Exodus 4 help

[mikedsjr]

I don't quite understand the passage below. Its one of the many passages in Scripture that seems like a sidenote to the main storyline and yet important somehow too. I'm curious what others know about the understanding of the passage. The primary issue are the Lord seeking to kill Moses and Zipporah circumcising the child to save Moses. The passage just comes from out of the blue. And I have never grasped why it is there or what it means.

Exodus 4:18-31 ESV

18 Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Please let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive.” And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.” 19 And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” 20 So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand.
21 And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’”
24 At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. 25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses'[c] feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26 So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.
27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak, and all the signs that he had commanded him to do. 29 Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. 30 Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. 31 And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.

 

[Progguy]

no-one does

 

[twin1954]

From off the top of my head I believe that it is given to show us that Moses wasn't being completely obedient. He knew that his son should have already been circumcised and before he went into Egypt to speak in the name of God he had to be obedient.

I will investigate further though. I know of a couple of preachers who have preached through Exodus and I will find their thinking on it.

 

[tz620q]

I don't quite understand the passage below. Its one of the many passages in Scripture that seems like a sidenote to the main storyline and yet important somehow too. I'm curious what others know about the understanding of the passage. The primary issue are the Lord seeking to kill Moses and Zipporah circumcising the child to save Moses. The passage just comes from out of the blue. And I have never grasped why it is there or what it means.

Moses and Zipporah had circumcised their first son at eight days as specified in Leviticus 12:3

"On the eighth day a boy is to be circumcised."

When God made his covenant with Abraham, it was a blood covenant. The blood that was given by the Jewish people was the blood of circumcision. This was a requirement for being Jewish as shown in Genesis 17:14

"Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

But Zipporah's father was a priest of the Midianites and they circumcised their children at 12-13 years old. So Moses had relented to his wife and father-in-law and not circumcised his younger son. That is what angered God and caused the scene above. It is a powerful story showing the need for obedience. God had just made Moses his prophet to the Hebrews in captivity in Egypt and yet he was willing to kill him for this breach in the Abrahamic covenant.

 

[mikedsjr]

Tz, interesting. I'm not against outside sources filling in info. I just don't know where the information you gave comes from.

 

[1watchman]

Yes, Twin has stated it right!

 

[tz620q]

Tz, interesting. I'm not against outside sources filling in info. I just don't know where the information you gave comes from.

I had read it in a footnote to one of my Bibles and had to look up the origin myself. Here is a link to wiki - Zipporah at the inn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is states the different interpretations of this story.

"Rabbinic
The ambiguous or fragmentary nature of the verses leave much room for extrapolation, and rabbinical scholarship has provided a number of explanations. Specifically, the Targum Neophyti, a midrashic translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic, expands Zipporah's enigmatic "you are truly a bridegroom of blood" to "How beloved is the blood that has delivered this bridegroom from the hand of the Angel of Death."

While the passage is frequently interpreted as referring to Gershom, Moses' firstborn, being circumcised, the Midrash actually states that the passage was, at that time, considered instead to refer to Eliezer, Moses' other son."

Not sure I would buy into all this; but it is a better analysis than most that I have seen.

 

[SaintJoeNow]

I don't quite understand the passage below. Its one of the many passages in Scripture that seems like a sidenote to the main storyline and yet important somehow too. I'm curious what others know about the understanding of the passage. The primary issue are the Lord seeking to kill Moses and Zipporah circumcising the child to save Moses. The passage just comes from out of the blue. And I have never grasped why it is there or what it means.

The passage is not "out of the blue" or hard to understand. God is always reasonable, blameless, and just. Had Moses not kept the law of circumcision for his children, God would have been just to kill Moses for the honor of His own word. This was made clear to Moses, and he immediately remedied his careless disobedience to God's law of circumcision.

The circumcision was obedience to God. It was demanded by God. God is not careless or lackadaisical when he calls for obedience. God commands his people to be holy as He is holy, and that means do what he says to do and do not do what He says not to do in order to be a testimony for Him in the world.
The fact that people seem to get away with carelessness when it comes to obeying God's word does not mean God is not going to hold them accountable and judge them according to His word. Moses was given no wiggle room because of the immediacy and importance of his calling for God to glorify His name in the world.

Moses was tolerating unholiness, disobedience, by allowing the child to go uncircumcised. God does not tolerate disobedience. God had a special calling for Moses which demanded obedience without delay. Moses was held by God as responsible for enforcing God's command for His people to be circumcised.
There are no grey areas with God. Zipporah was looking for an excuse to live in a grey area, and she got mad at Moses when God's law was enforced in the circumcision of her son.

 

[SaintJoeNow]

Moses and Zipporah had circumcised their first son at eight days as specified in Leviticus 12:3

"On the eighth day a boy is to be circumcised."

When God made his covenant with Abraham, it was a blood covenant. The blood that was given by the Jewish people was the blood of circumcision. This was a requirement for being Jewish as shown in Genesis 17:14

"Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

But Zipporah's father was a priest of the Midianites and they circumcised their children at 12-13 years old. So Moses had relented to his wife and father-in-law and not circumcised his younger son. That is what angered God and caused the scene above. It is a powerful story showing the need for obedience. God had just made Moses his prophet to the Hebrews in captivity in Egypt and yet he was willing to kill him for this breach in the Abrahamic covenant.

Good answer...an improvement on mine which I posted before I read your answer...so I learned a bit from you on this, and I even read through Exodus recently...forgot about Zipporah being a daughter of the Midianite priest.

God was jealous to protect the honor of His holiness and not allow His word to be ignored.

 

[Pedrito]

Much of this has been said already, but for sake of completeness:

(First of all, if something seems to be out of place, awkwardly stated, or stands out in some other way, it normally means that God has put it there to get our attention. If we take the time to investigate, we usually end up learning something very important, and more often than not are consciously blessed for our effort.)

When God made a covenant with Abraham (Abram) in Genesis 17, the sign of that covenant was male circumcision. Later on, when God established the Law Covenant with Israel, He confirmed circumcision as being the visible and necessary sign of that covenant, because it was a codified extension of the covenant with Abraham. (Exodus 12:43-49; Leviticus 12:3) When the Israelites entered the Promised Land, God commanded Joshua to reinstitute circumcision as the sign of God's covenant with them. (See Joshua 5:2-8)

We know that the Israelites kept the practice alive while in Egypt, because of Numbers 9:1-5. However, it is clear that the practice was was not continued during the wilderness wanderings when they were under God's judgement.

Moses had therefore been circumcised himself. However, he had been brought up as an Egyptian, and he had married into the family of a non-Israelite (Midianite) priest. (The Midianites had obviously abandoned the practice of circumcision at this time, otherwise they would have been circumcising on the eight day as their ancestor Midian had been.) Therefore, Moses had not circumcised his sons, the eldest in particular, as God had commanded.

God had chosen Moses to be the representative of the Chosen (Covenant) People before Pharaoh. Yet Moses stood in violation of that covenant.

The statement "the LORD met him and sought him to kill him" seems strange, does it not? The translation implies God had difficulty achieving a purpose. However, the word translated "sought" can be translated a number of ways. Some commentators suggest "threatened" as being a more appropriate translation. Moses was in violation of his covenant responsibility, and God was going to hold him to account.

For whatever reason, it was Zipporah who performed the act, an act which she would have found abhorrent (see Faussett on circumcision, for instance) - causing excruciating pain for her child, as well as the possibility of his bleeding to death or dying from what we now call infection. Hence she was somewhat livid with Moses. It is possible that she did not trust him to do the job properly.

Once the firstborn was circumcised, God withdrew the threat. The implication is that while only the firstborn was mentioned, the second son was circumcised as well at about the same time.


The importance of covenants and covenant relationships is thus brought home to us with force. (It is not the only example.) The importance of the covenant between members of what might be termed the “true church” and God, and the necessity for strict adherence once entered into, is thus highlighted.