El Elyon (The Most High God)
Adonai (Lord, Master)
Yahweh (Lord, Jehovah)
Jehovah Nissi (The Lord My Banner)
Jehovah-Raah (The Lord My Shepherd)
Jehovah Makeh (The Lord Who Strikes You)
Jehovah Rapha (The Lord That Heals)
Jehovah Shammah (The Lord Is There)
Jehovah Tsidkenu (The Lord Our Righteousness)
Jehovah Mekoddishkem (The Lord Who Sanctifies You)
El Olam (The Everlasting God)
Elohim (God)
Qanna (Jealous)
Jehovah Jireh (The Lord Will Provide)
Jehovah Shalom (The Lord Is Peace)
Jehovah Sabaoth (The Lord of Hosts)
Circumcision (Again)
Did you notice the strange story of God setting out to kill Moses as he headed back to Egypt to rescue the slaves in Exodus 4:24? These are the kinds of encounters I find fascinating, like puzzles that need solving. Moses’s Midian wife Zipporah intercedes by circumcising their son Gershom and dousing Moses’s big toe with the blood from the procedure. Interestingly, in Mesopotamian culture, the feet were sometimes a euphemism for the male private parts. So maybe she threw the foreskin at Moses’s private areas in anger that he had refused to circumcise his son “down there.” Regardless, Zipporah is depicted as a wife who is encouraging Moses to be faithful to his adopted Hebrew tradition. Midianites could have been monotheistic tribes that shared a common understanding of God with the Hebrews; they also descended from Abraham’s son Midian.
So what does it mean? It may mean that Moses only had a vague knowledge of the rite of circumcision and had dismissed its necessity. He was not raised as a Hebrew slave, and as we will see in later readings, the Hebrew tribe was somewhat unclear about their ancient tribal obligations. Remember, 400 years had passed. What sense of their Hebrew ritual and practice had been forgotten or muddled in those generations? Lodged in this story is the heroics of Zipporah, a non-Hebrew Midianite woman, who recognized what was needed—a firm commitment to the tribe’s ancient God and covenant. She circumcises Gershom and throws the evidence at Moses’s feet, and only then are they able to head toward Egypt committed to their new venture.
Plagues upon Egypt
Following YHWH’s command, Moses returns to Egypt with the power that he has received. Ten plagues eventually fall upon the Egyptians by Moses’s (and his brother Aaron’s) command:
1. Water turns into blood (Exod. 7:14–24)
2. Frogs swarm the land (Exod. 7:25–8:15)
3. Lice come upon humans and animals (Exod. 8:16–19)
4. Swarms of flies fill the houses (Exod. 8:20–32)
5. A deadly disease attacks all the livestock (Exod. 9:1–7)
6. Boils fester upon humans and animals (Exod. 9:8–12)
7. A thunderstorm of hail and fire falls on the land (Exod. 9:13–35)
8. Locusts descend and eat all the vegetation (Exod. 10:1–20)
9. Dense darkness so that no one could see (Exod. 10:21–29)
10. The death of every firstborn child (Exod. 11:1–12:36)
The final plague is the source story of the Jewish Feast of Passover. For Christians, this is a festival that also symbolically points to the sacrifice and salvation of Jesus, as he celebrated the Passover meal as his last supper with his disciples before his blood was shed to save and protect his people from judgment and death (Matt. 26:17). These are called “typologies,” ideas or symbols that repeat themselves in different forms across different stories into the New Testament. Passover is the “type” and Jesus’ last supper and his sacrificial blood is called the “antitype.” We will see more of these as we read ahead.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
1. Moses comes to realize that his wonderful life as Egyptian royalty was at the expense of the Hebrew people. If you inherited a wealthy company and found out that the profits came from the suffering of other people, what would you do?
2. If God had asked you to go back and free enslaved people, what do you think, feel, and do?
1. The Prince of Egypt, directed by Brenda Chapman, Simon Wells, Steve Hickner (Universal City, CA: DreamWorks, 1998), film.
Read Exodus chapters 15–17. Watch The Bible Project video on Exodus chapters 1–18.
The first song in the Hebrew Bible is the Song of Moses in Exodus 15. The story of Moses crossing the Red Sea is also fairly well known. Notice that the pulling back of the waters did not happen in an instant, but rather took the winds blowing all night long. The movie Exodus: Gods and Kings1 depicts this act as having been caused by a great earthquake that created a tsunami that pulled back the waters temporarily.
The story itself has some chronology and geography issues to sort out. The Hebrew slaves escaped Rameses, then fled, and crossed the Red Sea. If you look at a map, you see that the Red Sea is about 150 miles south and then east of the lower tip of the Sinai Peninsula. This would take a group of that size months to traverse. It isn’t out of the question that it took Pharaoh that long to regret the loss of his cheap labor source and chase them down with his army, but the locations for water at Marah, Massah, and Meribah are back up north on the west side of the peninsula. Mount Sinai, where the commandments were given early on in their journey, is located in the south central region. So how did they cross the Red Sea and then get back over to get water and the Ten Commandments?
The most common solution is that it wasn’t the traditional Red Sea they were crossing, but rather the Sea of Reeds, a body of water not too far from the city of Rameses, where they fled. The names may have been corrupted as the story was transmitted, or it is possible that what is now called that the Gulf of Suez was then considered part of the Red Sea. These are questions to ponder.
After the crossing of the Red Sea there are a host of stories that are often overlooked because they are not so fantastic. Nearly every movie made about Moses stops at the crossing of the Red Sea. Someone needs to make the film Moses: the Sequel.
Remember, Moses was not raised as a Hebrew but an Egyptian. When he finally flees his upbringing, he marries into the family of a Midianite priest. Embedded in these stories is an idea that you should always keep in mind: Moses is being tutored in the ways of an old, almost dead, faith. Some of the ideas and practices of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob surely remained with their Hebrew descendants, but perhaps they got muddled during those 400 years of slavery. What these stories do is give us a peek into the formation of a religious culture. God and Moses are going to recreate or expand formal Judaism.
It is hard for us to see how deeply we are affected and shaped by our culture, especially over time. Often we are so close to our context