Commentary - Exodus 4:24-26

Bird's-eye view

This brief, startling, and frankly bizarre episode on the road back to Egypt serves as a crucial hinge in the narrative. Moses, having been commissioned by God at the burning bush, armed with signs and wonders, and given his mission to confront Pharaoh, is here confronted himself by the God who sent him. The incident is a stark and bloody reminder that the covenant mediator must himself be in right covenantal standing before God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not a sentimental deity who overlooks the details. The sign of the covenant, circumcision, was not an optional extra or a cultural marker; it was a non-negotiable requirement, the neglect of which carried the death penalty. Before Moses can be God's instrument to deliver the firstborn of Israel from Pharaoh's death decree, he must first deal with the sign of the covenant in his own house. Zipporah's quick, if resentful, action saves her husband's life and underscores the deadly seriousness of covenant obligation. This is a lesson in the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of all wisdom and, in this case, the prerequisite for any effective ministry.

The passage violently rips away any notion that our relationship with God can be managed on our own terms. Moses was on God's mission, but he was carrying with him a glaring act of disobedience. God will not be trifled with. The covenant has teeth, and its blessings are always attended by its curses. This event establishes that the law God is about to give at Sinai applies first and foremost to the leadership. Before confronting the sins of Egypt, Moses must confront the sin in his own tent. The blood of the covenant, represented here by the bloody foreskin, is what mediates the relationship between God and His people, and it is a matter of life and death.

Outline

Context In Exodus

This passage comes immediately after God has given Moses his grand commission. In Exodus 3 and the beginning of chapter 4, Moses receives his calling at the burning bush, is given miraculous signs to perform, and is instructed to go to Pharaoh with the message, "Let my son go, that he may serve me" (Exod 4:23). God even tells Moses that if Pharaoh refuses, He will kill Pharaoh's firstborn son. It is in this high-stakes context that the Lord intercepts Moses. The juxtaposition is jarring and intentional. How can Moses be the instrument of a death sentence on Pharaoh's house for his treatment of God's "son" Israel, when Moses is in flagrant disobedience regarding his own son? The principle is clear: judgment begins at the house of God. Before the covenantal lawsuit against Egypt can proceed, the covenant mediator's own house must be brought into order. This episode firmly establishes the absolute seriousness of God's covenant commands, setting the stage for the giving of the Law at Sinai, where covenant faithfulness will be spelled out in detail as a matter of national life and death.

Key Issues

Covenantal Checkpoint

We must resist the urge to domesticate this passage. Our modern therapeutic sensibilities want to recoil from a God who seeks to kill the very man He just commissioned. But this is not an arbitrary mood swing on God's part. This is a covenantal checkpoint. Moses, the federal head of his household, was on his way to be the federal head of the nation, and he was carrying a capital crime with him. The sign of the covenant, given to Abraham in Genesis 17, was explicit: "Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant" (Gen 17:14). To be "cut off" means to be executed. Moses was walking around under a death sentence from the very God who was sending him.

Why had he neglected this? Perhaps it was a concession to his Midianite wife, Zipporah, who clearly found the rite barbaric. Perhaps in the forty years of exile, his own zeal for the particulars of God's covenant had grown lax. Whatever the reason, the excuse had expired. You cannot lead God's people if you are actively disobeying God's foundational command. God was not being capricious; He was being consistent. He was upholding the terms of His own covenant, and in so doing, teaching Moses a foundational lesson about the holy terror of walking with a holy God.

Verse by Verse Commentary

24 Now it happened at the lodging place on the way that Yahweh encountered him and sought to put him to death.

Moses is on the road, presumably with his family, heading back to Egypt to do the Lord's bidding. The setting is mundane, a stopping place for the night. And there, without warning, the narrative tells us that Yahweh Himself met Moses with lethal intent. The language is blunt and shocking. This is not a test or a vision; this is a divine assault. The one who had just revealed Himself in the fire of the bush now comes with the fire of judgment. The reason is not stated explicitly in this verse, but the subsequent action makes it plain. Moses, the appointed deliverer, is a covenant-breaker. He is liable to the covenant's ultimate curse: death. Before God will use Moses to execute judgment on Egypt, He first brings that same standard of judgment to Moses' own tent.

25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched his feet with it, and she said, “You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me!”

In the midst of this terrifying crisis, it is not Moses who acts, but his wife, Zipporah. Moses is likely incapacitated by whatever means God was using to seek his life. Zipporah, the Midianitess, grasps the situation with sudden, fierce clarity. She understands, either by intuition or by a frantic word from Moses, that the issue is their uncircumcised son. She performs the rite herself, using a sharp flint, which was a primitive but effective surgical tool. She then takes the bloody foreskin and touches "his feet" with it. There is debate whether this refers to Moses' feet or the Lord's (in some theophanic form) or is a euphemism for the genitals. The most likely referent is Moses. It is as though she is applying the blood of the covenant sign to the one who is under the sentence of death, warding off the executioner. Her exclamation, "You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me!" is not a term of endearment. It is a cry of anguish and resentment. Her marriage to Moses has just brought this bloody, terrifying obligation upon her and her son, and almost cost her husband his life. The covenant is not a tame affair.

26 So He let him alone. At that time she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood” with reference to the circumcision.

The effect of Zipporah's action is immediate. "He," Yahweh, let Moses alone. The threat is removed. The shedding of blood in obedience to the covenant has satisfied the covenant's demand. The law has been fulfilled, and the curse is lifted. The narrator then adds a clarifying comment, repeating Zipporah's phrase to make sure we understand the context. This was not a random outburst, but a specific reaction to the rite of circumcision. The blood of the covenant sign has saved the covenant mediator. The price of leadership is obedience, and the cost of disobedience is death. Moses has just learned this lesson in the most visceral way possible. He is now qualified to go to Pharaoh, not simply as one who has seen a burning bush, but as one who has personally experienced the life-and-death gravity of God's covenant word.

Application

This passage is a strong dose of salts for a church that has become far too casual in its approach to God. We like to think of God's covenant as a cozy arrangement of blessings, and we conveniently forget that it is a solemn bond with attendant curses for disobedience. This story reminds us that leadership in God's kingdom is a dangerous business. Before we set out to confront the sins of the world, we must first ensure our own house is in order. We cannot preach a gospel of obedience from a platform of personal disobedience.

The central issue for Moses was the neglect of a covenant sign. For us, the signs are baptism and the Lord's Supper. Do we treat them with the gravity they deserve? Or have they become rote rituals, neglected duties, or optional add-ons to our "personal relationship" with Jesus? This passage shows us that God takes the visible signs of His covenant with deadly seriousness, because they point to the bloody reality of our redemption. Zipporah had to apply the blood of the sign to save her husband. We are saved because the blood of the reality, Jesus Christ, has been applied to us. He is the ultimate bridegroom of blood, who purchased His bride, the Church, with His own life. Our obedience to Him, particularly in the small, tangible commands He gives the church, is not a matter of earning favor. It is the necessary response of a people who have been rescued from a divine death sentence by the bloody intervention of another.