DAY 22

A LITTLE BIRDY

Exodus 4, 5 & 6 and Matthew 14:22-36

Today I want to focus on a small, yet what might be a confusing part of the text in Exodus. The passage from Matthew I touched on yesterday. Today in Exodus 4-6 we have: Moses continuing to wrestle with God, seemingly at every turn saying, “But what if…”; God then in response to each turn gives Moses signs and wonders; Moses gets permission from Jethro (his father-in-law) to go back to Egypt; Aaron meets up with Moses; they go to Egypt and they begin to engage the Israelites. Moses all along the way is worrying about whether any of this will work because the people’s spirit was broken (cf. 6:9).

We will read more about how God inspires Moses, the people of Israel and hardens Pharaoh’s heart, and I will comment on those in the coming days, but today I want to focus on a short and confusing bit of the text: “At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!"  So he let him alone. It was then that she said, "A bridegroom of blood," because of the circumcision.” (from chapter 4:24-26).

I want to focus on this because we might be scratching our head. The more we skip over parts of the Scripture we do not understand, the more we can tend to dismiss other parts of God’s Word. So what do I think is going on here? My remarks come from a teaching of Dr. Douglas Stuart.

If we go “upstream one verse, to verse 23 we read that God foretells the killing of Egyptian first born son. This is serious business. The Exodus Story is not just one of many stories, but it is an extremely important moment. 

Moses is about to go and represent Almighty God, Moses is about to lead God's Covenant people (yes this goes back to Abraham see verse 4:5) to freedom, Moses is about to do this by taking on the mighty Egyptian Pharaoh, not by his own authority, but by God’s.

Does he have the moral authority to do so?

None of us by ourselves can claim such. Moses is like all of us, he is flawed and he fails. We have seen over and over again the flawed nature of the humans doing God’s work in the Bible. We should not judge them, rather we should see ourselves and understand God’s using of them means he can and will use us even if we are reluctant.

Here is Moses, who is supposed to be in a Covenant Relationship, he is suppose to be the human leader of those in Covenant with God, and his sons are not circumcised. Circumcision is the sign of the Covenant. It is interesting to note that he is living with the Midians. We might think that he was just following their culture by not circumcising his son. We know however that the Midianites practiced circumcision as well as the Hebrews.

We also know that Moses father-in-law was a Midianite priest (you might even say a Bishop) and therefore his wife would know how to perform a circumcision. In fact she says the “right words”, the words that a mother would say and not the words of a father.

A few more details: First the word “feet” is a euphemism for genitals in the language of the day. Second “Bridegroom of blood” is her saying, “I am married to Moses and therefore as his one flesh spouse I am doing on his behalf what he has not yet done.” One last detail, Moses wife’s name actually translates as “bird” or “birdy”.

Here is Moses on his way to demand Pharaoh obey God and he, Moses, has disobeyed God in this area. So here is Moses (in a culture that circumcises, and being from a people who circumcise) having not circumcised his son, the symbol of the Covenant. We all do this. We all compartmentalize. In some ways we obey God, and in other ways we do not.

God was willing to put Moses to death. For Moses not to circumcise his son and then demand Pharaoh to obey God would have been a horrendous error. Enter Birdy: this daughter of a priest, this godly wife, intercedes for Moses. Birdy, who is of one body with Moses, establishes that Moses and his sons are now in full covenant with God. Birdy saves the day! 

Which brings us all back this business of the Exodus and Plagues and being Covenant people; it is a serious business. We are now that people of the Covenant. God loves us yes, but let us not keep this relationship casually.