When the LORD Seeks to Kill Moses: Reading Exodus 4.24–26 in its Literary Context

1. Introduction

Exodus 4.24–26 is jarring. When God has taken so much time to appear to Moses, call and convince him, even extend God's personal name as evidence and support, how do we understand God's attempt to kill him (or his offspring)? ¹ One would shudder to be called by such a fickle God, a God who calls at one moment and who seeks to kill that called person in the next.

The attack is startling, causing us to read more closely to gain some clue to this abrupt turn, but the search for explanation only raises more questions than it answers. Most scholars’ approach is etiological—to look for solutions and clues amidst the laconic and ambiguous details, and to posit some connection or cultural practice that might be behind the text, which might then illuminate us as to the meaning and purpose of these verses. ² Despite numerous attempts, the ambiguities persist, and the result is that speculation abounds. ³ The present study argues that the ambiguities of Exod. 4.24–26 are part of a literary and rhetorical strategy within, and serving, the larger narrative and framework of Exodus 1–14, where God is claiming sovereignty over Moses’ life and over the life of Israel, against Pharaoh.

This study will progress in the following way. First, it will observe the literary and thematic connection between 4.24–26 with the verses surrounding it, as well as the larger frame of Exodus 1–14. Secondly, the question of who is attacked, obscured through an unspecified third person pronoun, will be examined with suggestions for how the resultant ambiguity functions to expand the meaning of the text. Thirdly, the meaning of the circumcising act will be considered in light of the larger narrative frame with the issue of identity emerging as a more likely theme than notions of expiation. Lastly, the action of 4.31, to ‘bow down and worship’, will be examined as a response to this dramatic event. Along the way, other texts with similar motifs and literary connections will be brought in. These intertextual links, though held loosely, may provide some interpretive insight or perspective.

The approach here is to make ‘sense’ of the passage in the context of the narrative ‘logic’ at work in these opening chapters of Exodus, and as this is informed by the intertextual connections with other dominant biblical texts. As Isbell states, ‘If the biblical text is allowed to speak within its own categories, the questions put to the story of the Exodus must be framed in a different way, and more appropriate theological answers must be sought’. ⁴ What are the categories at work within the text? What is the narrative logic? How does this small passage (Exod. 4.24–26) fit as a part of a larger rhetorical strategy? In addressing these questions, the theological dilemmas become part of larger ones as well. For example, it is discomforting to hear of God trying to kill God's messenger, but it is also unsettling to hear God wiping out the environment, livelihoods, and the firstborn children of the Egyptians in order to secure the release of the Israelites to worship in the wilderness. When we consider the larger rhetorical strategy, we discern that the events have been cast in such a way that God is seen to be engaged in a contest for authority over God's people. God is battling it out for sovereignty, and that battle implicates many lives.

2. The Battle for Sovereignty

Pharaoh has sovereignty over Israel at the beginning of Exodus. This sovereignty starts to unfold as God tells Moses in Exod. 3.7–8a: ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ God's peculiar connection to the people of Israel compels God to engage in the act of liberation. Of all the cries present in the world, it is the cries of God's people that have reached God's ears (Exod. 2.23–24). God emphasizes this again in 3.9, ‘The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them’. God then commissions Moses to go, acting as God's deliverer. And to Moses’ objections God says in 3.12, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship (‭דבע‬) God on this mountain’. This sign that they would worship their God voices the trajectory of God's relationship with Israel, one of worship and peculiar relationship. The sign being given also represents the struggle at play in these chapters. The word for ‘worship’ is also the word ‘to serve’. The question emerges: who is Israel going to ‘serve/worship'? As Moses will bargain with Pharaoh to let Israel temporarily go to ‘worship’ (‭דבע‬) their God, Pharaoh knows that such an act begins to undermine his lordship over them; it begins to weaken their ‘service’ (‭דבע‬); it will lead to a loss of control and a shift in obligation, and he will not ‘let them go’. Issues of worship and service implicate sovereignty.

As Pharaoh will hold on to his control over Israel, the language of God's ‘firstborn’ is introduced. In 4.22–23, God instructs Moses to say, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, ‘Let my son go that he may worship me’. But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son.”’ The logic is that Pharaoh has exerted authority and control over God's people, God's ‘son’ (‭ןב‬), God's ‘firstborn’ (‭רוכב‬). Therefore, in this battle for lordship over God's own ‘son’ God will strike at Pharaoh's ‘firstborn son’. God and Pharaoh are entering into an intense showdown of authority over Israel.

In David Gunn's words, God shows a ‘curious hint of insecurity’, as God is ‘bound up with his need to establish himself securely as Israel's God, the god of the covenantal promise, in the eyes of Israel’. ⁵ Though we might wish for a portrayal of God in which God remains above the fray in some dignified and refined fashion, in the rhetoric of Exodus God engages Pharaoh, rather, in a battle for God's children on the plane where Pharaoh's sovereignty has already been established. ⁶ God will threaten all that Pharaoh has exerted control over: his kingdom, the natural world, his ‘firstborn’, and even Moses. ⁷

Moses is on his way from Midian returning to Egypt, fulfilling the call which God placed on him in ch. 3, when the text says that the Lord ‘sought to kill him’ (‭ותימה שקבױ‬). This unexpected attack causes the reader to remember and read back, remembering that this is not the first time Moses’ life has come under attack, and the reader's attention is drawn to an important literary link back in Exodus 2. In the Exodus 2 passage, Moses fled Egypt to seek asylum in Midian because Pharaoh sought his life. In Exod. 2.15, when Pharaoh received word that Moses had killed an Egyptian and had buried him in the sand, Pharaoh ‘sought to kill’ Moses (‭גרהל שקבױ‬). Pharaoh had presumed power over Moses’ life, even as he did over the lives of all Israel, and as he had over the lives of the boy babies born to the Israelites. In the same way, in 4.24 God asserts authority over Moses’ life, as God ‘seeks’ his life.

The literary connection is strengthened when we see that the reference to Pharaoh's attempt to kill Moses is brought into closer proximity to 4.24, when Moses prepares to return to the place from which he fled in 4.19. There the Lord says to Moses, ‘Go back to Egypt; for all those who were seeking (‭םישקבמה‬) your life are dead (‭ותמ‬)’. ⁸ God is laying claim to God's ‘firstborn’, and laying claim to Moses’ life as God's messenger.

God is proving his own right by challenging Pharaoh on a number of fronts. God will eventually force Pharaoh to relinquish his control when Pharaoh's firstborn son is killed, and then as Pharaoh's pursuing army is drowned in the sea. Reinforcing the notion that there is a battle for sovereignty at stake, Levinson has argued that the confrontation between God and Pharaoh concerns who will be master to Israel. Liberation, as seen in Exodus, is not ‘freedom’ generally conceived. It is a freedom from Pharaoh's oppression so that they might ‘serve’ the Lord. God is establishing his place over the life of the Israelites and over the life and death of Moses. According to Levinson, ‘The point of the Exodus is not freedom in the sense of self-determination, but service, the service of the loving, redeeming, and delivering god of Israel, rather than the state and its proud king’. ⁹ Levinson sees the biblical narratives signifying ‘God's proprietorship of Israel and Israel's inescapable subjugation to her God’. ¹⁰ Gunn concludes similarly, though he is less comfortable with the notion of subjugation. He states, ‘I would rather say that the story nuances the theme of slavery vs. freedom by recognizing that the freedom into which Israel is delivered is in fact a different kind of servitude’. ¹¹ Gunn states further, ‘thus a certain irony underlies this story which tells of freedom gained, slavery overthrown, yet which presents the real struggle for Israel's “release” as being between rival masters’. ¹² God is displacing Pharaoh and his control, claiming sovereignty and authority over Israel, and over Moses.

This contest of authority and sovereignty is embodied throughout these chapters of Exodus in various ways, the most obvious being repetition of key words and phrases, along with variations within the repetition. The action of ‘seeking to kill’ has been pointed out already, as has the play on ‘to work/serve/worship’ as well as ‘son’ and ‘firstborn’. Additionally, Isbell points out the use of the word for ‘hand’ (‭די‬). Especially pertinent to the point here, ‘hand’ carries the weight of authority, power, and sovereignty and is used in reference to God's hand, Pharaoh's hand, and Moses’ hand. It is used in contexts of oppression, miracles, and deliverance; it occurs nearly fifty times between 2.19 and 14.31. ¹³ The repetition of ‘hand’ traces the contest of power and authority which runs through these fourteen chapters.

3. The Literary Impact of Ambiguity: Who Does the Lord Seek to Kill?

The proposed approach of reading in the context of the larger literary unit of Exodus 1–14 does not disregard, nor reduce, the ambiguities of the text. Indeed, the ambiguities serve to reinforce those thematic and literary connections. This section will briefly address one area of ambiguity where the lack of answers serves to uphold more than one possible explanation, and thereby serves to reinforce and strengthen the themes of the passage. ¹⁴

The Lord seeks to kill ‘him’ in v. 24. The text is not clear as to who the object of the attack is, as indicated by a third masculine singular pronominal suffix used twice (‭ותימה שקבױ הוהי והשגפי‬); the identity of the one being attacked is unspecified. We start looking back to the prior verses for some indication. In 4.20 Moses takes his wife and his sons and puts them on a donkey. In 4.19–23 Moses is being spoken to and instructed by the Lord. However, in the episode of lodging for the night, only the Lord and Zipporah are mentioned by name. The pronoun has no clear antecedent, and it is therefore not clear who has come under attack. We may presume in light of the masculine pronoun that it is either Moses or one of his sons.

Most commentators have seen Moses as the primary figure of the ongoing narrative, especially following the call narrative of Exodus 3, and thus the object of God's attack. J. Durham states, ‘It is hardly reasonable to claim that anyone except Moses is the object of Yahweh's encountering action. Moses is the center of Yahweh's concern everywhere else in the section.’ ¹⁵ Indeed, Moses is central to the narrative and to the plan God is working out. The narrative thus far in Exodus has been interested in Moses, and the connection has been established above with earlier events in Moses’ life which are connected thematically and literarily (‘seeking to kill’). The call of Moses and the identity of Moses (his ethnicity, allegiance, the master to whom he owes service) are at question.

Acknowledging Moses’ central role in the text, we can also acknowledge that Pharaoh too is central to the narrative as the one whom God seeks to displace as ruler over God's people. Exodus 4.23 features Pharaoh in the context of the words which Moses is to speak to him, expounding on the threat upon his son, his firstborn. Even as the focus is on Pharaoh as the adversary, the threat is towards his son. So it is possible, even likely, that this sudden shift might turn focus back to Moses as the central figure, while the threat is aimed towards Moses’ son, his firstborn. Both sons are nameless, both significant only by their relationship to the primary figures.

A. Howell takes up the argument that Gershom, Moses’ firstborn, is the object of the attack. He argues that the closest antecedent to the 3ms pronominal suffix is ‘your son, your firstborn’ (‭ךרכב ךנב‬), from 4.23. Therefore Gershom is the referent. Howell's point has merit, as the reference to the firstborn immediately prior does create a thematic tie around the theme of the firstborn son, and a close literary connection. ¹⁶ We must note, though, that it is actually Pharaoh's firstborn and not Gershom who is referred to in 4.23. Even so, Howell supports his premise saying, ‘Yahweh has just informed Moses about the upcoming tenth plague that will destroy the firstborn of Egypt while Yahweh protects his firstborn, Israel’. ¹⁷ According to Howell, Gershom, as the firstborn son, is susceptible to the tenth plague and must be circumcised in order to be identified with the people of God. ¹⁸ In reading the text in this light, there is clear foreshadowing of the Passover and the rescue of the Israelite firstborn while the Egyptians’ firstborn sons are struck down. Just as the Israelites will be saved by the smearing of blood, so Moses’ firstborn is saved by the touching of blood.

As can be seen, there are good reasons for reading Gershom as the object of the attack, and the recognized foreshadowing of the saving/killing of the firstborn. Even so, it must be recognized that Gershom actually features very little in the overall narrative. We return to the fact that the focus does seem to be Moses himself, and the language of the firstborn is actually aimed at Israel and Pharaoh's son (perhaps functioning as a collective for the Egyptians, and also as symbolic of Pharaoh's power). Therefore, our reading should not become too occupied with ideas of Gershom as the object and focus of the text. ¹⁹ The net effect, as seen in this limited survey, is that both readings bear compelling points, and both are possible. The inability to decide for one interpretation while eliminating the other leaves both options open. The text holds both readings open, enlarging the reach of the passage rather than specifying and thereby reducing its reach.

Understanding these readings as being held together through ambiguity is reinforced when we consider the inter-textual parallels. There are similarities and literary connections that tie Exodus 4 to both Genesis 22 and Genesis 32. In Genesis 22 there are parallels of loading a donkey/mule, taking a son on a journey from which he may not return; in both Exodus 4 and Genesis 22 the endeavor God has initiated is called into question by God's own choices. The inter-textual connections strengthen the Gershom reading, as both texts focus on the life of a ‘firstborn’ coming under threat in a heightening moment for the larger trajectory of God's providential plans. Both passages can be seen as a type of testing or trial of the central figure's faithfulness and faith in God's ability to bring the plan or promise to fulfillment.

On the other hand, in Genesis 32 God meets and wrestles with Jacob in a transitory space, where Jacob is left with a mark (a displaced hip) by the encounter. There Jacob's assailant ‘touches’ (‭עגנ‬) his thigh, and here in Exodus 4 Zipporah ‘touches’ (‭עגנ‬) Moses with the blood. Moses is marked by the blood, and by the emotional impact of having one's life come under attack in the course of the night. A further connection is that following this episode Moses is met (‭שגפ‬) by Aaron whom he kisses. Following the Jacob story, Jacob meets (‭שגפ‬) his brother and kisses him. Robinson comments on the parallels:

This transformative encounter with God, where life is on the line, has an effect of solidifying Moses’ resolve, establishing that it is God whom he shall serve and fear, and the smeared blood and averted attack are akin to Jacob's limp—a lasting reminder and sign.

This section demonstrates that the ambiguity is more than the result of our distance from the text, but is rather deliberately ambiguous, drawing us into the story to consider more than one possibility, and to uphold both in a way that broadens and strengthens the force of the passage. ²¹ The sense and force of both possibilities carry through, affirming and foreshadowing the Passover deliverance and the need to be covered from God's striking of the firstborn, as well as the testing, solidifying, and marking of Moses as God's own, and as God's chosen figure for the deliverance of Israel. This approach is confirmed when we consider the narrative logic and framework of Exodus 1–14, where God is laying claim to what is rightfully God's, both God's ‘firstborn’ (Israel), and God's messenger, Moses. The use of the third masculine singular suffix allows both to be reinforced as God's reclamation of God's sovereignty intensifies.

4. Circumcision as a Resolution to the Ambiguity of Identity

Immediately following the attack of v. 24, Zipporah takes a flint and cuts off the foreskin of her son, a clear reference to circumcision (v. 25). She then touches it to ‘his’ leg, and says, ‘you are a bridegroom of blood to me’. Then he (the Lord) withdrew from him. It is clear that Zipporah's actions are what stop God's attack, though it is quite unclear how her actions somehow satisfy God.

One of the main points in question is the meaning of this expression ‘bridegroom of blood’ (‭םימד ןתח‬). What does it mean, and how does this declaration, combined with the act of circumcision, serve to stop God's attack? It is generally agreed that the term ‭ןתח‬ refers to a relation through marriage, sometimes more specifically ‘bridegroom’. ²² Similarly, though slightly more broadly, Howell argues the term refers to a social relationship as opposed to someone related by blood-line. ²³ Howell sees, as do others, that the primary issue is the lack of circumcision. Some see the issue as Moses’ failure to be circumcised himself. Others, such as Howell, see the issue as Moses’ failure to circumcise the child Gershom. Either way, the failure to comply with circumcision is what prompts God's attack, which is then averted through Zipporah's intervention of circumcision.

Propp represents a different way to read the expression, though he too sees some unrequited offense as being the cause of the attack. He renders the term, with Schneemann, as ‘a bridegroom who has shed blood’; he is a relative by marriage to Zipporah, and he has been wanted in Egypt for murder. ²⁴ Therefore, God has attacked Moses because of some unexpiated crime. Through Zipporah's actions Moses’ crime is being atoned for as she applies the bloody foreskin to ‘his leg’. Propp then traces a development of a tradition which he sees connecting the practice of circumcision to the pascal ceremony, signifying the expiation of guilt through the touching of blood. ²⁵ In the end, this expression (‭םימד ןתח‬) occurs only here in the Old Testament, making its etymology difficult to ascertain.

Childs emphasizes that despite the many and various attempts at providing an explanation, the focus of the episode is circumcision. He states:

In the midst of abounding problems and ambiguities, as well as wildly divergent explanations by various scholars, Childs reminds us of what little we know. He states further, ‘the passage itself nowhere explains explicitly why Yahweh attacked Moses. It was only clear that what Zipporah did rescued him from death.’ ²⁷ Following Childs, the connotations of circumcision hold sway in the passage and therefore define Zipporah's action, and these have much more to do with being marked as an Israelite, and included in God's people, than expiation of a specific guilt. Explanations of Moses’ guilt or some other ‘just’ basis for God's attack are therefore particularly speculative.

The primary issue, rather, is not guilt, but identity. Who is Moses, and whose is he? The focus on the circumcision in stifling the attack is not the expiation of some offense. The focus of the circumcision is the establishing of identity: being clearly marked as God's, in God's eyes, Pharaoh's eyes, Israel's eyes as well as Moses’ own eyes. Throughout the first four chapters of Exodus the question of Moses’ identity has been prominent. He is an Israelite baby raised under the provision of Pharaoh's daughter, serving in Pharaoh's house. He seeks to help Israelite slaves, who are described as ‘his people’ (Exod. 2.11), but he is seen as ‘other’ by them (Exod. 2.11–14). To the Midianites, he is an Egyptian (Exod. 2.19). Whereas in biblical narrative individuals are quite often identified by their father or some ancestral lineage, we do not know the names of Moses’ parents. Zipporah is non-Israelite and only potentially Israelite through marriage. If Moses’ identity is unclear, so is Zipporah's, as well as Gershom's. Furthermore, Moses’ own hedging and hesitancy raises questions as to whether Moses is ready to stand squarely as an Israelite and as the leader of the Israelites. Here the quintessential act of circumcision forensically answers the question of identity; it marks Moses, Gershom, and Zipporah as Moses’ wife, as Israelite. From amidst the shrouded text, one unambiguous reality emerges: Moses’ family is marked and sealed as the Lord's. There is no more ambiguity when it comes to who Moses is and to whom his service and allegiance is due, and who it is that he should fear. ²⁸

As Moses’ identity is being solidified, this endangerment experience bears parallels with the story of Balaam in Num. 22.21–35. Both figures are commissioned to bring a message to a foreign ruler, each showing reticence. Along the way, both are encountered/attacked by the Lord, or an angel of the Lord, in Numbers 22. Both Moses and Balaam are saved by another figure, Zipporah/the donkey. Both are marked using the word for ‘foot/leg’ (‭לגר‬). Moses is marked with the blood on his ‘leg’, and Balaam's ‘foot’ is crushed by the donkey. In both cases, there is a development of character and determination to speak the word that the Lord has given. ²⁹

The connections between these passages suggest a similar motif, even a right of testing/passage required of God's messengers. Embry states:

This inter-textual connection strengthens the theme of Moses’ development, his deepening sense of identity and his call to proclaim the Lord's word.

5. Bowing and Worship: Confirmation of God's Sovereignty

This study has argued that the ambiguities of the text ultimately point us to the larger narrative where God is reclaiming authority over God's own, including clarifying the identity of Moses. This enveloping narrative is seen further in the events immediately following 4.24–26. For following the moment of attack and circumcision God calls Aaron to meet Moses at the mountain of God, and Moses tells Aaron all that has transpired (Exod. 4.27–28). Moses and Aaron then call all the elders of Israel and they share with them that God has seen their affliction and is attending to them; they perform the signs in the sight of ‘all the people’. The people believe and they ‘bow down and worship’ in v. 31 (‭דדחתשיו ודקי‬). The verb ‭דדק‬ has the sense of bowing down, showing homage, or worship. It is usually accompanied by ‭החש‬, as in the case of its three occurrences in Exodus (4.31; 12.27; 34.8). ³¹ The occurrence (‘bow and worship’) in Exod. 12.27 bears certain similarities with the occurrence here in ch. 4. Just as Moses and Aaron gather together the elders in Exodus 4, so in Exod. 12.21 Moses calls all the elders of Israel together. In ch. 4 Moses and Aaron explain God's plans and the signs that were placed in Moses’ hand; in ch. 12 Moses explains the instructions for the Passover when the Lord will kill the firstborn of the Egyptians, as well as instructions for observing the Sabbath once they have come into the land. Exodus 12.27 says that ‘all the people bowed down and worshipped’ (‭ווחתשיו םעה דקיו‬). In both occurrences there is a sense of awe and gratefulness for both God's fearsome power and God's gracious work on behalf of the people. Honor and reverence go together.

Although the occurrence of ‘to bow down and worship’ in Exod. 34.8 does not bear as close a similarity, there is still an analogous combination of graciousness and fearsomeness brought together. There Moses meets with God to receive the ten commandments a second time, and God speaks of divine compassion that lasts a thousand years along with the consequences of rebellion:

God shows his loving intention through the use of his power, and it strikes awe and reverence in the people, leading them to bow and worship him.

6. Conclusion

As we consider the literary and thematic connections of Exod. 4.24–26 with the immediately surrounding verses, with chs. 1–14 and with other significant passages such as Genesis 22 and 32 and Numbers 22, a certain multi-valence is evident. However, each possible reading which emerges from the ambiguity lends itself to the rhetorical strategy of Exodus 1–14, where God is asserting God's sovereignty over Pharaoh, where God is commanding the service/worship of Israel, where God is calling and confirming Moses in the pattern that God has with others (Abraham, Jacob, Balaam), and where God is foreshadowing the plan and the promises of God's deliverance. In this rhetorical strategy and in the narrative's ‘logic’, this short passage is not an etiological aside explaining the origins or morphing tradition of circumcision, but rather is an important moment in the identity of Moses, and in God's claim of sovereignty and authority. The ambiguities which have frustrated scholars prove not to be the obstacle but the mechanism for extending the meaning and significance of God's attack on Moses within this larger drama.