Lives of Scripture

Jannes is not named in Exodus itself, where Pharaoh's court "magicians" anonymously imitate some of Moses' signs -- turning staffs into serpents, water into blood -- before failing at the plague of gnats and confessing, "this is the finger of God" (Exodus 7:11-12, 22; 8:18-19). Jewish tradition names these magicians Jannes and Jambres, and Paul treats that tradition as established history when writing 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 names Jannes first, using him as the more prominent of the pair in a pastoral warning to Timothy about false teachers who resist the gospel through imitation and deceit -- confident that, as with Jannes before Pharaoh, such opposition cannot ultimately succeed against God's truth. Exodus never names Pharaoh's magicians; the names Jannes and Jambres rest on a tradition Paul's inspired letter draws on and affirms, even though Scripture's own record of it is limited to this single New Testament passage.