Staff of Moses
Artifact/relic belonging to Moses; mentioned in the Bible and Quran.

The Staff of Moses, also known as the Rod of Moses or Staff of God, is mentioned in the Bible and Quran as a walking stick used by Moses. According to the Book of Exodus, the staff (Hebrew: מַטֶּה, romanized: maṭṭe, translated "rod" in the King James Bible) was used to produce water from a rock, was transformed into a snake and back, and was used at the parting of the Red Sea. Whether the staff of Moses was the same as the staff used by his brother Aaron has been debated by rabbinical scholars.
Biblical references to the staff
The staff is first mentioned in the Exodus 4:2, when God appears to Moses in the burning bush. God asks what Moses has in his hand, and Moses answers, "a staff" ("a rod" in the King James Version). The staff is miraculously transformed into a snake and then back into a staff. The staff is thereafter referred to as the "rod of God" or "staff of God" (depending on the translation).
Moses and Aaron appear before the pharaoh, and Aaron's rod is transformed into a serpent. Pharaoh's sorcerers are also able to transform their rods into serpents, but Aaron's rod swallows their rods (Exodus 7:10–12). Aaron's rod is again used to turn the Nile blood-red.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Staff of Moses” is artifact/relic belonging to Moses; mentioned in the Bible and Quran. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Staff, Moses and Artifact, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2893333. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Staff of Moses” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.