Exodus 4

God gives the reluctant Moses three signs proving His divine power; for the first, he turns Moses's walking stick into a snake. How does Moses react? As the Bible oh-so vividly states, "he ran from it" (verse 3). Remember, Moses wrote this, so he's not going to write, "Moses flung his hands in the air, squawking in terror and showing the snake a clean dirty pair of heels." (Plus, he was probably using some ancient word processing software, like Microsoft Works on MS-DOS, so the strikethrough effect hadn't been implemented yet.) Or maybe he looked like the lizard in this GIF:

Moses keeps on making excuses, one of which I find particularly pertinent to my own character. In verse 10, Moses claims, "I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I'm one of the most awkward, tongue-tied communicators who don't actually have a legitimate speech impediment. I don't claim to be the pithiest, most erudite writer I know, but any half-decent writing is positively Shakespearean when compared with my speaking skills. (And if you're reading this, I did somehow succeed in snookering you into doing so via the written word, as I sure as heck didn't have the gumption to tell you in person.)

I don't want to turn this into a Dear Diary, but I have always had some degree of social anxiety. So whenever I had to give a presentation in school, or worse, work on a dreaded GROUP PROJECT, I'm sure my complaints to God were similar to Moses's--and they probably sounded just as querulous. I thought that, if I ever got past the interview stage, I'd have a behind-the-scenes type of job, ideally using my writing skills somehow (because I sure wasn't skilled at much else). So imagine my surprise when I pretty much fell into a job that requires me to talk for hours on end. As God says in verse 11, "Who gives human beings their mouths?" I'm still not some razor-sharp interlocutor, but without God's help, I probably wouldn't have lasted more than a week. (As I'm writing this, I'm getting the nagging sense that I've included this story in a previous post, and probably using very similar language as well, so I apologize if I'm repeating myself.)

Anyway, God, justifiably exasperated by Moses's litany of excuses, eventually promises to provide Moses's brother Aaron as his mouthpiece before booting him back to Egypt. On the way back, we're treated to a bizarre and indeed rather disturbing encounter that most extra-Biblical accounts of Moses omit. God meets Moses, intending to kill him, causing Moses's wife Zipporah to "cut off her son's foreskin and touch […] Moses' feet with it" (verse 25). We all know what a foreskin is (and if you don't, I'm not going to tell you here), and "feet" is a euphemism for, well, the same general area as the foreskin. What's going on here? Why would God want to kill Moses right after telling him that he will be the instrument by which God will liberate His people? The NIV Study Bible says something about Moses's son being uncircumcised, which causes Zipporah to perform the deed (much to her son's consternation). Once again in Exodus, we have another woman saving the day (a nice change from the mostly ignored women in Genesis); who knows what Moses was doing. (Probably figuring out what to say, being "slow of speech" and all that.) I admit that I still don't get this little passage, but I'm sure God had it included here for a reason. I know that's a rather unsatisfactory note to end on, but never fear. Moses's return to Egypt portends some cinematically dazzling events to come in the next few chapters.