Redemption and a foretaste of what’s to come (Exod 4:24-31)
Exod 4:24-31
This post concludes my reflections on God’s attack on Moses (you can read Part I here and Part II here). The question left to be answered is Zipporah’s action: what exactly is she doing and how does this save Moses? To remind ourselves of the ambiguity in the Hebrew, below again is my wooden translation.
4 24 It happened along the way at the lodging place that the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. 25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and made it touch his feet, and she said, ‘You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me’. 26 So he let him alone. She said ‘bridegroom of blood’ at that time with reference to circumcision.
Zipporah circumcised her son, that much is clear. Normally this was a male job, which shows her desperation. We can imagine that such an operation, performed in temporary lodgings by an inexperienced woman without anaesthetic, while her husband was at death’s door and her son was screaming with pain, was no small feat. Not for the first time, Moses’s life is saved by a woman (cf. Exod 2:1-10) and one who was not an Israelite at that. Throughout the OT we get glimpses of men and women outside Israel who to varying degrees do the right thing, acknowledge the Lord or turn wholeheartedly to Him. These vignettes hint at the larger story God is involved in, which encompasses the nations or Gentiles as well. The rest of Zipporah’s actions allows for a number of different readings. Instead of arguing each detail I want to present one possible interpretation that I believe is coherent and makes sense in the larger story.
Feet in Hebrew is sometimes used as a euphemism for genitalia (e.g. Isa 6:2)[1] and circumcision already focuses our attention on this area through which covenant commitment is expressed. Thus, it would make sense if Zipporah touched Moses’s genitals with the bloody foreskin of her son in a symbolic gesture that saved Moses’s life. The commitment that was lacking in Moses is made up for by the commitment of his firstborn to God. The correspondence is not exact, but we can hear a rich resonance as Christians: Jesus, God’s firstborn fulfilled the righteous demands of God and saved us through the giving of His life.[2]
The gesture overall evokes a number of other connections. Moses’s story, in many ways, foreshadows Israel’s journey and the verses prior to the attack on him highlight this link (Exod 4:21-23). Moses’s life is redeemed here symbolically by his son’s, while Israel’s will be redeemed by the lives of the Egyptian firstborns. Moses falls under judgement and only the symbolic application of blood saves him. Israel, too, will fall under the same judgement as the Egyptians, unless they smear blood on the doorposts of their houses. As Christians, we are saved by the blood of God’s ultimate firstborn, Jesus Christ. None of us are exempt of the necessity to be redeemed and restored and leaders especially need to remember the importance of faithful living because so many others depend on them. Despite the frightful aspects of this incident, which presents God as adversary and judge, God at the same time is on the side of Moses and his family. He wants them to succeed and He has been working to prepare His servant for eighty years (cf. Exod 7:7). Now the moment of public ministry has come. While we do not know what went on in Moses after God’s attack, we see the result. He understands the need for full commitment. After meeting Aaron and telling him all (Exod 4:27), they together perform the signs and convey God’s message (Exod 4:28-30) to the people. Israel believes them and worships God (Exod 4:31). God may take a long time to come through, but He often works behind the scenes unseen and unperceived until the moment of redemption is revealed.
[1] Isa 6:2 describes the angelic beings that Isaiah saw in a vision around God’s throne covering their ‘feet’ with wings. This is thought to be a euphemism because in Israel’s understanding exposing one’s private parts in God’s presence was unacceptable. For that reason, altars were not meant to have steps to avoid accidentally revealing too much (Exod 20:26) and priests had to wear long breeches (Exod 28:42-43).
[2] The phrase ‘blood bridegroom’ is obscure and there is no satisfactory explanation to what it signifies. The root meaning of the word for bridegroom is a relationship that is created through marriage, so the same word can also mean ‘a young husband’ or a son-in-law (in relation to the wife’s father). The cognate word in Arabic is connected to circumcision (which was performed shortly before marriage). None of this makes any coherent sense in the context of our story. Moses and Zipporah have been married long enough to have children, so calling him ‘bridegroom’ seems inappropriate. In any case, how would the circumcision create that relationship? Likewise, son-in-law makes little sense either, whether applied to Moses or his son.
