Please, Lord, send someone else! (Exod 4:13-20)

Despite the Lord’s repeated reassurances, the bottom line is that Moses feels too inadequate to take on the job God called him to. One can almost hear the panic in his voice as he says, ‘Please, Lord, send someone else!’ (Exod 4:13) Our insecurities can go so deep that we are paralysed by them and avoid the source of our fears at all cost. Sometimes we castigate ourselves and decide to face our fears head-on. In a lot of cases though, neither the fight nor the flight approach helps. What may be needed is a bridging environment with a margin of safety whether it is a space where we are less likely to be judged or where we can experience the challenge we fear on a smaller scale or have an extra person to give us support. In Moses’s case, God is willing to provide such a context by allowing Aaron to speak on his behalf (Exod 4:14-15), though He is losing patience fast. However, the chain of authority is clear: Aaron will serve as Moses’s ‘mouth’ (as the Hebrew says) and Moses will be as God to him (Exod 4:16), while God will teach Moses what to do. In other words, Aaron is purely an instrument, he does not take over the leadership and his access to God’s instructions is through Moses. What is interesting is that as events develop Moses is increasingly in centre stage and Aaron as spokesperson gradually recedes into the background. By the time Israel hits the wilderness, Moses speaks without an intermediary: he has finally come into his own.

In the present, the exchange between God and Moses is now concluded, seemingly all objections have been dealt with and Moses is ready to go. However, one wonders if this is the case. For one thing, Moses is not allowed to speak again, the dialogue is cut off after God’s authoritative command that he should take his staff and perform the signs (Exod 4:17). Often when Scripture wants to indicate someone’s obedience, it either states specifically that the person did what God had commanded (e.g. Noah – Gen 6:22; 7:5, 16) or repeats exactly God’s message with the person now doing it (e.g. the Lord says to Jonah, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh…’ in Jonah 3:2 and Jon 3:3 reads, ‘So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh…’).

The above is an argument from silence and may need to be treated with caution, but there are a couple of other anomalies, which would strengthen the case that Moses is at least ambivalent about the task ahead. First, he seems reluctant to tell his father-in-law his real mission or his encounter with God (Exod 4:18). Such spiritual experiences were perfectly acceptable to recount in the ancient world even to someone who worshipped another god. Further, Jethro proves himself to be a man with an open heart willing to recognise God’s work (Exod 18:8-12), as well as someone who gives wise advice to Moses later (Exod 18:17-24), such that Moses’s silence now is odd. It is as if he were speaking his mind: he will just go and check out how his people are doing. There is almost a wait-and-see attitude about whether to obey God fully. Secondly, it seems that he still needs reassurance and God encourages him: return to Egypt because those who wanted to kill you are now dead (Exod 4:19). Now we get the repetition that Moses returned to Egypt and also took the staff of God in his hand (Exod 4:20 harking back to Exod 4:19 and Exod 4:17). This is an important move, but as we shall see when discussing Exod 4:24-26 (the mysterious attack of the Lord involving Moses), there is one more step needed for his full commitment.

Once again, we see through Moses’s example God’s enormous patience in working with us. So often, God could more easily achieve His purposes without us and yet, He perseveres as we struggle to overcome our fears, doubts, objections and weaknesses. He is not one to give up easily on us and in the process, we become people transformed by His love and His power.