Covenantal Lethality: A Bridegroom of Blood Text: Exodus 4:24-26
Introduction: The God Who Is Not Safe
We live in an age that wants a domesticated God. We want a God who is manageable, predictable, and above all, nice. Our modern sensibilities prefer a divine therapist, a celestial butler, or a cosmic affirmation machine. But the God of the Bible, the God who is actually there, is none of these things. He is a consuming fire. He is holy, righteous, and terrifyingly pure. And if we do not understand this, we will never understand the gospel. The good news is not that God overlooks our sin, but that He has provided a way to survive His holiness.
Nowhere is this holy terror more jarringly displayed than in our text today. This is one of those passages that modern, squeamish evangelicals tend to skip over. It is abrupt, violent, and deeply unsettling. Moses, the man who just had a lengthy conversation with God at a burning bush, the man commissioned to be the great deliverer of Israel, is on his way to do the very thing God told him to do. And what happens? God meets him on the road and seeks to kill him. This is not a tame God. This is not a safe lion. This is the living God, and to trifle with Him, to presume upon His grace, is a deadly business.
This strange and bloody episode at a desert inn is not a random, bizarre interruption in the narrative. It is a foundational lesson in the nature of covenant. It teaches us that God’s chosen instruments are not exempt from His laws. It teaches us that covenant headship carries with it solemn, life-or-death responsibilities. And it teaches us that before Moses can be God’s instrument to bring judgment on Pharaoh’s house, his own house must first be in covenant order. Before you can remove the log from your brother’s eye, you must attend to the beam in your own. Before Moses can confront the covenant-breaking king of Egypt, he must first deal with the covenant-breaking in his own tent.
This passage is a stark reminder that nearness to God is a dangerous place if there is unconfessed sin or unheeded duty. God’s grace is not a license for laxity. It is the very reason for our obedience. And when we are disobedient, particularly in the foundational matters of the covenant, we should not be surprised when the God of the covenant shows up with lethal intent.
The Text
Now it happened at the lodging place on the way that Yahweh encountered him and sought to put him to death.
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!”
So He let him alone. At that time she said, “You are a bridegroom of blood” with reference to the circumcision.
(Exodus 4:24-26 LSB)
The Covenant Keeper's Wrath (v. 24)
The scene opens with a shocking confrontation:
"Now it happened at the lodging place on the way that Yahweh encountered him and sought to put him to death." (Exodus 4:24)
Moses is on mission from God. He has his instructions. He has his staff. He has his brother Aaron on the way to meet him. He is, from a certain point of view, being obedient. But God is not interested in ninety-nine percent obedience. Partial obedience is just a flowery name for disobedience. And Moses, the appointed leader of God's covenant people, was in gross violation of the covenant himself.
What was his sin? The context makes it plain. He had neglected to circumcise his son. This was not a minor oversight, a bit of forgotten paperwork. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant God made with Abraham (Genesis 17). It was the bloody, physical mark that distinguished God’s people from the rest of the world. It was a sign that said, "We belong to Yahweh, and we are under His authority and His protection." To neglect this sign was to treat the covenant with contempt. It was to say, in effect, that the promises of God, the identity of his people, and the commands of his Lord were optional. For the man chosen to lead the nation out of bondage, this was an intolerable hypocrisy.
God had commanded in Genesis that any uncircumcised male "shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant" (Gen. 17:14). Moses was about to be the agent of God's cutting off of the Egyptians, but here he stood, with a son in his own household who was, by God's own definition, "cut off." God's judgment must begin at the house of God. Before Moses can be a threat to Pharaoh, God makes it clear that He is a threat to Moses.
Notice the bluntness of the language. Yahweh "sought to put him to death." This is not a metaphor for a guilty conscience. This was a direct, mortal assault. Whether it was a sudden, life-threatening disease or a direct angelic encounter, the text does not specify. What is clear is that Moses' life was forfeit. This is the severity of God. He takes His covenant signs with deadly seriousness, because they point to a deadly serious reality: the curse of the covenant that falls on all who break it.
A Wife's Bloody Intervention (v. 25)
In the face of God's lethal wrath, it is not Moses who acts, but his wife, Zipporah.
"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!'" (Exodus 4:25 LSB)
Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest, is the one who understands the emergency. While her husband, the great prophet, is incapacitated by either sickness or terror, she grasps the situation. She knows the requirement of the covenant. Perhaps Moses had delayed out of a misplaced sensitivity to his foreign wife, or perhaps it was simple neglect. Whatever the reason for the failure, the responsibility was Moses', as the covenant head of his household. He was the federal head of his family, and he was failing to lead them in the most basic requirement of the covenant. His failure put the entire family, and the entire mission, in jeopardy.
Zipporah's action is swift and decisive. She takes a flint knife, performs the circumcision herself, and then does something striking. She touches the bloody foreskin to Moses' "feet." The word "feet" here is almost certainly a common Hebrew euphemism for the genitals. In this desperate moment, she is symbolically applying the sign of the covenant to Moses himself. It is a vicarious circumcision. The blood of the son covers the failure of the father. A substitute has been provided. The blood of the covenant has been shed, and by that blood, the covenant head is shielded from the wrath of God.
Her cry, "You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me!" is likely a cry of mingled anger, relief, and disgust. She is angry at Moses for putting their family in this position. She is disgusted by the bloody, primitive rite that she, a Midianite, was forced to perform. But in her words, she speaks a profound theological truth. Their marriage, their covenant relationship, has just been saved by blood. Moses has been redeemed as her husband, not by his own righteousness, but by a bloody sacrifice. This is the heart of the gospel in miniature. We are all betrothed to Christ, but our sin brings us under the sentence of death. It is only His blood, the blood of the new covenant, that makes us His bride and spares us from the wrath of God.
The Lord Relents (v. 26)
The effect of Zipporah's action is immediate and absolute.
"So He let him alone. At that time she said, 'You are a bridegroom of blood' with reference to the circumcision." (Exodus 4:26 LSB)
As soon as the blood was shed and the covenant sign was applied, the threat was removed. "So He let him alone." God’s wrath is not an arbitrary, capricious anger. It is a holy and just response to covenant-breaking. And when the demands of the covenant are met, through the shedding of blood, that wrath is satisfied. The text underscores the reason for this deliverance by repeating Zipporah's phrase: it was "with reference to the circumcision." The cause of the attack was the lack of the sign, and the cause of the deliverance was its application.
This event serves as a permanent, searing lesson for Moses. He is going to Egypt to declare God’s ownership over His firstborn son, Israel. He is going to be the instrument of the tenth plague, where the firstborn of Egypt will be killed. The blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts will be the sign that distinguishes the houses of the covenant people from the houses of the Egyptians. How could Moses possibly be the herald of such a message if he had not first applied the bloody sign of the covenant in his own house? He would have been a staggering hypocrite, and God will not use such men to do His mighty works without first purifying them, often through fire.
The lesson for us is plain. We cannot lead others where we have not gone ourselves. We cannot call others to submit to the Lordship of Christ if we are harboring pockets of rebellion and disobedience in our own homes. The headship of a husband and father is a federal headship, a covenantal responsibility. He is responsible for the spiritual state of his household. And if he neglects the fundamental signs and duties of the new covenant, baptism and the instruction of his children in the faith, he is trifling with holy things and inviting the severe discipline of God.
Conclusion: Covered by a Better Blood
This strange scene at the inn is a microcosm of our relationship with God. Like Moses, we are called by God to a great mission, to be ambassadors for Christ in a hostile world. And like Moses, we are prone to neglect, compromise, and disobedience. We treat the signs of the covenant, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as optional formalities. We allow our zeal to cool and our obedience to become selective. We presume upon the grace of God, forgetting that He is a holy God who will not be trifled with.
And so, we find ourselves at the inn, on the road, and God meets us. He meets us in our sin, in our hypocrisy, and He brings us to the point of spiritual death. He shows us that our own righteousness is worthless, that our mission is forfeit, and that we stand condemned.
But praise be to God, there is a better Zipporah and a better circumcision. Jesus Christ, our great high priest, saw our desperate state. He did not just perform the sign; He fulfilled it. On the cross, He was "cut off" from His people, bearing the curse of the covenant that we deserved. His was the ultimate circumcision, a circumcision of the heart made without hands. And His blood, the blood of the true Bridegroom, is applied to us. He is our bridegroom of blood, who bought us for Himself at the cost of His own life.
When God the Father looks at us, He does not see our covenant-breaking failures. He sees the blood of His Son. That blood covers our sin. That blood appeases His wrath. That blood secures our mission. And because of that blood, He "lets us alone." He lets us go on our way, not in fear, but in forgiven gratitude, ready to serve Him not out of slavish duty, but out of joyful love for the One who was willing to be a bridegroom of blood for us.