Chapter 4

1 Moses’ rod is turned into a serpent. 6 His hand is leprous. 10 He is loth to be sent. 14 Aaron is appointed to assist him. 18 Moses departeth from Jethro. 21 God’s message to Pharaoh. 24 Zipporah circumciseth her son. 27 Aaron is sent to meet Moses. 31 The people believeth them.

1. They will not believe. Moses’ previous question, following upon God’s promise of guidance and protection (ch. 3:13), had implied willingness to go and a desire for further information. Now it appears that Moses was still very much opposed to the idea of accepting the commission. Attempts have been made to defend him by explaining that he meant, “What if the people will not believe me?” etc. But his statement is emphatic and can neither be translated nor explained in this way. It is conceivable that since Jacob’s entry into Egypt, more than two centuries earlier, no divine revelation had been imparted to Israel, and doubt as to the validity of Moses’ claim to having received a divine commission might therefore easily arise.

13. It became a serpent. Since Moses’ faith was not yet strong enough to rely on the future sign promised him (ch. 3:12), God provided immediate signs by which he might validate his mission. These three signs were intended to convince the Israelites of the fact that God had appeared to Moses, but served at the same time to strengthen Moses’ faith and dissipate his fear of failure. This was to be evidence that God had called Moses to be the leader of Israel and endowed him with the power to discharge this responsibility.

4. By the tail. A snake charmer will usually pick up his serpents by the neck, so they cannot bite him. Moses was instructed to demonstrate his trust in God by taking up the serpent by its tail.

6. His hand was leprous. Leprosy was regarded as absolutely incurable. Its instantaneous appearance and removal were contrary to all experience and would be accepted as evidence of supernatural power. This sign may also have served as a warning that he who resisted or disobeyed Moses would suffer grievous results. While the object of the first miracle was to prove that Moses was the man whom the Lord had called to be leader of His people, the second was to make it clear that as the messenger of God he was granted the power necessary for executing the task.

8. The voice of the first sign. God personified these signs as having a “voice,” for they were to bear witness for Him in the person of His chosen instrument. According to Scripture everything has a “voice,” if we will but listen with our hearts—the day, the night, the heavens, the beasts, the fowls of the air, the fishes, and even the very stones. They cry aloud and lift up their voices, proclaiming the will of their Maker, whether man will hear or whether he will not (see Ps. 19:1–3; Job 12:7, 8; Hab. 2:11; Luke 19:40).

9. The water. Egyptians worshiped the Nile as the source of national prosperity. Power to turn the life-giving water of the Nile into blood would imply power over the gods of Egypt and power to desolate the land of Egypt. From this sign Israel was to learn trust in God, while Pharaoh and the Egyptians were afterward by the same sign to be led to fear Him (ch. 7:15–19). Thus Moses was not only entrusted with the word of God but also endowed with His power. He was the first prophet and worker of miracles to be sent by God to His people, and thus became a type of Christ (Deut. 18:15; John 1:45; Acts 3:22).

10. I am not eloquent. That he who had been “mighty in words and in deeds” (Acts 7:22) should claim difficulty in speaking seems unwarranted, in view of God’s promise to prosper his mission. His long absence from Egypt and the fact that he had not spoken its language during the sojourn in Midian without doubt made him feel unqualified to go before Pharaoh, but he should have been ready to trust in God. It has been suggested that Moses feared to speak in Hebrew because he had been living among the Midianites. This cannot have been the reason, however, since Midianite inscriptions differ but little from ancient Hebrew. The Jewish tradition that Moses had difficulty in pronouncing certain Hebrew letters, has no substantiation either.

12. I will be with thy mouth. God patiently reasoned with Moses as with a friend. He who had made man’s mouth was certainly able to impart the ability to speak fluently.

13. Send, I pray thee. When all the excuses Moses could offer were proved invalid, his hidden motives in making them became obvious. What had at first appeared to be doubt of his own ability was now revealed as distrust of God (see v. 19). For practical purposes he refused to go. His curt, almost rude, answer to the divine commission is even more emphatic in Hebrew than in English.

14. The anger of the Lord. The expression used is strong but probably means no more than that God was displeased. He did not punish Moses otherwise than by dividing between the two men the responsibility Moses was to have had alone.

Aaron the Levite. It is not clear why God here spoke of Aaron as “the Levite.” Some have suggested that there were others by the same name among the Israelites and that this designation was necessary to distinguish him. But it is not clear why the words “thy brother” would not have been sufficient in this case. Others have thought the designation anticipates the future consecration of his tribe to God’s special service.

He cometh forth. It has been suggested that Aaron planned to visit Moses in Midian to inform him of the death of the king from whom he had fled (see ch. 2:15, 23). Under any circumstances, Aaron did not start on his journey until God instructed him to go (ch. 4:27).

16. Thy spokesman. God promised to be with both men—with Moses that he might express accurately what God revealed to him, and with Aaron that he might speak clearly and persuasively. Moses’ position was the more honorable, though Aaron’s may have seemed so to the people.

Instead of God. In ch. 7:1 God promised Moses that his brother should be his prophet or spokesman. Divine inspiration was to rest upon Moses. Aaron was to accept Moses’ words as the words of God and do all that Moses bade him.

17. Take this rod. Moses was bidden to take, not any rod, but the particular one that had already been transformed into a serpent. The plural, “signs,” points to the plagues that were to fall upon Egypt, since only one of the three signs thus far given him was to be performed with the rod.

18. Let me go. Moses did not mention to Jethro the real object of his journey, for fear that Jethro would refuse permission for his wife and children to accompany him, and possibly also that a report of his return to Egypt might reach the court before he was ready to appear there, thus making his mission more difficult.

19. Go, return. As Moses made preparations to return to Egypt, the Lord appeared to him a second time with reassurance that he need not fear for his personal safety, since Pharaoh and all those who had sought his life were now dead.

20. His sons. Moses had two sons (ch. 18:3, 4), Gershom, whose birth is mentioned in ch. 2:22, and Eliezer, who was probably but an infant. The latter seems to have been born since Moses’ return to Jethro’s home, inasmuch as ch. 2:22 speaks of but one son born to him prior to the divine manifestation at Mt. Horeb.

Set them upon an ass. The ancient Egyptians themselves never rode on animals, though they often depicted foreigners, particularly children and noblemen, as riding donkeys. This word picture suggests that Moses had given up his former Egyptian customs and adopted the Semitic way of life.

The rod of God. Moses’ rod (ch. 4:2) had become the “rod of God” as a result of the miracles recorded in vs. 3 and 4.

21. All those wonders. Once more God appeared to Moses, either before he left Midian or on the way to Egypt. Upon this occasion God imparted to Moses information concerning what he must expect in Egypt. The expression “all those wonders” does not refer alone to the three signs mentioned in vs. 2–9, but to all the miracles he was to perform in the presence of Pharaoh.

Harden his heart. In Christ’s parable of the sower and the seed there was no difference between the seed scattered in one kind of soil and that sown in the others, or yet in the manner in which it was sown. Everything depended upon the reception given the seed by each type of soil. In like manner, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was in no way an act of God, but rather a deliberate choice on his own part (see PP 268). By repeated warnings and displays of divine power God sent light designed to point out to Pharaoh the error of his ways, to soften and subdue his heart, and to lead him to cooperate with His will (see DA 322). But each successive manifestation of divine power left him more determined to do as he pleased. Refusing to be corrected, he despised and rejected the light, until he became insensitive to it, and the light was finally withdrawn. It was thus his own resistance to the light that hardened his heart. Even the heathen recognized the fact that it was Pharaoh and the Egyptians themselves who hardened their hearts, and not God (1 Sam. 6:6).

Commentators have differed widely in their understanding of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, here attributed to God. There are altogether ten such statements. Eight of them (Ex. 4:21; 9:12; 10:20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8, 17) use the word chazaq, which means that the Lord would make Pharaoh’s heart “firm” so that it would not move, and that his feelings toward Israel would not change. In ch. 7:3 another Hebrew word, qashah, is used, which implies that the Lord would make Pharaoh’s heart “hard” or “unfeeling.” In ch. 10:1 a third word, kabed, is used, meaning that God had made Pharaoh’s heart “heavy,” or insensible to divine influence. That the different words are used more or less interchangeably becomes evident from a study of the context.

There are also ten statements to the effect that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Four of them (chs. 7:13, 22; 8:19; 9:35) use the word chazaq, “to make firm,” five (chs. 7:14; 8:15, 32; 9:7, 34) the word kabed, “to make heavy,” and one (ch. 13:15) the word qashah, “to make hard.” The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was evident first of all in the fact that he paid no attention to the demand of the Lord to let Israel go. His refusal was not restricted to the plagues the Egyptian magicians were able to imitate, but included those which the magicians themselves acknowledged to be “the finger of God” (ch. 8:19). It continued also after the fourth and fifth plagues, which fell upon the Egyptians but not upon the Israelites, a fact of which the king was informed (ch. 9:7). The hardening of his heart was demonstrated even more clearly when he broke his promise to let Israel go on condition that Moses and Aaron would remove the plague, and when he was forced to confess that he had sinned (ch. 9:27). Thus when Moses was told, before reaching Egypt, that the Lord would harden Pharaoh’s heart (ch. 4:21), God referred to the continued refusal of the king to obey Him and release the Israelites.

God takes no pleasure in the suffering and death of the wicked, but rather desires that all men repent and be saved (Eze. 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), and causes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good (Matt. 5:45). But as the sun affects different materials in different ways, according to their own nature—it melts wax and hardens clay, for instance—so the influence of the Spirit of God upon the hearts of men produces different effects according to the condition of the heart. The repentant sinner allows God’s Spirit to lead him to conversion and salvation, but the impenitent hardens his heart more and more. The very same manifestation of the mercy of God leads in the case of the one to salvation and life, and in that of the other to judgment and death—to each according to his own choice.

22. Israel is my son. In declaring Israel to be God’s first-born son Moses was to use language familiar to the Egyptian king. Each Pharaoh considered himself the son of the sun-god Amen-Ra.

23. I will slay thy son. For fulfillment of this prediction see ch. 12:29. Moses did not utter this threat till all other means of persuasion had been exhausted, in what he knew to be his last interview with the king (chs. 10:29; 11:4, 5; PP 273). In doing so he apparently carried out one of the many special directives received after his return to Egypt (chs. 6:11; 7:9, 15, 19; etc).

24. In the inn. The translation “inn” is misleading. There were no inns or even caravansaries on the way between Midian and Egypt. The Hebrew word used here has rather the meaning of “a place where the night is spent” (cf. Joshua 4:3, 8; Isa. 10:29). The RSV reads, “at a lodging place on the way.” The incident probably took place at a well or watering place where the family had stopped for the night.

Sought to kill him. Some have thought that Moses had an experience similar to Jacob’s at Peniel (Gen. 32:24–32). Others have suggested that a sudden, severe illness befell him, which he and Zipporah recognized as a punishment of God for failure to carry out one of His commandments. Actually, an angel appeared to Moses in a threatening manner, as if he intended to kill him (PP 255).

25. Zipporah took a sharp stone. Egyptian surgeons commonly used stone knives. According to Joshua 5:2 these were also the usual instruments for performing the rite of circumcision.

Cut off the foreskin. Moses returned to Egypt with his two sons (see Ex. 4:20). Evidently Gershom, the elder, had been circumcised in accordance with God’s instructions to Abraham (Gen. 17:10–14). In the case of Eliezer, the younger son, this rite had been neglected (PP 256). Not believing in the necessity of circumcision, Zipporah had resisted her husband’s intention to circumcise Eliezer at the appointed time. The appearance of the angel made it clear that her opposition did not excuse Moses from administering the rite. Now that her husband’s life was in danger she found it necessary to carry out the operation herself.

A bloody husband. These words are clearly an expression of reproach. They show that Zipporah performed the rite grudgingly, not from a desire to obey God, but of necessity, to save her husband’s life. Her meaning seems to be that Moses was a poor sort of husband, on whose behalf it was necessary to shed the blood of her sons in compliance with a national custom she regarded as barbarous.

26. So he let him go. God accepted Zipporah’s tardy act and restored Moses.

Because of the circumcision. When the angel released Moses, Zipporah repeated her reproachful words, adding in explanation, literally, “because of the circumcisions.” She may have had in mind the one performed in Midian on Gershom as well as that on Eliezer.

27. Go into the wilderness. This instruction to Aaron must have been given some time before Moses left Midian, for they met at Horeb, in the heart of the Sinai Peninsula (see on ch. 3:1), soon after Moses’ departure from his father-in-law. It is equally certain that the directions given Aaron were more complete than the brief record of Exodus indicates. Inasmuch as the wilderness extended from the border of Egypt through the Sinai Peninsula and into Arabia, God must have told him precisely the way he was to take in order to meet his brother.

29. All the elders. As to the elders, see on ch. 3:16. Though Moses and Aaron had no authority to call the tribal and family heads together, these men responded to their invitation.

30. Aaron spake. Aaron entered at once upon the duties of his office as “spokesman” (v. 16), declaring to the elders the fact that God had called his brother to accomplish their deliverance. Aaron also, and not Moses as we should have expected (v. 17), performed the signs (see PP 263). God apparently either ordered or approved this delegation of power. On later occasions we find Aaron more than once required by God to work the miracles (chs. 7:19; 8:5, 16).

31. The people believed. This was another evidence of divine favor. It stands in marked contrast with the usually incredulous attitude of the Israelites, who so often “believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation” (Ps. 78:22). Their longing for deliverance and these manifestations of miraculous power won a favorable response from the elders.

They bowed their heads. The faith of the people, and the worship in which it was expressed, proved that the promise of God to the fathers still lived in their hearts. Though their faith did not stand the subsequent test, yet, as the first expression of their feelings, it bore witness to the fact that Israel was willing to follow the call of God.

Ellen G. White comments

1-31PP 253-257

1, 3, 4  PP 253

6-8PP 254

10   4T 314

10-14PP 254

14   PP 320

15-17PP 254

16   3T 293

18   PP 255

19   SR 111

21   PP 268

22, 23  DA 51; PP 273

24   PP 255

25, 26  PP 256

27-31PP 257