Lesson #3

The Call and Commission of Moses

(Exodus 2: 23 4: 31)
In Lesson #2 we witnessed the plight of the Israelites and we met Moses,
one of the great characters of Scripture. Born to a Levite couple, Moses is
saved from the infanticide ordered by Pharaoh: he is adopted by Pharaohs
daughter and brought up in the household of Pharaoh, a prince of Egypt, a
young man educated *in+ all the wisdom of the Egyptians, a young man
groomed for leadership in Egypt.

Then at 40 years old, in a moment of righteous indignation and extremely
poor judgment, Moses throws it all away by killing an Egyptian who was
abusing a Hebrew slave. His crime discovered, Moses flees Egypt, a wanted
criminal, running east, all the way to the backside of the desert in the land
of Midian.

In a biblical type-scene, Moses meets a girl at a well in Midian, marries
her and settles down off the grid, tending his father-in-laws sheep for the
next forty years.









In the grand sweep of our narrative, the Hebrews have lived in Egypt for
400 years and have increased in population from Jacobs family of 70 to
nearly 2 million people. During that time, immersed in the advanced and
sophisticated culture of Egypt, they have forgotten the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob; indeed, if they remembered anything at all about him, it
was little more than the faint echo of a folktale from a long time ago.

Meanwhile, in Midian, in the rugged landscape of the Sinai wilderness
amidst snakes, scorpions and jackals, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
speaks to 80-year old Moses from within a burning bush, telling him to
return to Egypt, confront Pharaoh and say: Let my people go!

The stark contrast between the gods of Egypt and the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob is startling. What kind of God is this, one who dwells not in
a magnificent temple in Thebes, but in a bush in the middle of nowhere?












Exodus 2: 23-24

A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died.
The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried
out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to
God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of
his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw
the Israelites, and God knew . . .












Exodus 2: 23-24
A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died.
The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried
out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to
God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of
his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw
the Israelites, and God knew . . .
In Stephens defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7: 23-30 we learn that
Moses fled Egypt when he was 40 years old and that he returned to Egypt
when he was 80 years old; indeed, Exodus 7: 7 tells us that Moses was
eighty years old. And Aaron eighty-three, when they spoke to Pharaoh.












Exodus 2: 23-24

A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died.
The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried
out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to
God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of
his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw
the Israelites, and God knew . . .
The Hebrew words translated here as groaned and moaning (or
groaned and moaned) are phonetic cousins through metathesis, the
rearranging of letters within each word to create a play on sound. Nice
touch!












Exodus 2: 23-24
A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died. The
Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried out, and from their
bondage their cry for help went up to God. God heard their
moaning and God was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. God saw the Israelites, and God knew . . .
In Genesis the character of God is deeply developed, bedecked with
dazzling detail. He is an intimate God, a God who walks in the garden with
Adam and Eve, who has dinner with Abraham and who debates with
Abraham face to face.
We noted in Lesson #2 of Exodus that the God of Genesis seems to
withdraw in Exodus, morphing into a remote and mysterious figure, one of
awesome power, cloaked in fire.
God is barely mentioned in Exodus 1 and 2, but in these two verses he steps
from the shadows onto center stage, his nameElohimrepeated five
times in two verses.












Exodus 2: 23-24
A long time passed, during which the king of Egypt died.
The Israelites groaned under their bondage and cried
out, and from their bondage their cry for help went up to
God. God heard their moaning and God was mindful of
his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God saw
the Israelites, and God knew . . .
In a single verse, God heard the Hebrews moaning; he was
mindful of his covenant; he saw the Israelites; and God knew . .
.. This progressive sequence of four vivid verbs awakens God to
the plight of his people, and launches his epic plan for their
redemption.



















Sinai Peninsula









Mt. Sinai
(Horeb)









Not the highest peak in the Sinai Peninsula, Mt. Sinai rises 7,497 feet above sea
level as part of a volcanic ring complex, consisting of various types of granite. Its
alternate name Horeb derives from the Hebrew root word meaning dryness,
suggesting something like Parched Mountain.
Mt. Sinai









Approaching Mt. Sinai from the southwest.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas









Established in the 6
th
century by the emperor Justinian I, St.
Catherines Monastery sits near the foot of Mt. Sinai.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas









Moses and the Burning Bush (mosaic), 6
th
cent.
St. Catherines Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt.










The traditional burning bush at St. Catherines Monastery.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas
Now, go! I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people,
the Israelites, out of Egypt (Exodus 3: 10).








Moses has five reasons why he cant go!








Moses has five reasons why he cant go!








1. But, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring
the Israelites out of Egypt? (3: 11).
Moses has five reasons why he cant go!







2. But, if I go to the Israelites and say to them, The God of your
ancestors has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his
name? what do I tell them (3: 13).
God replied to Moses: I am who I am.
Then he added: This is what you will
tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to
you.

As Robert Alter observes, Gods name
poses an ontological divine mystery of
the most daunting character, a
mystery that resists unraveling. I AM
suggests a faint etymological link to
the primitive Hebrew root of the verb
to be; that is, to pure essence. It is
being in its purest form, being that
rests at the very core of creation.


Moses has five reasons why he cant go!







3. But, suppose they do not believe me or listen to me? For they
may say, The Lord did not appear to you. (4: 1).
Moses has five reasons why he cant go!







4. If you please, my Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in
the past nor now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am
slow of speech and tongue (4: 10)literally, I am of
uncircumcised lips.
Moses has five reasons why he cant go!







5. If you please, my Lord, send someone else! (4: 13).

Begins with:
Israel is my son, my first born (Exodus 4: 22)

And ends with:
. . . and thus, all Israel will be saved . . . for the
gifts and call of God are irrevocable.
(Romans 11: 26-29)












Any discussion about the Jews . . .
A very strange story

On the journey, at a place where they spent the night,
the Lord came upon Moses and sought to put him to
death. But Zipporah took a piece of flint and cut off her
sons foreskin and, touching his feet, she said, Surely
you are a spouse of blood to me. So God let Moses
alone. At that time she said, A spouse of blood, in
regard to the circumcision.
(Exodus 4: 24-26).











As Robert Alter points out: This elliptic story is the most enigmatic
episode in all of Exodus. It seems unlikely that we will ever resolve
the enigmas it poses . . ..
(The Five Books of Moses, p. 330)

Not unlike the phantasmagorical scene in Genesis 15 when a deep sleep
fell upon Abram, and a great, dark dread descended upon him (15: 12) and
God said to Abram: Know for certain that your descendants will reside as
aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed
for four hundred years (15: 13);
and not unlike the mysterious stranger (God) who confronts Jacob at the
Jabbok River in the dark of night and wrestles with him until morning, as
though trapped in a nightmare from which he cant escape (Genesis 32: 25-
31);
so this story seems starkly archaic and primitive, adrift in a dark night of
the soul, and written in a crabbed style, as though the writer were afraid
to spell out its real content.













In this strange story the Lord is dark and dangerous, a potential
killer of both father and son (after all, he has just said to Pharaoh in
the previous verse, Since you refused to let [my son, Israel] go, I
will kill your son, your firstborn).
Moses claim in the preceding verses that he is a man of
uncircumcised lips (4: 11) somehow connects to this story in a
twisted, fragmented way.
In addition, the story mirrors on some level the perilous rite of
passage that the hero must undergo before embarking on his
mission, although in this story the mirror seems cracked and
distorted.
Awash in ambiguity, the murky language shifts, keeping the reader
off balance: Why does the Lord intend to put Moses to death? Why
does Zipporah cut off her sons foreskin? Whose feet (a euphemism
for genitals) does she touch: the boys, Moses or Gods? And
who is the spouse of blood: Moses or God?















As we have noted already, the first space of the Exodus story
Egypt as a place of bondageis saturated in water imagery;
parched dryness and fire dominates the second spacethe
Wilderness.
The transition between the two demands blood: in the first plague
the life-giving waters of the Nile turn to blood, bringing death; in
the tenth plague God slays the firstborn of Egypt, sparing the
Israelite firstborn by blood smeared on the wooden lintels, warding
off the Angel of Death.
Once the Israelites pass through the waters of the Red Seaand
the Egyptians drown in itthe Israelites build the Tabernacle in the
Wilderness, and God prescribes five great sacrifices, four of which
are blood sacrifices.
RedemptionGod moving the Israelites from slavery to freedom
calls for vast quantities of blood and water.















On the way back to Egypt to launch Gods epic plan of redemption,
this strange, dreamlike sequence foreshadows the intimate link
between water and blood, life and death.

In Leviticus 17: 11 we read: . . . The life of the flesh is in the blood,
and I have given it to you to make atonement on the altar for
yourselves, because it is the blood as life that makes atonement.
And our author of Hebrews writes: . . . Without the shedding of
blood there is no forgiveness (9: 22).

Later, to inaugurate his redemption of all humanity, the Lord Jesus
Christ, Son of God, passes through the waters of baptism, as the
Israelites pass through the waters of the Red Sea; and he sheds his
blood on the cross, as the blood of the Passover Lamb is shed on the
wooden lintels of the Israelite homes: in both cases, the Lamb of
God dies, that the children of God may live.
























Pietro Perugino. Moses Journey into Egypt and the Circumcision of His
Son, Eliez (fresco), 1482. Southern Wall, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.


1. In Exodus 2: 23-24 God is spurred into action by the
groaning and moaning of the Israelites. Why now
and not earlier?
2. Why does God appear to Moses in a burning bush in
the wilderness, a bush that is not consumed?
3. What is Moses immediate reaction to God speaking
to him from within the bush?
4. Moses has five reasons why he cannot go back to
Egypt. What is the real reason?
5. Why is the strange story of Zipporah circumcising her
son placed between Gods calling Moses in the
wilderness and his return to Egypt?





Copyright 2014 by William C. Creasy
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