Pharaoh's response is contemptuous and precise: who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go. The double denial — I do not know and I will not obey — frames the entire plague narrative as a lesson in knowing. By the end of the ten plagues, Pharaoh will know. The question who is the Lord? is the wrong question asked in the wrong spirit, but it is the question God will spend Exodus 7–12 answering with power. Romans 1:21 describes those who, though they knew God, neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. Pharaoh represents the limit case of that refusal: he does not even acknowledge the knowledge. The education of Pharaoh, and through Pharaoh the watching world, begins here with the most arrogant possible starting point — and proceeds to the most devastating possible demonstration.

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