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Moses’ Hand
Exodus 4:6–9 — Moses’ Hand. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
6Furthermore, the LORD said to Moses, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” So he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, his hand was leprous, white as snow.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
‘ō·wḏ Yah·weh way·yō·mer lōw hā·ḇê- nā yā·ḏə·ḵā bə·ḥê·qe·ḵā way·yā·ḇê yā·ḏōw bə·ḥê·qōw way·yō·w·ṣi·’āh wə·hin·nêh yā·ḏōw mə·ṣō·ra·‘aṯ kaš·šā·leḡ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
Again Yahweh said to him, Bring, pray, your hand into your bosom; and he brought his hand into his bosom, and brought it out, and behold — his hand leprous like the snow.
Where the English smooths the original
It is in the bosom that the nurse carried the sucking child ( Numbers 11:12 ), the shepherd the lambs ( Isaiah 40:11 ), and the sacred singer the many nations, from whom he has suffered reproach and injury ( Psalm 89:50 ). So Moses also carried his people in his bosom, i.e., in his heart
Hereby God would suggest to them how soon he could weaken and destroy the hard and strong hand by which the Egyptians tyrannised over them. It might also be done to keep Moses humble and depending upon God
The worst form of leprosy was called by the Greeks λεύκη , “the white disease.” When it is fully developed, the whole skin appears glossy white, and every hair is “white like wool”Ellicott notes the ancient Egyptian slander, preserved in Manetho, that branded the Israelites 'the lepers' — a polemic this very sign may answer.
while the first miracle was simply a sign of supernatural power - a credential, the second was a warning and a lesson. What might not he do to smite or to save on whom God had bestowed such power over the human organism?
The instantaneous production and cure of the most malignant and subtle disease known to the Israelites was a sign of their danger if they resisted the command, and of their deliverance if they obeyed it.
Put now thine hand into thy bosom—the open part of his outer robe, worn about the girdle.JFB supplies the concrete picture the word note presses: the ḥêq is the open fold of the outer robe at the breast, not a separate 'cloak.'
7“Put your hand back inside your cloak,” said the LORD. So Moses put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his skin.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
yā·ḏə·ḵā hā·šêḇ ’el- ḥê·qe·ḵā way·yō·mer yā·ḏōw way·yā·šeḇ ’el- ḥê·qōw way·yō·w·ṣi·’āh mê·ḥê·qōw wə·hin·nêh- šā·ḇāh kiḇ·śā·rōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And he said, Return your hand into your bosom; and he returned his hand into his bosom, and brought it out from his bosom, and behold — it had turned back like his flesh.
Where the English smooths the original
The inflicting of this disease, and curing it again in an instant, was so much the greater miracle, as the leprosy is a disease generally reckoned incurable by human art, especially the white leprosy, so called, because it overspreads the skin with white spots like snow.
however until Moses might be in himself to be a deliverer of the people, signified by his weak and leprous hand, yet being quickened and strengthened by the Lord, would be able to answer to the character; though, after all, the deliverance must be imputed not to his hand and power, but to the mighty hand and power of God.Gill reads the leprous-then-clean hand as a figure of the deliverer himself: powerless in himself, made able only by God.
At the command of God, Moses put his hand, now covered with leprosy, once more into his bosom, and drew it out quite cleansed. This was what Moses was to learn by the sign; whilst Israel also learned that God both could and would deliver it, through the cleansed hand of Moses, from all its bodily and spiritual misery.
8And the LORD said, “If they refuse to believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe that of the second.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hā·yāh ’im- lō ya·’ă·mî·nū lāḵ wə·lō yiš·mə·‘ū lə·qōl hā·ri·šō·wn hā·’ōṯ wə·he·’ĕ·mî·nū lə·qōl hā·’a·ḥă·rō·wn hā·’ōṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And it shall be, if they will not believe you, and will not hearken to the voice of the first sign, then they shall believe the voice of the latter sign.
Where the English smooths the original
Not “the voice of Moses witnessed to by the first sign” (Rosenmüller), but the voice, which the sign itself might be regarded as uttering. (Comp. Psalm 105:27 , where Moses and Aaron are said to have proclaimed “the words of God’s signs.”) A miracle speaks to men.
he saith the voice, to note that God’s works have a voice to speak to us, which we must diligently observe. See Micah 6:9 .
According to the sacred writers everything that can teach us anything - day, night, the heavens, the firmament, the beasts, the fowls of the air, the fishes, nay, the very stones - have a voice. They teach us, speak to us, declare to us, cry out aloud, lift up their voice, shout, sing, proclaim God's will
And these miracles spoke aloud in the ear of reason, and said, Believe in him whom God hath sent.
9But if they do not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. Then the water you take from the Nile will become blood on the ground.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·hā·yāh ’im- lō ya·’ă·mî·nū gam hā·’êl·leh wə·lō liš·nê hā·’ō·ṯō·wṯ yiš·mə·‘ūn lə·qō·le·ḵā wə·lā·qaḥ·tā mim·mê·mê hay·’ōr wə·šā·p̄aḵ·tā hay·yab·bā·šāh wə·hā·yū ham·ma·yim ’ă·šer tiq·qaḥ min- hay·’ōr wə·hā·yū lə·ḏām bay·yab·bā·šeṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And it shall be, if they will not believe even these two signs, and will not hearken to your voice, then you shall take from the waters of the Nile and pour upon the dry land; and the waters which you take from the Nile shall become blood upon the dry land.
Where the English smooths the original
The change of a rod into a serpent showed that a feeble implement might become a power to chastise and to destroy. That of a healthy into a leprous hand, and the reverse, indicated that Moses’s mission was both to punish and to save; while the change of water into blood suggested—albeit vaguely—the conversion of that peace and prosperity, which Egypt was enjoying, into calamity, suffering, and bloodshed.
The Nile received divine honours as the source of every good and all prosperity in the natural life of Egypt, and was even identified with Osiris (cf. Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 109 transl.). If Moses therefore had power to turn the life-distributing water of the Nile into blood, he must also have received power to destroy Pharaoh and his gods.
this would be a specimen also of what he would do hereafter, in turning the waters of the river into blood, thereby avenging the blood of innocent babes drowned there by the Egyptians.
Shall become , Heb. shall be, even shall be , i.e. it shall assuredly be so.
Those miracles, two of which were wrought then, and the third to be performed on his arrival in Goshen, were at first designed to encourage him as satisfactory proofs of his divine mission, and to be repeated for the special confirmation of his embassy before the Israelites.
The third sign was for these last, who would regard the Nile as a great divinity, and would see in the conversion of Nile water into blood a significant indication that the God who had commissioned Moses was greater than any Egyptian one.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The second sign is staged on Moses' own body. At Yahweh's word he brings his hand into his חֵיק (bosom) — the fold of the robe over the breast — and draws it out מְצֹרַעַת כַּשָּׁלֶג, leprous like the snow. The Pulpit Commentary marks the escalation precisely: the first sign was 'simply a sign of supernatural power - a credential,' but the second was 'a warning and a lesson.' Ellicott and Benson agree the white form was reckoned by the ancients 'absolutely incurable' — so its instant infliction and cure could only be God. Then comes the reversal: at the command to הָשֵׁב (return) the hand, it שָׁבָה — it turned back, intransitive, the hand obeying by coming again to itself like his flesh. Keil reads the bosom theologically: it is where 'the nurse carried the sucking child... and the shepherd the lambs,' so that 'Moses also carried his people in his bosom, i.e., in his heart' — the leprous, then-cleansed hand a figure of the defiled nation God would purge through the deliverer. Gill draws the humbling point: the deliverance must be 'imputed not to his hand and power, but to the mighty hand and power of God.' Poole says the same — the sign keeps Moses 'humble and depending upon God.'
Verse 8 names what the signs are: they have a קוֹל — a voice. The Hebrew literally says Israel must hearken to the voice of the first sign. Ellicott insists this is 'not the voice of Moses witnessed to by the first sign... but the voice, which the sign itself might be regarded as uttering,' citing Psalm 105:27, where Moses and Aaron 'proclaimed the words of God's signs.' Poole notes the same: 'God's works have a voice to speak to us, which we must diligently observe.' The Pulpit Commentary widens it to all creation — the heavens, the beasts, 'the very stones - have a voice... much more, must a miracle be regarded as having a voice.' Benson, citing Bishop Warburton, grounds the idiom in the ancient 'mixed discourse of words and actions.' The demand the signs voice is twofold and named in two verbs — אָמַן (believe, lean your weight on) and שָׁמַע (hear-and-obey). The provenance of each claim is the commentator named.
The third sign is held in reserve, 'to be resorted to only if necessary' (Cambridge). Moses is to take from the waters of הַיְאֹר (the Nile) and pour them on הַיַּבָּשָׁה (the dry land), where they will וְהָיוּ לְדָם — become blood. Poole catches the doubled Hebrew verb: 'Heb. shall be, even shall be, i.e. it shall assuredly be so.' Keil locates the theological aim: the Nile 'received divine honours as the source of every good... and was even identified with Osiris,' so to turn its 'life-distributing water' to blood is to declare power over 'Pharaoh and his gods.' Gill hears retribution in advance — the river that drowned the Hebrew infants 'avenging the blood of innocent babes drowned there by the Egyptians.' Ellicott reads the three signs as a sequence of meaning: a rod that destroys, a hand that can 'punish and to save,' and water-into-blood foreshadowing Egypt's 'calamity, suffering, and bloodshed.' Each reading is the named commentator's; this synthesis only gathers them.
Read under Sola Scriptura, the through-line of these four verses is condescension to unbelief. God does not rebuke Moses' fear that Israel 'will not believe me' (4:1); he answers it — not with one proof but three, escalating, 'God is patient with all reasonable doubt' as Ellicott puts it. The middle sign is the strangest, because God afflicts his own messenger's body to make the lesson visible: the hand that will be raised to deliver is first shown leprous, then clean, so that no one — least of all Moses — will mistake the power for his own. The same God who can make a hand white as death and then call it back like his flesh is the God who can make a slave-people clean. The signs are not magic but speech: each one has a קוֹל, a voice, and the response they require is the response the whole Bible requires — אָמַן, to lean your weight on the word of the One who sent the sign. This reading is offered to be tested against the text, not received on its own authority.
The hand of the deliverer is shown leprous before it is shown clean — so that the power will never be mistaken for the man's own.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The exact idiom of Moses' sign — מְצֹרַעַת כַּשָּׁלֶג, leprous as snow — recurs verbatim when Miriam is struck for opposing Moses (Num 12:10). The same hand-of-power motif inverts: here leprosy authenticates the deliverer; there it judges the one who challenges him. Both Keil and Poole cross-reference Num 12:10 directly.
Numbers 12:10
basis: rare shared lexemes H6879 tsâraʻ (in 18 vv) + H7950 sheleg (in 20 vv) — the same 'leprous as snow' idiom, Verifier-confirmed (H2009 hinnêh is also shared but common, ~799 vv, so not load-bearing)
The identical phrase brands Gehazi when he takes Naaman's payment by deceit: he goes out from Elisha's presence leprous, as white as snow (2 Kgs 5:27). The same rare pair מְצֹרַע/שֶׁלֶג that marks Moses' sign marks the prophet's curse — Moses' hand made white to authenticate, Gehazi made white to condemn. A separate, lighter link binds the two episodes: the Cambridge editors note that Exod 4:7's intransitive שָׁבָה (turned/came again) is the verb used of Naaman's cleansing in 2 Kgs 5:14 — though that is the common root שׁוּב (~950 vv), a thematic rather than rare-verbal tie.
2 Kings 5:27 · 2 Kings 5:14
basis: rare shared lexemes H6879 tsâraʻ (in 18 vv) + H7950 sheleg (in 20 vv) — the same 'leprous as snow' idiom, Verifier-confirmed (Exod 4:6 / 4:7 ↔ 2 Kgs 5:27); the šûb (H7725) tie to 2 Kgs 5:14 is common-lexeme/thematic, not the basis for this tier
The חֵיק (bosom) into which Moses draws the leprous hand is the same bosom in which, Keil notes, the nurse carries the child (Num 11:12) — where Moses later protests, 'Have I conceived all this people, that Thou shouldest say to me, Carry them in thy bosom?' The sign in Exod 4:6 and Moses' complaint in Num 11:12 share the word; the leprous hand pressed to the breast foreshadows the burden of the leprous nation Moses must carry.
Numbers 11:12
basis: shared lexeme H2436 chêyq (the bosom, ~33 vv); thematic — carrying the people, not a quotation; Verifier-confirmed
The third sign is the seed of the first plague: the water of הַיְאֹר (the Nile) poured out and becoming blood (Exod 4:9) is enacted in full when Aaron strikes the river (Exod 7:17, 20). Gill explicitly reads 4:9 as 'a specimen also of what he would do hereafter, in turning the waters of the river into blood.' The shared vocabulary — yᵉ’ôr (Nile), mayim (water), dâm (blood) — runs straight from the private sign to the public judgment.
Exodus 7:17 · Exodus 7:20
basis: shared lexemes H2975 yᵉʼôr (Nile, ~48 vv) + H1818 dâm (blood) + H4325 mayim (water); same sign-act enacted, not a quotation; Verifier-confirmed
Moses pours Nile-water on הַיַּבָּשָׁה (the dry land) — the word for what God made appear at creation (Gen 1:9) and what Israel will cross on through the parted sea (Exod 14:16, 22, 29). The same noun (H3004) ties the third sign to both the creation of dry land and the deliverance across it; the water-to-blood here is, structurally, a dark inversion of those life-giving acts.
Genesis 1:9 · Exodus 14:22
basis: shared lexeme H3004 yabbâshâh (dry land, in 14 vv); motif link creation/sea-crossing, not a quotation; Verifier-confirmed
The verse closes on a second, rarer word for parched earth: בַּיַּבָּשֶׁת (bayyabbāšeṯ, H3006) — a byform that the Verifier finds in only two verses of the whole Hebrew Bible. The one other place is Psalm 95:5: 'the sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.' The lexeme is rare enough that the echo is genuinely verbal, yet the two texts pull opposite ways: in the Psalm the dry land is the work of God's creating hands; here, water poured on that same dry ground turns to blood as a sign of judgment. A creator's hand made the land; a deliverer's hand will redden it. The link is a single rare word, not a quotation, so it is tiered verbal only on the strength of that rarity and held lightly.
Psalm 95:5
basis: rare shared lexeme H3006 yabbesheth — the Verifier finds it in only 2 verses (Exod 4:9 and Ps 95:5); a true rare-word echo, not an NT citation, so 'verbal' rests on lexeme rarity alone
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Matthew Henry, on this whole passage (4:1–9), reads the signs as pointing forward: it belonged to Christ alone 'to heal the soul of the leprosy of sin; and so it was for Him first to cast the devil out of the body, and to heal the leprosy of the body.' Where Moses' sign could only display leprosy given and taken, the Gospels show Jesus touching the leper and cleansing him (Matt 8:3) — the hand drawn from the bosom clean becomes the hand that makes others clean. This is a widely-held patristic and Reformation reading, voiced here by Henry.
Matthew 8:2-3 · Mark 1:40-42
Keil closes the unit by naming the type explicitly: Moses, 'the first God-sent prophet... the first worker of miracles, and in this capacity a type of the Apostle of our profession (Hebrews 3:1), even the God-man, Christ Jesus.' The signs accredit Moses as sent; Hebrews 3:1–6 sets Moses' faithfulness 'in all God's house' as the shadow of the Son's. The cross-Testament link is typological, not verbal (Greek Hebrews cannot share Strong's numbers with Hebrew Exodus), but it is ancient and structural: the sent-and-attested deliverer prefigures the sent-and-attested Son.
Hebrews 3:1-6 · John 5:36
The third sign turns the water of Egypt's god to blood, a sign of judgment (Exod 4:9; 7:20). The first sign of Jesus turns water to wine (John 2:9–11), manifesting his glory so that his disciples believed in him. Both are inaugural signs that transform water and so move witnesses toward faith; but the figure inverts — Moses' first public sign is water made blood for judgment, the Son's first sign is water made wine for joy. This is a novel typological pairing offered for testing, not a traditional reading.
John 2:9-11 · Exodus 7:20
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
This unit (Exod 4:6–9) is the second and third of the three signs given to Moses at the bush. Voices: every excerpt above is a verbatim contiguous substring of the public-domain commentary supplied in voices_raw, trimmed only at the ends; eight authors are now drawn on across the unit (Ellicott, Poole, the Pulpit Commentary, Barnes, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Benson, Gill, Keil & Delitzsch). Matthew Henry's note covers the whole block 4:1–9 (it is keyed identically to every verse in the source), so it is featured once, in the Christ section where it speaks. Threads: the two 'leprous as snow' links (Num 12:10, 2 Kgs 5:27) rest on genuinely rare shared lexemes — צָרַע (in 18 vv) and שֶׁלֶג (in 20 vv) — and are tiered verbal / quotation — confirmed on that basis alone; hinnêh and yâtsâ, also shared, are common and not load-bearing. The Ps 95:5 thread rests on the byform יַבֶּשֶׁת (H3006), which the Verifier finds in only 2 verses of the whole Bible — rare enough to tier verbal, though it is a single-word echo (creation vs. judgment), not a quotation, and is held lightly. The Nile-to-blood and dry-land threads are structural / thematic: their shared words (mayim, dâm, yᵉ’ôr, yabbâshâh) are common, so the link is by motif and Gill's explicit cross-reference, not by quotation. The Cambridge note ties Exod 4:7's שָׁבָה to 2 Kgs 5:14, but שׁוּב is common (~950 vv), so that is a thematic rather than rare-verbal tie. Christ: the Henry and Keil readings are widely-held in the tradition and so labeled; the water-to-blood / water-to-wine pairing is flagged novel and under-claimed deliberately. Cross-Testament: the Hebrews 3:1 link cannot be a 'verbal' thread — Greek and Hebrew share no Strong's numbers — so it is given only as typology, on Keil's own framing. Honesty: the leprosy-as-incurable claim reflects ancient medical belief (Celsus, Kalisch) reported by the commentators, not a modern diagnosis; 'leprosy' (צָרַעַת) in Scripture covers a range of skin conditions broader than modern Hansen's disease.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)