Exodus4chapter 4

Exodus 4:1-2

Moses raises a fourth objection and it contradicts what he has just been told, since Exodus 3:18 promised that the elders shall hearken to thy voice. God answers with a question about a shepherd's stick rather than with an argument. The rod in his hand at this verse is the instrument the rest of the book runs on, at the court in 7:12, at the river in 7:20, at the sea in 14:16 and at the rock in 17:6.

Exodus 4:3-4

The stick becomes a serpent and Moses runs from the thing he had been carrying, then is told to take it by the tail, which is the one place a man handling a snake does not grasp it. Egypt wore the rearing cobra on the crown of its kings, so the first sign given to Moses puts in his hand the creature Pharaoh's house used as its emblem. Genesis 3:15 set the quarrel with the serpent and its seed, and the contest in Exodus opens with a serpent held by the tail.

Exodus 4:5

the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac: The sign has a stated purpose and it is belief in a person rather than wonder at a marvel. God names himself by three men four centuries dead, which ties the deliverance to the promise of Genesis 15:13 and 15:14 rather than to a new departure. Jesus quotes the same triple naming from Exodus 3:6 at Matthew 22:32 and argues the resurrection from the tense of the verb.

Exodus 4:6-7

The second sign is worked on Moses himself and it costs him what the first did not, since leprosy is the condition that put a man outside the camp. It is the only one of the three signs with no later scene attached to it anywhere in the book. What it announces is answered in words at Exodus 15:26, I am the LORD that healeth thee, which is the first occurrence of healeth in Scripture.

Exodus 4:8-9

The signs are given as a graded series against unbelief, each one held in reserve for the case where the one before it fails. The third is never performed here, and it is the only one that touches Egypt's own river, poured out on dry ground where anyone can watch it. It becomes the first plague at Exodus 7:20, where the water is struck in the river itself instead of being carried out of it.

Exodus 4:10-12

The next objection is his own mouth, and the Hebrew idiom behind slow of speech reads as heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue. God's answer moves off the mouth and onto its maker, naming the dumb and the deaf and the blind as his own doing, then promising to be with the mouth and to teach it what to say. Acts 7:22 says Moses was mighty in words and in deeds, and readers have long set that beside this verse without settling how the two fit together.

Exodus 4:13-14

The last objection drops the arguments and asks God to send somebody else. This is the point where the anger of the LORD is kindled against Moses, and it is the only such line in the whole call at the bush. The answer still gives him what he asked for, and Aaron is already on the road, which means the brother was travelling before the request was made.

Exodus 4:15-16

The arrangement made here is the shape of prophecy stated in miniature, one man receiving the word and another carrying it. Exodus 7:1 says it outright, that Moses is made a god to Pharaoh and Aaron his brother shall be his prophet. Matthew Henry reads the concession as a loss rather than a gift, since Moses now speaks through a mouth he does not govern, and Aaron is the man who makes the calf in chapter 32.

Exodus 4:17

The call closes by handing back the same stick Moses was holding at verse 2. Nothing new is issued to him, and the one instrument of the deliverance is a shepherd's staff he already owned. By verse 20 the text calls it the rod of God, and it swallows the magicians' rods at 7:12, divides the sea at 14:16 and strikes the rock at 17:6.

Exodus 4:18-19

Moses asks his father in law for leave and gives him a part of the reason, that he will see whether his brethren are yet alive. God's word in verse 19 settles the danger by telling him that all the men are dead which sought thy life. Matthew 2:20 puts nearly the same words to Joseph about Herod, they are dead which sought the young child's life, and commentators have long read the two side by side.

Exodus 4:20

Moses carries a wife and sons back into the country he fled, and the text says sons in the plural though only Gershom has been named, at Exodus 2:22. The second is Eliezer, named at Exodus 18:4 on the day the family is sent back out again. The staff becomes the rod of God in this verse, which is what a shepherd's stick is called once God has told a man what to do with it.

Exodus 4:21

but I will harden his heart: This is the first of nineteen hardening statements in Exodus and it is spoken before a single plague has fallen. Through the first five plagues the text puts the act on Pharaoh or leaves it stative, at 7:13, 7:22, 8:15, 8:19, 8:32 and 9:7, and 9:12 is the first verse that says the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, after which the subject never changes back. R. C. Sproul reads the sequence as one act carrying two true descriptions, divine sovereignty and human responsibility both real and neither cancelling the other. The free will reading takes the order seriously and holds that God confirmed a man in the direction he had already taken, and Romans 9:17 quotes Exodus 9:16 into the same argument.

Exodus 4:22-23

The tenth plague is announced in chapter four, before the first one falls, and it is framed as a matter between two sons. Genesis spent fifty chapters setting the younger ahead of the firstborn, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Ephraim over Manasseh, and Exodus turns and deals with the firstborn directly at 12:29, 13:2 and 13:13. The demand at verse 23 reads let my son go, that he may serve me, and it is the first of seven times a purpose clause is fixed to the release, returning as let my people go, that they may serve me at 7:16, 8:1, 8:20, 9:1, 9:13 and 10:3. Release is asked for with a use named for it every time.

Exodus 4:24-26

Three verses report an attack on the road and the account is compressed to the point that its pronouns carry no names. The text does not say whom the LORD sought to kill, and readers divide over whether it was Moses or the son, over which son was circumcised, and over what Zipporah meant by a bloody husband. Matthew Henry and John Gill both read the danger as falling on Moses, taken to account for leaving his own household outside the covenant sign of Genesis 17:10 while going to demand a nation's release. Keil and Delitzsch read it of the uncircumcised boy, and the passage itself names neither.

Exodus 4:27-28

God had been speaking to Aaron as well, and the two lines of instruction meet in the mount of God, which is the Horeb of Exodus 3:1 where the bush burned. The reunion of two brothers parted forty years is given one word, that he kissed him. Moses hands over everything he was given, the words and the signs together, so Aaron goes in to the elders knowing what Moses knows.

Exodus 4:29-31

The chapter closes on the answer to the objection it opened with, since Moses had said they will not believe me and the people believed. What moves them is the report that the LORD had visited the children of Israel and looked upon their affliction, which is the language of Genesis 50:24 where Joseph promised that God will surely visit you. They bow their heads and worship, the same act the people perform at Exodus 12:27 on the night the passover is commanded. The belief recorded here does not hold past chapter five, where these same people turn on Moses once Pharaoh doubles the work.