Exodus 5:5

5:5 Pharaoh was thinking, ¹  “The people of the land are now many, and you are giving them rest from their labor.”

[5:5]  ¹ tn Heb “And Pharaoh said.” This is not the kind of thing that Pharaoh is likely to have said to Moses, and so it probably is what he thought or reasoned within himself. Other passages (like Exod 2:14; 3:3) show that the verb “said” can do this. (See U. Cassuto, Exodus, 67.)