1And Moses answered and said, But suppose they will not believe, nor listen to my voice; suppose they say, Jehovah has not appeared to you. 2And Jehovah said to him, What is that in your hand? He said, A staff. 3And He said, Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled before it. 4And Jehovah said to Moses, Stretch out your hand and take it by the tail; and he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand; 5that they may believe that Jehovah the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you. 6Furthermore Jehovah said to him, Now put your hand into your bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous, like snow. 7And He said, Put your hand back into your bosom. So he put his hand back into his bosom, and drew it out of his bosom, and behold, it was restored like his other flesh. 8And it shall come to pass when they do not believe, nor heed the voice of the first sign, that perhaps they will believe the voice of the subsequent sign. 9And it shall come to pass when they do not believe even these two signs, nor listen to your voice, that you shall take water from the river and pour it on the dry land. And the water which you take from the river shall become blood on the dry land. 10And Moses said to Jehovah, O my Lord, I am not a man of words, neither formerly in times past nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I have a heavy mouth and a dull tongue. 11And Jehovah said to him, Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Is it not I, Jehovah? 12Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. 13And he said, O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever You may send. 14And the anger of Jehovah burned against Moses, and He said: Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can form words to speak. And behold, he is also coming out to meet you; and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. 15And you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do. 16And he shall speak for you to the people. And he shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God. 17And you shall take this staff in your hand, with which you shall do the signs. 18So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him, Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see whether they are still alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. 19And Jehovah said to Moses in Midian, Go, return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead. 20And Moses took his wife and his sons and mounted them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand. 21And Jehovah 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. And I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. 22And you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says Jehovah: Israel is My son, My firstborn. 23And I say unto you, Let My son go that he may serve Me. And if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn. 24And it came to pass on the way, at the lodging place, that Jehovah met him and sought to kill him. 25And Zipporah took a flint and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely you are a husband of blood to me! 26So He let him go. Then she said, You are a husband of blood; because of the circumcision. 27And Jehovah said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him on the mountain of God, and kissed him. 28And Moses told Aaron all the words of Jehovah who had sent him, and all the signs which He had commanded him. 29And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the sons of Israel. 30And Aaron spoke all the words which Jehovah had spoken to Moses. And he did the signs in the eyes of the people. 31And the people believed. And when they heard that Jehovah had visited the children of Israel and that He had given attention to their affliction, they bowed down and prostrated themselves.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 MIRACULOUS CHANGE OF THE ROD, &c. (Exo. 4:1-31)
But, behold--Hebrew, "If," "perhaps," "they will not believe me."--What evidence can I produce of my divine mission? There was still a want of full confidence, not in the character and divine power of his employer, but in His presence and power always accompanying him. He insinuated that his communication might be rejected and he himself treated as an impostor.
2 the Lord said, . . . What is that in thine hand?--The question was put not to elicit information which God required, but to draw the particular attention of Moses.
A rod--probably the shepherd's crook--among the Arabs, a long staff, with a curved head, varying from three to six feet in length.
6 Put now thine hand into thy bosom--the open part of his outer robe, worn about the girdle.
9 take of the water of the river--Nile. Those miracles, two of which were wrought then, and the third to be performed on his arrival in Goshen, were at first designed to encourage him as satisfactory proofs of his divine mission, and to be repeated for the special confirmation of his embassy before the Israelites.
10 I am not eloquent--It is supposed that Moses labored under a natural defect of utterance or had a difficulty in the free and fluent expression of his ideas in the Egyptian language, which he had long disused. This new objection was also overruled, but still Moses, who foresaw the manifold difficulties of the undertaking, was anxious to be freed from the responsibility.
14 the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses--The Divine Being is not subject to ebullitions of passion; but His displeasure was manifested by transferring the honor of the priesthood, which would otherwise have been bestowed on Moses, to Aaron, who was from this time destined to be the head of the house of Levi (
1Chr 23:13). Marvellous had been His condescension and patience in dealing with Moses; and now every remaining scruple was removed by the unexpected and welcome intelligence that his brother Aaron was to be his colleague. God knew from the beginning what Moses would do, but He reserves this motive to the last as the strongest to rouse his languid heart, and Moses now fully and cordially complied with the call. If we are surprised at his backwardness amidst all the signs and promises that were given him, we must admire his candor and honesty in recording it.
18 Moses . . . returned to Jethro--Being in his service, it was right to obtain his consent, but Moses evinced piety, humility, and prudence, in not divulging the special object of his journey.
19 all the men are dead which sought thy life--The death of the Egyptian monarch took place in the four hundred and twenty-ninth year of the Hebrew sojourn in that land, and that event, according to the law of Egypt, took off his proscription of Moses, if it had been publicly issued.
20 Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass--Septuagint, "asses." Those animals are not now used in the desert of Sinai except by the Arabs for short distances.
returned--entered on his journey towards Egypt.
he took the rod of God--so called from its being appropriated to His service, and because whatever miracles it might be employed in performing would be wrought not by its inherent properties, but by a divine power following on its use. (Compare
Acts 3:12).
24 inn--Hebrew, "a halting place for the night."
the Lord met him, and sought to kill him--that is, he was either overwhelmed with mental distress or overtaken by a sudden and dangerous malady. The narrative is obscure, but the meaning seems to be, that, led during his illness to a strict self-examination, he was deeply pained and grieved at the thought of having, to please his wife, postponed or neglected the circumcision of one of his sons, probably the younger. To dishonor that sign and seal of the covenant was criminal in any Hebrew, peculiarly so in one destined to be the leader and deliverer of the Hebrews; and he seems to have felt his sickness as a merited chastisement for his sinful omission. Concerned for her husband's safety, Zipporah overcomes her maternal feelings of aversion to the painful rite, performs herself, by means of one of the sharp flints with which that part of the desert abounds, an operation which her husband, on whom the duty devolved, was unable to do, and having brought the bloody evidence, exclaimed in the painful excitement of her feelings that from love to him she had risked the life of her child [CALVIN, BULLINGER, ROSENMULLER].
26 So he let him go--Moses recovered; but the remembrance of this critical period in his life would stimulate the Hebrew legislator to enforce a faithful attention to the rite of circumcision when it was established as a divine ordinance in Israel, and made their peculiar distinction as a people.
27 Aaron met him in the mount of God, and kissed him--After a separation of forty years, their meeting would be mutually happy. Similar are the salutations of Arab friends when they meet in the desert still; conspicuous is the kiss on each side of the head.
29 Moses and Aaron went--towards Egypt, Zipporah and her sons having been sent back. (Compare
Exod 18:2).
gathered . . . all the elders--Aaron was spokesman, and Moses performed the appointed miracles--through which "the people" (that is, the elders) believed (
1Kgs 17:24;
Josh 3:2) and received the joyful tidings of the errand on which Moses had come with devout thanksgiving. Formerly they had slighted the message and rejected the messenger. Formerly Moses had gone in his own strength; now he goes leaning on God, and strong only through faith in Him who had sent him. Israel also had been taught a useful lesson, and it was good for both that they had been afflicted.