Jambres

Jambres, together with Jannes, is named in 2 Timothy 3:8 as one of the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses before Pharaoh, resisting the truth as Paul warns certain false teachers of his own day were doing. Their names do not appear in the narrative of Exodus itself but were preserved in Jewish tradition (cf. the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic literature) as the names of the court magicians who matched Moses' signs with their own sorcery (Exodus 7:11, 22; 8:7). Their eventual failure to replicate the plague of gnats (Exodus 8:18) marked the limit of their power against the God of Israel.