Why Did God Try to Kill Moses? Exodus 4:24-26

Short answer: the verse never says why, and the question quietly assumes something the Bible does not say: that God is a being outside you, attacking a man’s body. In this course, the one who “would have put him to death” is YHVH, the I AM, and a court puts identities on trial, not bodies. The name Moses is the identity Pharaoh’s house gave him. He is on his way to tell Pharaoh “Israel is my son”, while that identity still stands and the seed in his own house is unmarked. The cut is made, and the pressure stops.

The rest of this page shows how to get there, one piece at a time.

The passage

Now on the journey, at the night's resting-place, the Lord came in his way and would have put him to death. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cutting off the skin of her son's private parts, and touching his feet with it, she said, Truly you are a husband of blood to me. So he let him go. Then she said, You are a husband of blood because of the circumcision. — Exodus 4:24-26 (BBE)

The same passage with the word meanings put in:

Now on the journey, at the place where the night is spent, YHVH came in his way and would have put him to death. Then Bird took a sharp stone, and cutting off the skin of her son’s private parts, and touching his feet with it, she said, Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me. So he let him go. Then she said, You are a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.

What changed, and why:

• Zipporah means “bird” (Strong’s H6855). The name appears only three times: Exodus 2:21, 4:25 and 18:2.
• The night’s resting-place is a lodging place, an inn (H4411), from the word for staying the night (H3885).
• “Husband” is the Hebrew word for bridegroom or son-in-law (H2860). Strong’s adds that it can also stand for a circumcised child, as a kind of espousal.
• “Blood” is H1818, in its plural form here.
• “The Lord” stands for YHVH in the BBE, so the verse says YHVH, not Elohim.

Five ideas you need first

1. Moses is a name, and a name is an identity

In the Bible a name is not just a label. It says who someone is being (Lesson 9). So start with the name in this scene.

Moses’ story begins in water. His mother hides him in a basket at the edge of the Nile (Exodus 2:3). Then:

And when the child was older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son, and she gave him the name Moses, Because, she said, I took him out of the water. — Exodus 2:10 (BBE)

Two things to notice. First, the name is given by Pharaoh’s daughter, not by his Hebrew family. Second, it means what she says it means: Moses is Strong’s H4872, “drawing out (of the water), i.e. rescued”, from H4871, “to pull out”. So Moses is the identity of the one Egypt drew out and raised as its own son.

Yet he is split. When he is grown, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew:

Now when Moses had become a man, one day he went out to his people and saw how hard their work was; and he saw an Egyptian giving blows to a Hebrew, one of his people. — Exodus 2:11 (BBE)

Raised in Pharaoh’s house, he still calls the Hebrews “his people”. He kills the Egyptian, runs from Pharaoh into Midian (Exodus 2:15), and there is given Zipporah as his wife (Exodus 2:21). That is the man walking back toward Egypt in Exodus 4: a name given by Egypt, going back to speak for Israel.

2. Egypt means double straits

Egypt’s Hebrew name is Mitsrayim (Strong’s H4714). Strong’s says it is the dual, or two-part, form of matsor (H4693), a word for a limit that Strong’s renders as besieged places, defence, fortified. So the name means a hemmed-in place, doubled: double straits.

And the story shows Egypt behaving exactly that way. It keeps the Hebrews in hard work (Exodus 2:11, above). It holds on to the son: “you did not let him go” (Exodus 4:23). And Joshua 5:9 calls it “the shame of Egypt”, something that has to be rolled away. Egypt is the state of being fenced in by a claim about yourself, living inside limits you did not choose, under a name someone else gave you.

Put that with Moses’ name. He was drawn out of the water and brought into Pharaoh’s house, so Moses is the identity of someone brought inside the straits. Now he is sent back in to bring sons out.

3. A son is a seed

A seed holds what a plant will become. Plant it, and the same kind of plant comes up. That is how the Bible opens its story of growing things:

And God said, Let grass come up on the earth, and plants producing seed, and fruit-trees giving fruit, in which is their seed, after their sort: and it was so. — Genesis 1:11 (BBE)

The same Hebrew word for this plant seed (zera, H2233) is also the word for children and descendants. Strong’s gives it as seed, and by extension offspring. And the Hebrew word for son (ben, H1121) is defined by Strong’s as a son “as a builder of the family name”.

So when the Bible says son, it is talking about identity being carried forward. A son is the father’s seed: what he is, planted into the next life. This is the seed rule from Lesson 7: plant words carry an identity claim, and what is planted gives back only what it is.

4. Circumcision is the mark on the seed

The cut first appears when Abraham is given an agreement. Notice how often the word seed shows up:

And this is the agreement which you are to keep with me, you and your seed after you: every male among you is to undergo circumcision. In the flesh of your private parts you are to undergo it, as a mark of the agreement between me and you. ... And any male who does not undergo circumcision will be cut off from his people: my agreement has been broken by him. — Genesis 17:10-11, 17:14 (BBE)

In plain terms: there is an agreement, it runs through the seed, and the cut is the mark that shows a seed belongs to it. A male without the mark is treated as outside it. Genesis 17:13 says the agreement is to be “marked in your flesh”.

5. The Bible uses the cut as a picture of inside matching outside

The cut does not stay a bodily rule. Later writers keep using it as a picture of belonging.

Joshua 5. The people have crossed out of Egypt, but the sons born on the journey had never been marked:

And their children, who came up in their place, now underwent circumcision by the hands of Joshua, not having had it before: for there had been no circumcision on the journey. ... And the Lord said to Joshua, Today the shame of Egypt has been rolled away from you. — Joshua 5:7, 5:9 (BBE)

Look at the pattern: a journey out of Egypt, sons not yet marked, a cut made at a stop, and then the way is clear. Exodus 4 has the same shape in miniature.

Jeremiah 4:4. The cut is lifted from the body to the inside:

Undergo a circumcision of the heart, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem — Jeremiah 4:4 (BBE)

So the cut was never only about skin. It is the visible sign that who you say you are and what is marked on you agree.

Now read the scene

1. The message is about sons. Just before the scene, Moses is given words for Pharaoh: Israel is “the first of my sons”, “let my son go”, and Pharaoh’s first son will be put to death (Exodus 4:22-23). The whole errand is built on the word son.

   And you are to say to Pharaoh, The Lord says, Israel is the first of my sons: And I said to you, Let my son go, so that he may give me worship; and you did not let him go: so now I will put the first of your sons to death. — Exodus 4:22-23 (BBE)

2. Moses has a son of his own. He set out with his wife and sons (Exodus 4:20), and at the stop the cut is made there and then (Exodus 4:25). The text does not name which son, or say why he had not been marked. It only shows the cut being made.
3. The mismatch. Moses is carrying the word son to Pharaoh. But he still carries the name Pharaoh’s house gave him (“drawn out” of Egypt’s water, and Pharaoh’s daughter’s son), and the seed in his own house lacks the mark that goes with the word. By the rule in Genesis 17, that son is outside the agreement.
4. The place. A lodging place is a stop for the night. Moses has left, and has not arrived. The scene happens in the gap between the two.
5. The one who acts. Bird, the wife, is the one who acts. She calls Moses a bridegroom, the word Strong’s links to circumcision as a kind of espousal. This is the Lesson 8 rule: a husband-and-wife union is the picture of a claim joined to its identity (Genesis 2:24). Here the joining is sealed with a mark.
6. The stop. “So he let him go” comes straight after the cut (Exodus 4:26). There is no prayer and no argument. It ends the moment the mark is made.

The father’s house

Genesis 2:24 gives the order for becoming a husband:

For this cause will a man go away from his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they will be one flesh. — Genesis 2:24 (BBE)

Leave first, then be joined. Now count the houses Moses has. He is born into the house of Levi (Exodus 2:1). He is raised and named in Pharaoh’s daughter’s house (Exodus 2:10). He is given a wife in Jethro’s house in Midian (Exodus 2:21). And just before our scene, he goes back to that last house:

And Moses went back to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, Let me go back now to my relations in Egypt and see if they are still living. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. — Exodus 4:18 (BBE)

Then he goes back again, to Egypt, the house that named him. Notice the pull: Moses keeps returning to a father’s house, when the rule says go away from it. Lesson 8 gives the test: if a character goes toward the father’s ground instead of away from it, the story is running the rule backwards.

Now look at the stop. His wife is the one who acts, and the word she gives him is bridegroom: a husband, but one who has not finished leaving. And notice the word flesh. Genesis 2:24 says the two become one flesh, and Genesis 17:11-13 says the agreement is marked in the flesh. In this reading, the cut is where those two meet: the old house’s claim is cut away, and he is joined to the agreement instead of to Egypt’s straits. Then “he let him go”.

How the scene changes the Genesis 1 picture

Lesson 5 says every story is the Genesis 1 scene, changed. Here is this scene set against the seven groups from Lesson 4:

Now the three questions from Lesson 5:

1. What is the ground, and what does its name mean? Egypt, double straits, where the sons are held. The scene stops at a night’s resting-place on the way to it.
2. Who is standing on it, and what do their names mean? Moses, “drawn out”, carrying a name Pharaoh’s house gave him. Bird, the wife. The son, the seed.
3. What has changed from Genesis 1? In Genesis 1 the ground and seed are built first and called good, and then the identity is placed and given rule. Here the identity arrives with an old name, the ground is straits, and the seed does not carry the mark that goes with the claim. He is not ruling. He is pressed, and he is walking toward the father’s ground.

That is why the court moves. It is the same court as Genesis 1, ruling on the picture that is actually being offered, and the picture does not match the claim yet.

So why did God try to kill Moses?

The question is usually asked as if God were a person outside us, wanting to kill another person’s body. The Bible does not read that way. In this course the Elohim are the judges, the court that rules on who you say you are (Lesson 1), and YHVH is the I AM, your own awareness in the present (Lesson 2). The verse says YHVH. A court like that does not execute bodies. It rules on identities.

So what is on trial is the name Moses and what it stands for: the one Egypt drew out of the water and raised as Pharaoh’s daughter’s son. That identity is about to stand in front of Pharaoh and say Israel is my son. It cannot say it truthfully while it still wears Pharaoh’s house and the seed in its own house is unmarked. It also keeps going back to a father’s house when the rule is to leave one, and it is walking back into Egypt, the double straits it was drawn into. Verse 24 is the court meeting that gap.

Now read the cut. The skin is cut away, and the mark of the agreement goes on the seed (Genesis 17:11). In Joshua 5:9 the same cut is what rolls “the shame of Egypt” away. In this reading, what is cut off is the Egypt-given identity, and what is marked is the one who belongs to the agreement. Then “he let him go”: the court has what it needs, and the claim and the mark agree.

The verse is short, so the verses around it carry the explanation.

Two small notes on the wording. The BBE says “him” in verses 24 and 26 without giving a name, and Moses is the one the chapter has been following. It also says “his feet” in verse 25 without saying whose.

Remember: a name is an identity, Egypt is double straits, a son is a seed, you leave the father’s house before you are joined, the cut is the mark on the seed, and a claim and its mark have to agree.