7:8–13 The conflict between the pharaoh and the Lord commences with a prefatory symbolic wonder. While Moses’ staff is sometimes called the “staff of the Lord” (4:20; 17:9), God uses the staffs of Aaron and Moses interchangeably to perform the wonders in Egypt. In the first encounter with the pharaoh, Aaron’s staff becomes a reptile. In the first two wonders God tells Moses to take his staff (v. 15; the Lord speaks of “the staff that is in my hand,” v. 17), but the agency of the wonders is Aaron’s staff (vv. 9–10, 12, 17, 19–20). This shifting of staff references demonstrates that the power lay not in any of the staffs, but in the Lord. The most ambiguous reference is at the end of the chapter when someone (“he”) “raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh” (v. 20). The verse probably ref…