Discovery #9: Moses and His Strange Encounter with God

Moses holding the Ten Commandments given to him by the very hand of God

 Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

The Early Story of Moses

I discovered this story while preparing for my book, “God (still) has BIG Plans for the Jews.” I wanted to share it with you today because it is the type of story most of us probably don’t remember (or never read), yet it contains some important revelations about God and how He works in and through us.

This is a story about Moses. Here’s the backdrop:

• Moses was born during a time when Pharoah had declared that all Jewish babies must be killed by drowning them in the Nile (His idea of population control for the Jews).
• Moses was saved and adopted into the family of Pharoah and raised as a member of the Egyptian royal family.
• From scripture, it is clear that Moses was aware of his heritage because, in Exodus 2, we read (NCV):

One day he visited his people and saw that they were forced to work very hard. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew man, one of Moses’ own people. ¹² Moses looked all around and saw that no one was watching, so he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand.

Think about this point for a moment. Moses was raised in the royal family of Pharaoh. The same Pharaoh that had declared all Jewish babies to be killed. Why would he allow Moses, a Jew, to be raised in his household? He probably chose to allow Moses to live under his roof as a favor to his daughter (Moses’ adopted mother) because she was attached to the child. But don’t think for a moment that Pharoah would allow Moses to follow his Jewish heritage while raising him. Jews were slaves. Moses was raised as a royal Egyptian prince. How he learned of his lowly beginnings as a Jew is a mystery, but it will soon become a central part of our story.

• Once it was discovered that Moses had killed an Egyptian, Pharoah tried to kill him, but he escaped to the land of Midian, where he married Zipporah, had children, and settled down.
• After 40 years of living as a shepherd with the Midianites (who were distant cousins but definitely not Jews), God came to him and spoke to him through a burning bush that was not touched by the fire that surrounded it. God told Moses, “I have come down to save them (my people, the Jews) from the Egyptians.” Exodus 3:8a (NCV) And, to Moses’ great surprise, God wanted him to be His spokesperson before Pharoah!
• If ever there was a time when God called someone to a holy calling – this was it! God was about to reveal Himself to the world in a manner and with such power that the world had never seen! And Moses would be the instrument of that power!

The Unusual Way God Prepared Moses for his Task

We all think we know the rest of the story, but do you? A very unusual thing happened to Moses on his way back to Egypt. God attacked Moses and “sought to kill him.” Exodus 4:26b (AMP) Why? Didn’t God call him to this mission? And didn’t Moses try everything he could do to reject the calling? So, why, after Moses accepted God’s calling, did God seek to kill him?

The simple answer is – when God calls you to embark on a holy mission, you must prepare yourself (or purify yourself) for the task. Ignorance of God’s laws is no excuse! Moses had not properly prepared himself, and God wasn’t going to let him overlook this critical part of his preparation.  So, what did Moses miss and why?

In Genesis 17, God made a covenant with Abraham promising that he would be “the father of many nations.” (Genesis 17:4b – AMP). But God made it clear that Abraham had a role in this covenant. God said, “As for you [your part of the agreement], you shall keep and faithfully obey [the terms of] My covenant…(that): Every male among you shall be circumcised.” (Genesis 17:9b-10 – AMP).

We can make all the excuses we want for Moses, but it is clear that he had failed to circumcise one of his sons. Blame it on his upbringing in the house of Pharoah. Blame it on his having married a non-Jewish wife and his having lived with her family for 40 years. Before God called Moses, all indications point to the fact that Moses had not lived the life of a Jew. He was a humble man who did not miss the power of Pharoah’s house, nor had he aspired to anything greater than living a quiet life as a shepherd. Following the laws of his ancestors was not a priority! But it was to God! And the way in which God purified Moses will blow your mind! Read what Moses wrote about this event in Exodus 4: 24-26 AMP:

²⁴ Now it happened at the lodging place, that the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him [making him deathly ill because he had not circumcised one of his sons]. ²⁵ Then Zipporah took a flint knife and cut off the foreskin of her son and threw it at Moses’ feet, and said, “Indeed you are a husband of blood to me!” ²⁶ So He (God) let Moses alone [to recover]. At that time Zipporah said, “You are a husband of blood”—because of the circumcision.

This obscure story about Moses has confused many who read it. Granted, we don’t know all the details but allow me to piece together what I believe is happening here:

• Let’s combine three things we know about Moses to help us decipher this story.
  • Moses probably had many gaps in his knowledge of Jewish history and traditions.
  • Moses knew he was a Jew, and he showed compassion for his people when he killed the Egyptian overseer who was persecuting a Jewish slave.
  • As a result of his action, Moses gave up his life of living in the house of Pharoah, and he banished himself (at the age of 40) to Midian.
• Now we know that the Midianites were not Jewish and did not practice Jewish traditions. So, it would seem logical that Moses would have picked up and followed the religious traditions of the Midianites. Except, we see that one of Moses’ sons was circumcised. No one knows why, but it fits the story if we assume that Moses knew something of his culture, and so, when his first son was born, he circumcised him on the 8^th If true, it would suggest that Moses was curious about his Jewish heritage but, because of his lack of education and a suitable mentor, he was clumsy at applying it.
• Now, imagine Moses performing that act on his son. It is a bloody, painful thing to do to an 8-day-old boy. It takes a lot of faith to do such a thing to your own son! And imagine Zipporah watching all this. Imagine their discussion afterward! To her, circumcision must have appeared as a barbaric act! To Moses, he probably had doubts as to the necessity of it all because of his limited understanding of its history. As a result, perhaps they both agreed not to circumcise any future sons.
• After God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, who do you think was the first one he told? Probably Zipporah. And it appears she believed him because, by the time we get to this story, she has left her family and her home to travel with Moses to Egypt (on what both may have thought was a suicide mission).
• Now, here is where the story gets interesting. God has called Moses on a holy mission to serve Him and lead the Jews into the Promised Land – the land promised to Abraham. But the person God calls (Moses) has violated the one condition of God’s covenant with Abraham – he has failed to circumcise both his sons. Up to this point, the story makes sense. But why did God make Moses “deathly ill” and seek “to kill him?” There is only one answer that makes sense – God wanted Zipporah to perform the circumcision!
• And that is exactly what Zipporah does. She goes into her son’s room, wakes him up, and cuts off his foreskin. She then goes back to Moses and throws “it (the foreskin) at Moses’ feet, and said, “Indeed you are a husband of blood to me!” Clearly, there are some issues being worked out here! Perhaps she did this because she saw Moses and his Jewish heritage as being based on too much blood being shed. Maybe it related back to the circumcision of their first son, or maybe it was because Moses (in an effort to identify with his Jewishness) was in the habit of offering blood sacrifices to His God. If so, that would explain why Zipporah called him a “husband of blood.” Despite her abhorrence of the practice of circumcision, she did what she had to do to save her husband!

And God did accept what she did! I think this must be the story where we get the phrase, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.” ((“God Moves in a Mysterious Way” is a Christian hymn, written in 1773 by William Cowper from England.))

Lessons Learned

There are many important lessons to be learned from this little, obscure story:

• God does not call perfect people into his service, but He always calls the right
• Once called, God will prepare you for that service.
• Often, the process of preparation is hard, and it usually involves a purification process – requiring the person called to go through some form of trial so they are “worthy” (purified) for their calling.
• God was calling Moses to fulfill His promise to Abraham – to bring His chosen people into the “promised land.” This was symbolic of what Christ has done for us by leading us out of darkness and into the light of His Kingdom – Heaven. To fulfill such a high calling, Moses needed to be right with God according to the covenant He made with Abraham.
• God often uses other people to bring about the process of purification. In this instance, He used Zipporah, Moses’ wife. She was making a huge sacrifice by leaving her family and her people to follow Moses, but she would be rewarded by experiencing first-hand the mighty power of Moses’ God as he eventually led his people out of Egypt. For reasons to be discussed in another email, the marriage eventually did not work out. In Exodus 18: 2 (NIV): “After Moses had sent away his wife Zipporah, his father-in-law Jethro received her³ and her two sons.”
• One last point. Although the key to understanding this passage is in knowing how God valued circumcision at that time, the early Christian church also struggled with it. Seeing itself as a predominately Jewish religion, the Jewish members tried to force circumcision onto all its members – including and especially the Gentiles. Paul called them out on this in Acts 15: 1-2 (NCV)

15 Then some people came to Antioch from Judea and began teaching the non-Jewish believers: “You cannot be saved if you are not circumcised as Moses taught us.” ² Paul and Barnabas were against this teaching and argued with them about it

And that, dear friends, is the power of Jesus at work. We are no longer bound by the Law nor any restrictions God may have made in a prior promise. The blood of Jesus changed all that. Now, when God calls us into ministry, we are made worthy by the cleansing blood of Jesus in the very second we accept His call. The Holy Spirit enters us as a result of our decision and prepares us for service! AMEN!

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