Moses is on his way to Egypt and he has his wife and two sons (Gershom and Eliezer) with him. Something startling happens on the journey.
"At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him." (Exodus 4:24) We get to this verse and probably think, "What on earth is going on here?" Moses is the Lord's chosen deliverer for the children of Israel; why would He want to kill him?
I don't believe the Lord wants to kill Moses, but Moses has neglected to do something that he is spiritually required to do as a Hebrew male. I think perhaps the Lord has been dealing with Moses' heart on this matter for a long time and Moses hasn't obeyed. Moses needs to set this thing straight before he arrives in Goshen to speak to the Hebrew people. He has to have everything in his heart right with the Lord before he'll be ready to lead his people.
Moses becomes ill on the way down to Egypt. While staying at an inn, he falls sick---so sick that he's in danger of losing his life. It's often in times of desperate hardship that we start asking ourselves, "Why is this thing happening to me? Did I do something to bring this on myself? Is there something I need to repent of?" Illness has a way of causing us to examine our hearts, and we find Moses examining his heart and finding the cause of his current distress: in defiance of the Lord's command to Abraham and to all Abraham's descendants, Moses has not circumcised one of his sons. This fact will be made clear to us momentarily.
Why does it matter that Moses hasn't circumcised one of his sons? Here is what the Lord said to Abraham on the day He gave him the sign of the covenant He was making with Abraham and his descendants: "Then God said to Abraham, 'As for you, you must keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is My covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner---those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.'" (Genesis 17:9-14)
Moses has not kept covenant with the Lord. We can safely assume that Moses' parents had him circumcised when he was eight days old. He may have been raised as an Egyptian but he had the sign of the Lord's covenant as a permanent mark on his body. When he became a father of two sons, he circumcised one and not the other, and this means he violated the command we find the Lord giving Abraham and Abraham's descendants in Genesis 17. Partial obedience to the Lord is still disobedience, and Moses needs to be all in with the Lord by dedicating both his sons to the Lord and to the covenant the Lord made with the Israelites. In addition, why should the Hebrew people listen to Moses or accept him as their leader if he is not in covenant with the Lord? If they find out he hasn't been obedient in a matter this important, they have the right to excommunicate him from their assembly (see Genesis 17:14 above where the Lord says a violator "will be cut off from his people").
To use a modern example of how not obeying the Lord in something as important as circumcision would hinder Moses' work with the people, would we listen to our pastor if he hadn't obeyed the Lord in a matter such as baptism? Baptism is the outward sign of what has taken place on the inside when we accept Christ as our Savior. It's a symbol of being dead to our old life and having risen to our new life. If we learned our pastor hadn't ever voluntarily submitted to baptism at some point after receiving Christ as his Savior, wouldn't that bother us? (I'm not teaching salvation through baptism; I don't subscribe to that doctrine. I believe salvation takes place on the inside and that baptism is a public ritual we undertake as a statement to the world that Jesus has cleansed us from the inside out. After all, in the New Testament we find people undergoing baptism after receiving Christ as their Savior, not before or in place of making a decision to give their hearts to Christ.) But the point is, would we let our pastor lead us if he had never undergone an important ritual of the Christian faith? A lot of us would think twice about it, that's for sure. And a lot of the Hebrew people would have thought twice about following Moses if he failed to obey the Lord regarding the covenant of circumcision.
Moses' illness causes him to have to confront his sin and repent of it. Once he's made his heart right with the Lord he's still too ill to perform the covenant sign on his son himself. His wife has to carry out the procedure. She's very bitter about what takes place in our passage today and I think this is a clue as to why Moses didn't circumcise both his sons. Zipporah was a Midianite, not a Hebrew, and she was opposed to having such a procedure performed on her baby boys. Moses obviously went ahead and circumcised one of his sons eight days after the child's birth, over his wife's objections, but didn't follow through when the other son was born. Some scholars think it was the firstborn he didn't circumcise since in the passage preceding this one the Lord spoke of the nation of Israel as His firstborn and the Lord told Moses of the coming death of Pharaoh's firstborn, but I think it's just as likely that Moses circumcised his firstborn son and Zipporah was so horrified that when the second child arrived she protested so vehemently that to keep the peace in the household Moses gave in to her wishes. We don't know which son it was and it doesn't matter in the scheme of things. But I think the Lord purposely made Moses too ill to do it himself so that Zipporah has to do the thing she prevented her husband from doing. I think the Lord wants her to repent of refusing to submit to His will, but I'm not sure she does. She does what she's asked to do but she clearly isn't happy about it.
"But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it. 'Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,' she said. So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said 'bridegroom of blood', referring to circumcision.)" (Exodus 4:25-26) Moses is lying ill in bed, too weak to stand. It may be that Zipporah places their son across the foot of the bed to circumcise him, then touches Moses' feet with the skin to make him aware that the deed has been done. Or it could be she touches his feet as a sign that strength is about to return to his body and that he will soon be back on his feet again. But she says angry words to her husband. She blames Moses for what has just taken place, saying bitter words such as: "If I hadn't married you I wouldn't have had to do this. A Midianite husband wouldn't have brought me to this point." She may be saying the ancient equivalent of, "I should have listened to Mother when she told me not to marry you!"
We will learn later in Exodus that Moses doesn't take his wife and sons on down to Egypt with him after this. It looks as if about a year passes before he reunites with them. Some scholars think the discord between Moses and Zipporah is so strong and unpleasant at this time that they need a cooling off period. Others think Moses sends them back to Midian to give the boy time to heal and that, due to the dangers and stress of Moses' sojourn in Egypt and due to the problems he faces in the first year after the exodus, his reunion with his family is delayed by circumstances.
What I think we can take away from what we've studied today is this: whenever hardship comes into our lives, it's always wise to examine our hearts and ask ourselves and the Lord whether we've done anything to cause these circumstances. If we've brought our own trouble upon ourselves, the quickest way to smooth our path can be to face our wrongdoing, repent of it, and get back into the Lord's will. That's what Moses does in today's passage and that's what sets him back on the road to recovery. Of course not everything that happens to us in this world is a result of our own sins. We live in a fallen world where we're surrounded by the sins of others. Sometimes they sin against us and cause us hardship. Sometimes their sins even cause natural disasters, for in the Bible we sometimes find famine and disease occurring as judgment or as an incentive to get nations to repent. We may find ourselves suffering in those times, not so much for our own mistakes, but for the collective mistakes of many of our fellow human beings. What did the prophets do in those times? What did the godly citizens do it those times? In the Bible do we find them complaining to the Lord about having to suffer as the result of someone else's sins? Oddly, no. We don't. We find them identifying themselves with the people around them, crying out to God in intercessory prayer for their nation, and saying things like, "Lord, we have sinned! Lord, we have transgressed Your laws! Lord, forgive us and heal our land!"
Keeping this in mind, and using both the prophets and Moses as our examples, what should we be doing in this present time of distress? We should be examining our hearts and repenting of any sins that come to mind. And we should be identifying ourselves with our nation and our world by identifying ourselves with our fellow man and saying, "Lord, we have sinned! Collectively, we have transgressed Your laws. Humanity has fallen short of perfection. Some have rejected You entirely. Even those of us who love You are unable to live sinless lives even though we want to. There is sin everywhere on this earth. Lord, forgive us! Lord, heal us!"
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