Lives of Scripture

Jambres is not named in Exodus itself, where Pharaoh's "magicians" anonymously reproduce some of Moses' signs before Pharaoh -- turning staffs into serpents and water into blood -- before failing to match the plague of gnats and admitting, "this is the finger of God" (Exodus 7:11-12, 22; 8:18-19). Jewish tradition supplied the names Jannes and Jambres for these court magicians, and Paul treats the tradition as reliable history when he writes to Timothy: "Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes's and Jambres's folly was also" (2 Timothy 3:8-9). Paul's point is pastoral, not biographical: he uses Jambres as a known example to warn Timothy about false teachers in the church who resist the gospel through imitation and deception, confident that -- as with Jambres before Pharaoh -- their opposition cannot ultimately prevail against God's truth. Exodus itself never names Pharaoh's magicians; the names come from a tradition Paul treats as established, though Scripture's own inspired record of it is confined to this single New Testament passage.