouth: but you will be to him in the things which belong to God. 4:17Take also this rod in your hand, with which you are going to do the signs." 4:18Moses went away, and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him: "I will go and return to my brothers in Egypt, so that I may see whether they are still alive." 4:18To him Jethro said: "Go in peace."
4:19So the Lord said to Moses in Midian: "Go, and return into Egypt, for all who were seeking your life are dead." 4:20So Moses took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass: and he returned into Egypt, carrying the rod of God in his hand. 4:21And the Lord said to him as he returned into Egypt: "See that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your hand: I will harden his heart, and he will not let the people go. 4:22And you will say to him: 'Thus says the Lord: Israel is my firstborn son. 4:23I have said to you: Let my son go so that he may serve me; 4:23and you have refused to let him go: look, I will kill your firstborn son.'"
4:24And when he was on the journey, at the inn the Lord met him, and wanted to kill him. 4:25For that reason Zipporah took a very sharp stone, and circumcised the foreskin of her son, and touched his feet, and said: "A bridegroom of bloods you are to me." 4:26And he let him go after she had said: "A bridegroom of bloods because of the circumcision." 4:27But the Lord said to Aaron: "Go to meet Moses in the desert." 4:27And he went on to meet him at the mountain of God, and kissed him. 4:28And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him, and the signs which he had commanded.
4:29And they came together, and gathered all the elders of the sons of Israel. 4:30And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had said to Moses: and he did the signs before the people, and the people believed. 4:31And they heard that the Lord had visited the sons of Israel, and had looked upon their affliction: and bowing down they worshipped.