A Little History

I've not been on here for much too long, and have probably lost what readers I had, but I will try to make time to post something more often. This is a little bit of history, with some background, to give us a little insight into that mighty man of God, Moses, showing that he, too, was merely human.

Exodus 4:22-26
Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, {23} and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.'“ {24} At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. {25} But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it. "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. {26} So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)

The question that comes to mind when we read these words is, “What do they mean?” Looking into several different sources and interpretations shows that most of them view the words in a similar manner.
First we need to do what we must do in all circumstances when studying the word of God; we must look at the context, the setting in which these words are recorded. But to be able to understand them we need to look a little bit further than just those verses.

By going back just two verses, we get an idea of the context. Moses is enroute to the face the pharaoh to begin to set the Israelites free. However, there is no time period indicated between the moment of God speaking to Moses and their arrival at an inn or lodging place.

In order to study the scriptures we need to be aware of several things. One of them is the way the scriptures were recorded. First of all, there were no punctuation marks in either the Hebrew or the Greek languages. In other words there were no periods to end a sentence, or questions marks, or commas. The translators had to look at the context to be able to place the end of one sentence and the beginning of another. There was nothing to mark the end of the paragraph, or the end of the chapter. On top of this the Hebrew language contains no vowels. And, as shown here, there are often occasions when the passage of time is not shown, just assumed.

We have an unknown time period between God telling Moses what to say to Pharaoh, and Moses arriving at the lodging place with his wife and son. What we have is an insertion of an occurrence between the time God spoke to Moses and God speaking to Aaron. The narrative then bounces to Moses and Aaron meeting and then the two of them speaking to Pharaoh. Knowing the distance they had to travel on foot we have to mentally insert the passage of time into these verses to have them make any sense to us.
Starting in verse 22 we have God telling Moses, “Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.'"

The anticipation of the death of the first-born is here limited to the first-born of the Pharaoh. This is due punishment for his enslavement of Israel for, says the LORD, Israel is my first-born son. This statement refers to Israel's election by God. Both Hosea 11:1 and the metaphor of Israel as the bride in Jeremiah imply this.

Hosea 11:1 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
Jeremiah 2:2 "Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem: "'I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown.

The corollary of Israel's sonship is God's fatherhood

Isaiah 64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

In this elective relationship of father and son in redemption, the Bible distinguishes sharply from the fatherhood of God and the sonship (and brotherhood) of man in creation. In the account of the plagues this phrase Let my son go becomes the theme of Moses' demand upon the Pharaoh; the term son, however, is there changed to “people,” for it refers to God’s son Israel or the Israelites.

When Pharaoh refused to liberate Israel, God's firstborn son, God's judgment destroyed Pharaoh's firstborn son. God is a God of grace and judgment. He offers grace to His chosen and judgment to those who reject Him. Election is based on God's parental love, and the decision is His.

Now we get to the idea behind the next three verses. We have to think about what there was that physically separated the Israelites from the Egyptians.

Genesis 17:9-12 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. {10} This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. {11} You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. {12} For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner--those who are not your offspring.

Moses had apparently put off circumcising his son, in violation of God's express command. He had to learn that disobeying God and incurring His wrath were more serious than anything that could befall him from the wrath of Pharaoh. The Lord sought to put him to death by allowing him to fall ill, and Zipporah performed the circumcision of their son to save Moses' life. Then the Lord let him alone (i.e., God healed him) when Zipporah touched the circumcised skin to Moses’ feet. Remember that feet were a very private part of the body to the Israelites. Touching of the feet intimated a close personal relationship. Here we have a private part of Moses’ son touched to a private part of Moses.

Circumcision had been mostly ignored by the Israelites while they were in Egypt. It had fallen from a regularly performed part of their worship of God. They had almost completely stopped performing the circumcision with small children. It had become a part of the rite of passage for a young Israelite boy at puberty, or in some societies it was reserved for their time of marriage. This is why Zipporah made the statement, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.” She was a Midianite, and among the Midianite people the rite was performed as part of the marriage ceremony, and the bridegroom was circumcised.

Moses had not carried out the covenant between God and the Israelite people by having his son circumcised when he was 8 days old, as commanded in Genesis. The reason is not given; perhaps it was at the insistence of Zipporah, his Midianite wife, thinking ahead to the marriage ceremony of their son. Moses was suddenly struck with an unexpected illness, the nature of which is not described. Moses and Zipporah did know, however, that the illness was a message from God, and she reacted quickly. The "sharp stone" mentioned in other translations was a flint knife such as Joshua later used for the same purpose.

Joshua 5:2 At that time the LORD said to Joshua, "Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again."

Flint was used for this purpose because it has a very sharp edge to it. Before the use of iron was common, all the nations of the earth had their edged tools made of stones, generally of flint for its sharpness. Our ancestors had their arrows and spearheads made of flint; which are frequently turned up in plowed fields. And even when iron became more common, stone knives seem to have been preferred for making incisions in the human body. The Egyptians used them to open the bodies for embalming; and the tribe of Alnajab in Ethiopia, who followed the Mosaic institution, performed the rite of circumcision with knives made of stone. The flint knife was used even when there were metal knives because of its sharp edge.

God met Moses in anger. The Lord threatened him with death or sent sickness upon him, as the punishment of his having neglected to circumcise his son. When God reveals to us what is amiss in our lives, we must give all diligence to correct it quickly. This is the voice of the shepherd’s rod; it calls us to return to Him that smites us. God gets our attention in differing ways, and in this case it was with an illness that smote Moses.

Moses was forgetful of the foundational sign of Israel's covenant relation to God. On the eve of delivering Israel he was reminded that without circumcision an Israelite was cut off from the covenant.

Circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant. "The reproach of Egypt" was that, during the later years of the Egyptian bondage, this separating sign had been neglected and this neglect had continued during the wilderness wanderings.

Joshua 5:6-9 The Israelites had moved about in the desert forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the LORD. For the LORD had sworn to them that they would not see the land that he had solemnly promised their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. {7} So he raised up their sons in their place, and these were the ones Joshua circumcised. They were still uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way. {8} And after the whole nation had been circumcised, they remained where they were in camp until they were healed. {9} Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.

The New Testament analogy to what the Israelites did in Egypt is conformity to the world. They conformed to the land where they lived and failed to follow their God. In today’s world it is the failure to openly take a believer's place with Christ in death and resurrection. Spiritually, circumcision is putting to death the deeds of the body through the Spirit. In our society the symbolic point of our spiritual circumcision is the cleansing of the spirit with water or baptism.

The verses that surround the ones we study now in Exodus are arranged to dramatize the great battle of wits between Moses and Pharaoh. It is especially made clear that all the details of the struggle were in the hands of a higher power. Nothing in the world occurs apart from the will of God. Things all arrange themselves so that God can display his full power. So we find the ancient problem of divine grace and human freedom in the unsolved condition in which it has always remained. The biblical authors emphasize first one side and then the other, but make no attempt to reconcile them.

Calvin felt that unless God had a blueprint of every detail exactly as it was going to happen there could be no meaning in history—all would be the prey of chance. If God did not harden Pharaoh's heart, how then did it happen? The only answer seems to be that it happened contrary to the will of God. In that case, God has lost control of things and chance rules. On the other hand, Pharaoh knew that he was free to do as he wanted, and the guilt of his sin was his alone. Like two poles of an arc light, these two opposites stand across from one another, and the light of common sense shines between.

Humanity is free within certain limits. God lets us act as we wish within those limits, but is able to control the results to His own glory. He hardened Pharaoh's heart making it the prisoner of its evil past.

Moses was enroute to fulfill the commands of God, but he had not done the one thing that had to be done first. He had not circumcised his son. How was Moses to save God’s son, Israel, if he had not already cared for his own son? So, God stops him with an illness that could kill him. Moses’ wife, Zipporah, understood the problem immediately. I am sure that Moses had discussed this with his wife, and it appears that he had given in to her desires reference circumcising their son at the time of his marriage and ignored the command of God.

From these three verses we can see that God does not take kindly to being disobeyed, and will allow illness, injury, or other bad things to come into our lives to remind us of who is in charge. The one thing we have to remember is that while God does not do these things to us, He allows the prince of this world to do them. This was true in the days of Exodus and is still true today.

God had a plan for Moses, and Moses was expected to perform it as God wanted it performed. The circumcision of his son was part and parcel of how God wanted Moses to perform his duties. Just as He did not allow Moses to wiggle out of it with one excuse or another, God will not allow us to wiggle out of His plans for us. One way or another, God will get our attention, and He will accomplish His plans. We can either go along and do all we can to further His plans, or He will force us. The first way is much more pleasant.