CHAPTER 4

(1491 B.C.)

THE ROD

¹And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The LORD has not appeared unto you. (The hesitating and timid Moses of Mount Horeb was the same courageous and self-reliant Moses who smote the Egyptian dead! His strength then unfitted him as a Divine instrument, and now his weakness unfits him Williams.)

²And the LORD said unto him, What is that in your hand? And he said, A rod. (The rod, within itself, was nothing!)

³And He (God) said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. (By the rod turning to a serpent, a venomous one at that, Moses, in essence, was being told that he was going to come up against the powers of darkness. Egypt was actually ruled by demon spirits, which worked through Pharaoh and the magicians, etc. It was a nation wholly taken over by demon spirits, and ruled thereby.)

⁴And the LORD said unto Moses, Put forth your hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand (this told Moses that he had power over Satan):

⁵That 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 unto you. (The Lord would help Moses, thereby letting the people know that he was functioning within the boundaries of the same Promises which God had given to the Patriarchs.)

⁶And the LORD said furthermore unto him, Put now your hand into your bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow. (Putting his hand into his bosom showed him what man is, a sinner, hence symbolized by leprosy.)

⁷And he said, Put your hand into your bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out of his bosom, and, behold, it was turned again as his other flesh. (Thus we see here, in this particular sign, that which Jesus Christ can perform, as it regards the Salvation of the soul. He can cleanse from all sin, and He Alone can cleanse from all sin. While Christ is always the Source, the Cross is always the Means.)

⁸And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe you, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. (The only answer to the serpent, i.e., Satan, and the sin which he causes, which is so hideous it can only be symbolized by the dread disease of leprosy, is the Blood, the Precious Blood, of the Lord Jesus Christ, epitomized in the next Verse.)

⁹And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto your voice, that you shall take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which you take out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land. (The only answer to sin is the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The pronoun they refers to the Elders of the Israelites.)

¹⁰And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since You have spoken unto Your Servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. (Verses 10 through 12 portray the Call of God upon man. I am not eloquent. And even if we were, it would not save anyone.)

¹¹And the LORD said unto him, Who has made mans mouth? or who makes the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD? (God could and would have cured the defect in Moses speech, whatever it was; could and would have added eloquence to his other gifts, if he had even at this point yielded himself unreservedly to the Lords guidance and heartily accepted his mission. Nothing is too hard for the Lord.)

¹²Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall say.

¹³And he said, O my Lord, send, I pray you, by the hand of him whom you will send. (Moses would feel safer leaning on the arm of Aaron than leaning on the arm of Jehovah! And yet Aaron was no real help to him, but the contrary; Aaron made the golden calf.)

AARON

¹⁴And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses, and he said, Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And also, behold, he comes forth to meet you: and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. (Nothing is more dishonoring to God, or more dangerous for us, than a mock humility. When we refuse to occupy a position which the Grace of God assigns us because of our not possessing certain virtues and qualifications, this is not humility, but rather unbelief!)

¹⁵And you shall speak unto 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. (The Lord would give Moses the words to say, and it would be the duty of Aaron to accept what Moses said as Divine.)

¹⁶And he shall be your spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to you instead of a mouth, and you shall be to him instead of God. (In other words, Moses speaking to Aaron was the same as God speaking to him.)

¹⁷And you shall take this rod in your hand, wherewith you shall do signs. (In effect, the Lord is telling Moses that He could use anything, even a wooden stick. This should have made Moses very ashamed!)

¹⁸And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray you, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. (Had Moses left for Egypt without first notifying his father-in-law, it would have been grossly discourteous, and even the height of ingratitude. This act of Moses manifested his thoughtfulness of others and his appreciation of favors received.)

EGYPT

¹⁹And the LORD said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought your life. (From the way the Lord commands Moses here, it would seem that he was still reluctant to go. The Lord would reassure him by telling him that all the men in Egypt who sought to kill him from 40 years back were now dead. So, there need be no fear from this source; however, before we criticize the reluctance of Moses, we should look at ourselves first of all.)

²⁰And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand. (His sons were Gershom [2:22], and Eliezer [18:4], the latter probably an infant. This rod is the same one of Verse 2, which had now become the Rod of God, and because of the miracles of Verses 3 and 4. The Lord commands him to take this Rod to Egypt.)

²¹And the LORD said unto Moses, When you go to return into Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in your hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the People go. (The hardening of Pharaohs heart doesnt mean that God tampered with Pharaohs will, but rather, by foreknowledge, looked at the heart of the Monarch, and thereby knew what Pharaoh would do. God would simply supply the opportunity.)

²²And you shall say unto Pharaoh, Thus sa ys the LORD, Israel is My son, even My firstborn (Pharaoh would understand this terminology fully, for he, himself, was called Son of Ra):

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, even your firstborn. (So, at the outset, Moses was to tell Pharaoh that if he didnt let the Children of Israel go, his firstborn would die. So, the Monarch was not without warning. At any point he could have repented, and his firstborn would have been spared, as well as the destruction of Egypt.)

²⁴And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him (met Moses), and sought to kill him (threatened to kill the child; this was Eliezer, the infant; concerning this, Williams says: Moses was commanded to announce to Pharaoh that Jehovah, the God of Israel, was about to slay his [Pharaohs] son; but Moses had to learn that disobedience and rebellion in him was just as hateful as in Pharaoh; and that God, because of His nature, must judge with death sin wherever found).

²⁵Then Zipporah (the wife of Moses) took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband are you to me. (We find here that the wife of Moses was not too very much in sympathy with the things of God. So, Moses, not desiring to create a family problem, had evidently acquiesced to his wife, and had neglected to circumcise the baby boy.)

²⁶So He (God) let him (the child) go: then she said, A bloody husband you are, because of the circumcision. (Even though Zipporah circumcised the child, she, with anger and passion, declared that her husbands religion was a religion of blood, i.e., of blood-stained rites. Thus, Moses had to learn that God would judge him before He judged Pharaoh, and that rebellion in the one was the same as rebellion in the other; and this lesson must have enabled Moses to proclaim this dreadful truth with the force of a personal experience Williams.)

MOSES AND AARON

²⁷And the LORD said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him. (Aaron met Moses at Mount Sinai, perhaps very shortly after he received the revelation of the burning bush, etc. The brothers had been separated for some 40 years.)

²⁸And Moses told Aaron all the words of the LORD Who had sent him, and all the signs which He had commanded him. (And now Aaron is to find out that he is to be the spokesman for Moses as it regards the tremendous confrontation, which would take place quite a number of times, between Moses and the Monarch of Egypt.)

²⁹And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the Elders of the Children of Israel (the Scripture is silent regarding the trip to Egypt; the Scripture seems to indicate that Moses sent his wife and children back to Jethro [18:2]):

³⁰And Aaron spoke all the words which the LORD had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people (the serpent, the leprous hand, and the blood, all observed by the Elders).

³¹And the people believed: and when they heard that the LORD had visited the Children of Israel, and that He had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped. (Moses had said, The people will not believe me. But the question was not as to whether they would believe him, but whether they would believe God. Their faith reached out at this time and, in fact, they did believe.)