Featured Exodus 4:24 — The Lord met Moses and “was about to kill him” ? ! ?

[Multicolored Lemur]

Bible Gateway passage: Exodus 4 - King James Version

And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The LORD hath not appeared unto thee. And the LORD said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground...

www.biblegateway.com

24 “And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him.

25 “Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

26 “So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.”

— King James Version

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Obviously, if Almighty God had tried to kill Moses, he’d be dead in less than half a second. Probably less!

The part in which Moses’ wife Zipporah circumcises their son and casts the foreskin at “his feet,” I think that’s a polite way of saying Moses’ genitals. And therefore, this counts as a symbolic circumcision of Moses.

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Later edit —
The title used to be “ . . God tries to kill Moses . . ”


I changed it to “ . . was about to kill him“ This is the same as intends to kill. But I’m going with the simple English of the New International Version —

24 “At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him.”

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

21 And the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh . . .

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So, the part before this, God is giving instructions to Moses.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

27 And the Lord said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. . .

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Okay, so part in which God “sought to kill” Moses doesn’t really connect with either the Moses part [ the instructions to Moses], or the instructions to Aaron part.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

Documentary hypothesis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Basically, the idea that the first 4 books of the Old Testament draw from multiple sources.

And “Redactor” is a fancy way of saying “Editor.”

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

And to think my friend Mike felt so tremendously guilty about masturbation at age 16.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Obviously, if Almighty God had tried to kill Moses, he’d be dead in less than half a second. Probably less!

Understanding that Exodus passage you bring up was tricky because it sometimes hard to see when God is speaking and when Moses is speaking. From what I can tell, those passages do not mention why God wanted to kill Moses. We can speculate that it was for some wrongdoing since that would be the only reason an all-good God would do that. I also get your point about God attempting to kill Moses. The whole thing really doesn't make sense unless details were left out OR as you mentioned, there were different editors and perhaps Exodus 4 shows the hand of two different editors. How would the writer even know that God was trying to kill Moses? Did that information come about through special revelation or some assumption, perhaps to explain how serious God looked at circumcision?

My go-to site says that God was upset that Moses did not circumcise his son. God didn't follow through with killing Moses because Moses' wife finally performed the circumcision. I guess both views are possible, although many would question if not circumcising should be a capital offense. To read more on this view, read here...https://www.gotquestions.org/kill-Moses.html

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

My go-to site says that God was upset that Moses did not circumcise his son. God didn't follow through with killing Moses because Moses' wife finally performed the circumcision.

God is being shown as an abusive parent. The day is going fine. Moses has taken on the important assignment of talking to Pharaoh. Then God suddenly remembers something? And God’s only anger style is high anger?

It’s also bad storytelling. If we were sitting around the campfire listening to an older person tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh and “Let My People Go,” then for get an attempt of God to kill Moses and for something which God had seemingly forgotten about, what a sidetrack!

And it doesn’t come up again. It’s just really abrupt.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

@Multicolored Lemur

I'm sure the Church can pay for a Hollywood editor to do some polishing on the story.

 

[Scooter]

God is being shown as an abusive parent. The day is going fine. Moses has taken on the important assignment of talking to Pharaoh. Then God suddenly remembers something? And God’s only anger style is high anger?

It’s also bad storytelling. If we were sitting around the campfire listening to an older person tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh and “Let My People Go,” then for get an attempt of God to kill Moses and for something which God had seemingly forgotten about, what a sidetrack!

And it doesn’t come up again. It’s just really abrupt.

God did not try to kill Moses. The Bible says God met Moses on the way with the intent of killing him. The Hebrew word translated as "sought" is the word בָּקַשׁ (bâqash) and it means "to search out (by any method, specifically in worship or prayer); by implication, to strive after:—ask, beg, beseech, desire, enquire, get, make inquisition, procure, (make) request, require, seek (for)." So God did not try to kill Moses. Moses had sinned by not obeying the commands of God so God was going to punish him accordingly. The Bible is very clear that the wages of sin is death. God was not an abusive parent, He is a just parent. He was going to chastise Moses according to His word.

Now, this reminds me that God should not to be quizzed by you as if you were some district manager and God is some guy whose numbers are down for the month. God is my personal God and He means a lot to me. So that's that.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

I'm sure the Church can pay for a Hollywood editor to do some polishing on the story.

Well, for the whole big Exodus story we already have The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as the Pharaoh Ramses, I guess Ramses the First.

will pull a screen shot or two —

Baka — “If we stop moving stones for every grease woman who falls, the city would never rise”

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Ramses’ wife Nefretiri — “Moses, Moses, you splendid, adorable fool.”

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a lot of drama in the movie, which is from the 1950s and runs 3 hours and 40 minutes long.