Exodus - Lesson 6

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-06 
Circumcision of Moses 
Lesson Transcript

All right, well, we have come to one of the most baffling passages in the book of Exodus, and I bet some of you thought I was going to skip right on by it, because nobody seems to know what to do with it. But I am convinced that the story of the circumcision, the hasty circumcision on the way back to Egypt, is actually really important, both theologically and literarily. So in the overall literary structure of the book, as well as in the theological themes of the book, so we're going to linger here in the second half of chapter four, and see if I can help this passage make sense to you as well.

I'm convinced that every weird passage in the Bible is here for a reason, and that if we wrestle with it long enough, it will reveal its secrets to us. So hopefully that will happen for us today. First of all, let's give a kind of bird's eye view of what's happening in this passage.

We have seven or so micro scenes, scenes that last only a verse or two each, spanning from Exodus 4 verse 18 to verse 31. And often the part that people are most baffled by is verses 24 through 26. I'll just read that part for you to begin.

At a lodging place on the way, this is on the way back to Egypt. Yahweh met Moses and was about to kill him. 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. So Yahweh let him alone. At that time, she said bridegroom of blood, referring to circumcision.

All right, that's weird. So, so many questions that we could wrestle with as we come to this passage. First of all, in the Hebrew, there's a lot of ambiguity in these verses.

There's a lot of pronouns rather than names. And our English Bibles try to clear this up and make it obvious who is being talked about. But it's not always clear in Hebrew.

So in Hebrew, it says, at a lodging place on the way, Yahweh met him and was about to kill him. So who is Yahweh trying to kill? Moses or Moses' son Gershom? Because the action that Zipporah takes is to circumcise their son. And so is it possible that Yahweh is trying to kill their son and this is what saves him? That's one question.

Why, if it's Moses, which I think is more likely because it's just been talking about Moses in the previous verse, if it's Moses that Yahweh is trying to kill, the question is why would Yahweh try to kill Moses right after commissioning him to go to Egypt? Moses is obeying after all. It seems like he deserves a pat on the back, not a threat to his life. Why is Moses entirely passive in this story? Why had Moses not already circumcised his son? Was Moses already circumcised? Would he have been? Would he not have been? And what are the possible factors to consider? How in the world did Zipporah know what to do? She takes very quick action and it seems to avert disaster.

How did she know what to do? Whose feet does she touch with the foreskin? The NIV says she touched Moses' feet with it but in Hebrew again it just says his. She touched his feet with it. Is this Moses' feet? Is this Gershom's feet? Is this Yahweh's feet? And is this a reference to actual feet or is feet a euphemism for male genitalia as some have suggested? Who drew back from whom after she performed the ritual? It says in the NIV it says, so Yahweh let him alone.

I believe in the Hebrew it says here, so he drew back from him. So who's drawing back from whom? And what does her statement mean when she says, surely you're a bridegroom of blood to me? For many years when I came across this I read this with a measure of disgust like, I can't believe you made me do this. You're a bridegroom of blood to me.

And imagine she was talking to Moses saying that her groom is making her do this bloody thing and she doesn't like it. But the more time I've spent with the story the less convincing I think that tone or that focus of her statement is. So what I want to do to help us answer these questions is to zoom out to this entire context of verses 18 to 31 and show you that this is a tightly constructed literary unit with an important literary function.

So if we can isolate the various scenes in this section and show how they're interconnected with each other that will help us help inform how we read it. Because these verses 24 to 26 don't really make much sense on their own but they begin to make more sense as part of this larger unit. So here are the seven scenes that I see in this passage.

So first is verse 18 where Moses leaves Jethro to return to his brothers in Egypt. So Moses went back to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive. Jethro said, go and I wish you well.

So this is interesting in lots of ways. It's just a tiny scene. It's interesting because what Moses says he's going to do is not quite exactly what God says for Moses to do.

He's not going back to see if they're alive. He's going back to set them free. So it's curious how Moses phrases this to Jethro and you wonder is he holding back from telling Jethro the whole truth about going back because it's embarrassing, because he wants to save face in case it doesn't work.

Is he really curious about whether they're still alive? What's going on here? But he's also going to an older male figure and asking for permission to leave and he's getting permission to leave which is what he's going to do when he gets to Egypt. He's going to go to Pharaoh, ask for permission to leave, and eventually be able to leave. So lots of significance to this tiny scene.

Scene two is Yahweh's recommissioning of Moses. So there's a reiteration of what we just read earlier in chapter four and it's told as if this has already happened but it's just being fronted again by the narrator so that we have it in mind. Now Yahweh had said to Moses and Midian, go back to Egypt for all those who wanted to kill you are dead.

So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey, and started back to Egypt and he took the staff of God in his hand. So that's scene three. The recommissioning is verse 19, verse 20 is Moses his wife and sons travel and then we have scene four which is Yahweh's threat to Pharaoh's firstborn and this one is three verses long.

Yahweh said to Moses, when you return to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I've given you the power to do but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then say to Pharaoh, this is what Yahweh says, Israel is my firstborn son and I told you let my son go so he may worship me but you refuse to let him go so I will kill your firstborn son. So right at the center of this series of scenes is this explanation of why it's appropriate for Yahweh to kill the firstborn of Egypt which is of course the the most devastating of the plagues or signs and wonders that come on Egypt is the death of the firstborn.

So that's going to happen because Israel is God's firstborn and Pharaoh has refused to let them go. So it's a tit for tat. God is going to give a punishment that fits the crime and that's right at the center.

Then we get the scene where Moses life is under threat or Gershom's life is under threat that we've already read and it's Moses and his wife and sons that are part of this scene. So scene five matches scene three involving the same characters and then we have verses 27 to 28 another commissioning from Yahweh. This time he's commissioning Aaron to meet Moses in the wilderness.

So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. Then Moses told Aaron everything Yahweh had sent him to say and also about all the signs he had commanded him to perform. And then verses 29 to 31 is the final scene in which Moses and his brother Aaron arrive in Egypt.

So Moses had taken leave of Jethro to go see his brothers in Egypt and now he and his brother are going to go to Egypt. So lots of key words linking those scenes. So Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites and Aaron told them everything Yahweh had said to Moses.

He also performed the signs before the people and they believed. It's a nice satisfying conclusion. There's going to be times of unbelief coming in the future but here they believed.

And when they heard that Yahweh was concerned about them and had seen their misery they bowed down and worshipped. It's a very satisfying conclusion to this unit of text. So you'll see that on the slide I've laid these scenes out in a chiasm or literary sandwich where you can see there's correspondences between one and seven, two and six, three and five, and then four in the middle which is usually usually the center of the chiasm is the place that gets the the most significant emphasis.

And so if we want to understand this weird circumcision scene we need to see where is it in this chiasm, what does it correspond to, and how does that help us. So there's a few more things in addition to the connections between each of the paired scenes in this larger text. There's also a bunch of other connections between the scenes.

So in two of the scenes there's a mention of the Chatan or Chotan which means relative by marriage. So we have the father-in-law mentioned in verse 18 and then in 25 and 26 the bridegroom of blood is using that same word Chatan. So the mention of that male relative by marriage, the commissioning of Moses and the commissioning of Aaron mirror each other.

The firstborn of Yahweh in scene four and then the firstborn of Pharaoh in scene four and then the very next scene we have the firstborn of Moses who's at under threat. We have Pharaoh seeking to kill Moses in verse 19, Yahweh seeking to kill Moses in verse 24. We have Yahweh wanting to kill Pharaoh's son and then Yahweh wanting to kill Moses' son right after that.

We have Yahweh and Aaron both encountering Moses using the same word Pagesh or Pagash. So we have the the encounter with Yahweh and the encounter with Aaron. The encounter with Yahweh is really dangerous but the encounter with Aaron ends with a kiss and so that it's not a threat like the first encounter.

And then we have Moses intention to see his brothers and Moses and Aaron's arrival in Egypt. So lots of literary links that join these scenes together and make this a tightly constructed unit. We also have not only is this scene tightly constructed but it plays a really significant role in the literary design of the entire book of Exodus.

So I've shown you this panel before that that talked about the deliverance of Moses and the deliverance of the Hebrews as stories that mirror each other and interestingly Zipporah's role in this story provides us with a sort of bookend or or framing around the deliverance of Moses story. So the name Zipporah in Hebrew Zipporah sounds a lot like Shiphrah which is the name of the midwife in chapter one. So framing the Moses deliverance saga we have two women Shiphrah and Zipporah both of whom deliver him in a time of crisis.

So that seems significant. We also have both of them are participating in this larger theme of women who deliver Moses. So there's there's such a there's such a strong thread of that going through the first four chapters of the book.

Similarly we have a conversation with Jethro in this chapter in this scene in chapter four and we have another conversation with Jethro coming up in chapter 18 and I'll show you in a moment how many literary links there are between those two conversations. So if we have Zipporah who's helping to frame the Moses deliverance saga now we have Jethro who's helping to frame the Israel deliverance saga and again those two stories have all kinds of echoes with each other. We also have in this Zipporah story an incident of circumcision and the circumcision here anticipates the next time we're going to hear circumcision which is in chapter 12 when they prepare for the Passover and Moses will give instructions to the people of Israel about who is who is allowed to celebrate Passover with them and those who are allowed to celebrate Passover are only those who have been circumcised.

So we have circumcision here and circumcision in chapter 12 and again a kind of framing effect that happens around the deliverance of Israel. Both of these rituals the circumcision in chapter 12 and the circumcision here protect from Yahweh killing the firstborn and in both rituals although the the Passover ritual isn't a circumcision but you have to be circumcised to participate in the Passover in both of those rituals the Passover and the circumcision in chapter four blood is applied by touching it's the same Hebrew word negah in both stories so Zipporah takes the foreskin and touches Moses' feet with it whereas in the Passover story they take the blood of the lamb and they touch the doorframe with the blood and so there's there's a number of echoes and a number of literary links there. One more thing I'll point out while we're looking at this visual demonstration of the literary design of the book I've put a circle around Miriam.

Miriam you'll remember was the one who took her stand to to bear witness to to watch over her brother and oversee his deliverance. We're also going to see in chapter 14 that the Israelites the people of Israel after they pass through the Sea of Reeds they will take their stand using the same word at the shore of the sea to watch God deliver them by drowning the Egyptian army and then Miriam will lead them in a song and a dance celebrating God's victory in his deliverance. So we have Miriam in both cases taking her stand and bearing witness to God's deliverance.

Again it seems like this is not accidental what we're reading in Exodus is not an FYI this happened or just so you know this happened next. What we don't get is what you would have if someone was just following Moses around and scratching everything down on a legal pad you know kind of journalistically saying what happened. What we have is a beautifully crafted narrative account of God's work in history that helps us to see the patterns in the ways that he works.

Terrence Fredheim talking about this passage says once again it is a woman who by her quick-wittedness and insight saves Moses. Zipporah stands in the train of the midwives Moses' mother and sister and the daughter of Pharaoh. Moses owes his very life to a series of actions by women two of them non-Israelites.

Moses is thus revealed as one who does not himself stand without need of mediation with God. But this patterning goes on further there's more going on. We talked about the type scene of Moses showing up at the well and ending up married by the end of the scene and here we have another type scene.

So the idea of Moses traveling across the wilderness and having a threat to his life in the context of obeying Yahweh finds two there are two other stories in the Torah that have the same kinds of elements that reappear. So one is the Jacob story when Jacob is on his way back to his family and he's going to reunite with his brother Esau. Many of the same elements as the Moses story he leaves his father-in-law he journeys to meet his brother he's got an uncertain reception he's bringing his wives and sons he encounters God on the way.

Remember that the wrestling match that happens all night long with an elohim and so he's he encountered God at the place where he spent the night and he ended up leaving with his staff he was spared by the angel who spoke to him and he left the encounter injured and then he met and kissed his brother and that is almost precisely what we have going on with Moses who left his father-in-law journey to meet his brother with an uncertain reception bringing his wife and sons on a donkey he encounters God where he spends the night takes his staff he's saved by his wife who spoke to him he leaves the encounter injured and with bloody defeat and he met and kissed his brother and then the Balaam story is the other one that echoes and kind of develops this a little further you'll remember that Balaam is the pagan sorcerer who is hired by a foreign king to curse the Israelites as they're camped on the plains of Moab and as he's journeying to the Israelites with an uncertain reception God's told him you're only allowed to say what I tell you you can say you can only bless them and he's like okay but he's gonna go and try to curse them and so there's this uncertainty in his traveling he's going on a donkey he encounters God he has his staff his donkey saves him and speaks to him and he leaves the encounter injured with a crushed foot so there's so many overlaps between these stories and I think the takeaway to me is that whenever there's a journey of obedience to the command of God and you're crossing from one place to another place you go through a period of liminal space where there's a question about whether you will fully obey whether you're fully on board with God's will and Moses as he's going back to Egypt is in a vulnerable place he has responded to the command of God but it's uncertain whether he will fully carry out God's will and so on his way back God meets him and ensures that Moses is fully on board Moses cannot go back to Egypt and inspire the people to listen to God and obey his command and leave Egypt if he himself is not in compliance with the only command given to Abraham and Genesis to be a member of the covenant you need to circumcise your son yourself and your sons and Moses is apparently not in compliance with the only requirement for covenant membership and so it's absolutely essential that Moses settles this with God he can't go lead the people in something he has not himself done he he hasn't obeyed himself and so the the moment of crisis on the way matches these other stories where there's a moment of crisis on the journey and there's a sense of God wanting to make clear that obedience exact obedience really matters okay so circumcision itself might be unfamiliar to some of you who are watching and so let me just take a step back and make sure that we all understand this circumcision is the incision or complete removal of the foreskin the Israelites were not the only people who practiced circumcision but for the Hebrew people for the family of Abraham it was the sign of God's covenant with Abraham and I think the reason why God chooses this particular sign is because he has promised that Abraham will be the father of many and so in the very organ of his body that that participates in procreation God marks him so that he understands that the fruitfulness and fertility of his family is not due to his own anything of his own but that it's he's dedicated himself and his posterity to God and God's the one who is providing these this fruitfulness so other cultures practiced circumcision at puberty or at marriage but Israelites practiced it on the eighth day now it's not entirely clear whether Moses would have been circumcised Moses was born into a Hebrew household in Egypt and he was there for three months so if they were being careful to observe God's command then he would have already been circumcised by the time he's brought to the Nile River so it's not clear when or or how extensively they would have practiced circumcision now if I'm a mom of a Hebrew boy whose life is in danger and I'm hiding him from Egyptian police or military I'm probably not going to perform an elective surgery that will make him cry so it seems at least reasonable to me to think that when the daughter of Pharaoh found Moses in the river that he was not yet circumcised and if that's the case then she likely would have circumcised him when he reached puberty some sources that I've looked at said that the Egyptians did not fully remove the foreskin they just cut a slit in it so I'm not sure whether Moses would have been fully circumcised or only partly circumcised either way if it's happening in an Egyptian context then it's not the sign of the covenant so even if he's already been circumcised by his Egyptian mother then Moses is still not in compliance with the covenant demands so every male community member of the Israelites is required to be circumcised even foreigners this is the method of assimilation into the Israelite community is to undergo circumcision we're told in Joshua chapter 5 verse 5 that there's a mass circumcision right as the people enter across the Jordan river and enter into the promised land they stop and have a circumcision party because apparently nobody got circumcised as they traveled through the wilderness I am not sure why that is whether they didn't feel it was important or whether they didn't feel they could do it in a sanitary and safe way in the wilderness but in any case when they get to the land they all see the importance of it so it's in Joshua 5 5 it says that those leaving Egypt were circumcised and they would have had to have been to celebrate the Passover and to prepare for God's deliverance so then we have this gap of circumcision until they get into the land so Joshua rectified that oversight in the wilderness by acting as Zipporah had done he circumcises the sons of Israel with flint knives to ensure their covenant status all right so back to our original questions we had so many of them about Zipporah and this little scene in verses 24 through 26 her statement you are a blood relative that's how I would translate it the NIV has surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me but as I've already noted the word hatan that root word has a broader meaning than just groom or father-in-law it means any male relative by marriage and so Christopher Hayes argues that through this ritual Zipporah claims her family's relationship to the divine kinsman Yahweh that perhaps he or she's not speaking to Moses saying oh you're such a bridegroom of blood to me but rather that she's speaking to Yahweh and now on the basis of her obedience to the command of circumcision she can now say to Yahweh we are family you are a blood relative and I imagine now that she's not saying it with disgust but that this is a ritual declaration that the act she has just done has effectively made them part of the covenant family so no matter who Zipporah circumcised whose feet she touched and to whom she spoke her ritual action and statement resolved the uncertainty of their covenant status Yahweh had announced his intention to kill the firstborn of Egypt that was in the scene right before this one Israel's my firstborn so tell Pharaoh I'm going to kill your firstborn so Moses can hardly go back to Egypt with an uncertain status he could have been even technically the firstborn of Pharaoh we don't know how many children Pharaoh had or where the daughter of Pharaoh fell in the family tree but Moses is adopted into this and if the daughter of Pharaoh has married the next Pharaoh as sometimes happened then Moses could technically be the firstborn of Pharaoh he cannot go back to Egypt with any kind of question mark around his identity it has to be settled so now after following this act of circumcision Moses family is fully identified with the descendants of Abraham and this is me just speculating but one possible way of reading this is that she takes the son's foreskin and touches Moses feet with it I've already mentioned that feet could be a euphemism here for male genitals and it's possible that if Moses was circumcised as an Egyptian that she's touching his genitals with the bloody foreskin as a way of re-circumcising him she's trying to say now your circumcision counts as covenant circumcision though it didn't count for that before and then she makes this ritual declaration of their relationship with Yahweh so we can't be entirely sure but we can consider the possibilities I think when I come to this story what I've come to see about it is it's such an ambiguous text with all of the reference vague that it kind of draws you in to puzzle over it and figure it out and I actually think that's what it's designed to do that this story ends up having a destabilizing effect as we go back to Egypt we think we know who Yahweh is we think we're all about what he's doing and we are on track and we can't wait to see what happens and then this happens and we're like what in the world why is Yahweh trying to kill Moses what what kind of God would do this what does he even want from me so it kind of gets us off our stable focus and it and it brings us to the place where we're like I'm not sure I entirely know who Yahweh is and what Yahweh wants and that is actually right where the narrator wants us to be as we come into the signs and wonders because as I've already shared the purpose of the signs and wonders is to is so that you may know that I am Yahweh so God is preparing us by destabilizing our maybe fossil assumptions about who God is he's preparing us to reshape our image of God so that it's more accurate and more robust so that we'll come out of Egypt with the people of Israel with a much fuller picture of who God is and of what he desires from us.