Bible Strands
Exodus 12:32
Take your flocks and herds as well, just as you have said, and depart! And bless me also.”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Pharaoh addresses Moses and Aaron at night, immediately after ordering them to depart and worship the LORD, as the Egyptian populace pressures them to leave quickly.
The words — The verse contains the Hebrew particle גַּם (gam), meaning "also" or "as well," three times to mark the addition of livestock to the departure order and to append the plea for a blessing.
The thread — The livestock demand aligns with the Israelites' prior requirement in Exodus 10:26 that no animals remain for worship, while the blessing request mirrors Esau's repeated appeals in Genesis 27:34 and Genesis 27:38.
Why it lands — The text records Pharaoh's coerced concession and desperate plea, requiring the reader to observe how terror, not conviction, drives a ruler's final negotiations with God.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also.
Cross-references
- Exodus 10:26 Even our livestock must go with us; not a hoof will be left behind, for we will need some of them to worship the LORD our God, and we will not know how we are to worship the LORD until we arrive.”
- Genesis 27:34 When Esau heard his father’s words, he let out a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me too, O my father!”
- Genesis 27:38 Esau said to his father, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, O my father!” Then Esau wept aloud.
- Exodus 8:28 Pharaoh answered, “I will let you go and sacrifice to the LORD your God in the wilderness, but you must not go very far. Now pray for me.”
- Exodus 9:28 Pray to the LORD, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail. I will let you go; you do not need to stay any longer.”
- Exodus 10:9 “We will go with our young and old,” Moses replied. “We will go with our sons and daughters, and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the LORD.”