Moses objects again and God gives him power to do miracles
4
📚And Moses answered and said, “But, look, they will not believe me, or obey my voice. For they will say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’ ”4:1 God had said that they would listen (Ex 3:18), so Moses had no business making this excuse.⚜
2 📚And the LORD said to him, “What is that in your hand?” And he said, “A rod”.
3 📚And he said, “Throw it on the ground”. And he threw it on the ground, and it became a snake, and Moses ran away from it. 4 📚And the LORD said to Moses, “Put out your hand, and take it by the tail”. And he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand.
4:3-4 The serpent was the well-known emblem of the kings of Egypt (Pharaohs) who wore them on their crown. The Pharaohs themselves were regarded as divine. Now Moses is given power over Pharaoh.⚜
5 📚The LORD said “This is so that they may believe that the LORD God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you”.
6 📚And again the LORD spoke to him, “Now put your hand inside your cloak”. So he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out he saw that his hand was leprous 📖 like snow.
4:6 The power to inflict and remove plagues was also given to Moses.⚜
7 📚And he said, “Put your hand inside your cloak again”. And he put his hand inside his cloak again, and he drew it out from inside his cloak, and saw that it had been restored like his other flesh.
8 📚And the LORD said “It will come about that if they do not believe you, or pay attention to the evidence of the first sign, they may believe the evidence of the latter sign. 9 📚And it will be that if they do not believe even these two signs, or obey your voice, then you shall take some water from the river, and pour it on the dry ground. And the water which you take from the river will become blood on the dry ground”.
4:3-9 This is the first time in recorded Old Testament history that any man had been given the power to do miracles.⚜
4:9 The Nile was (and is) the great river of Egypt. Most of Egypt’s civilization and agriculture was along its banks. It was worshiped as divine.⚜
Moses objects again and asks God to send someone else
10 📚And Moses said to the LORD, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, not before this and not since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue”.
4:10 Another unacceptable excuse. God does not need men’s eloquence, but their obedience.⚜
11 📚And the LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who make the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD? 12 📚So now go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall say”.
4:12 Deut 18:18; Isa 50:4; Jer 1:9; Matt 10:19-20; Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11-12; 21:14-15; John 14:26; 16:13. This is the way the whole Bible was inspired. God taught His prophets what to say, and breathed His thoughts into their minds. And He carried them along in their writing in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21).⚜
13 📚And he said, “O my Lord, please send the word by the hand of anyone else you want to send”.
14 📚And the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and he said, “Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And also now he is coming to meet you. And when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.
4:13-14 Now Moses makes almost a flat refusal to go and God’s anger burns against him because of it (compare Ps 90:7-11). Let us understand that Moses, great man that he was, had a sinful nature like all the rest of mankind (Rom 3:23), and needed God’s grace to overcome it. If we refuse to do the will of God in spite of repeated urgings and commands and promises we too will be the objects of His anger.⚜
15 📚And you shall speak to him, and put words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. 16 📚And he will be your spokesman to the people. And he himself will be as a mouth for you, and you will be as God for him. 17 📚And you shall take this rod in your hand. You shall do signs with it”.
Moses returns to Egypt
18 📚And Moses left and returned to his father-in-law Jethro, and said to him, “Please let me go and return to my brothers who are in Egypt, and see whether they are still alive”. And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace”.
19 📚And the LORD said to Moses in Midian, “Go, return to Egypt, for all the men who tried to take your life are dead”. 20 📚And Moses took his wife and his sons, put them on a donkey, and returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand.
21 📚And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders 📖 before Pharaoh, which I have put in your hand. But I will harden 📖 his heart so that he will not let the people go. 22 📚And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD: Israel is my son, my firstborn. 23 📚And I say to you, Let my son go so that he may serve me. And if you refuse to let him go, then I will kill your son, your firstborn.’ ”
24 📚And it happened at the inn along the way, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him, 25 📚but Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off her son’s foreskin and threw it at his feet, and said, “You are a bridegroom of blood to me”. 26 So the LORD let him alone. Then she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood”, because of the circumcision.
4:24-26 Why would God think to kill the very person He planned to use to deliver His people from bondage? The answer is to be found in the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants (Gen 17:9-14). At that time God gave circumcision as the sign of the covenant. Moses was disobedient to this command of God, and he was in danger until he obeyed – or made his wife obey. It seems that his wife may have been the stumbling-block to obedience. Of course, if God had really made much of an effort to kill Moses He could easily have done so. What He wanted was to wake him up to an important duty. To get men to wake up and obey Him God may sometimes use very drastic measures.⚜
27 📚And the LORD said to Aaron, “Go into the desert to meet Moses”. And he went and met him in the mountain of God, and kissed him. 28 📚And Moses told Aaron all the words of the LORD who had sent him, and all the signs which he had commanded him to do.
29 📚And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel, 30 📚and Aaron spoke all the words which 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 children of Israel, and that he had looked on their misery, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.