Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 4-6.

Part of this passage confuses me.  When Moses left his father-in-law it tells us that he took his wife and sons (note the plural there) with him.  A couple of verses later, the passage says that the Lord met “him” (which the translators decided meant Moses, and probably does) and was about to kill him.  The only reason the Lord did not kill Moses was because Zipporah circumcised her son (note the singular there) with a flint knife.  I am confused by the fact that God had sent Moses to Egypt but now was seeking to kill him.  Why was the Lord seeking to kill Moses here?  Was it because his son was uncircumcised?  Were both of his sons uncircumcised, or just the one?   The best explanation I have seen for this is that these few verses were part of a larger account which has been lost to us over time.  As best I can make it out, Moses had failed, for one reason or another, to circumcise the younger of his two sons (there is no biblical basis for it being the younger, that is just what makes sense to me). God could not have his representative not be in compliance with the rules he had laid down for the descendants of Abraham.  I further speculate that Moses had not circumcised his son for one of two reasons.  First, he did not circumcise him because Zipporah objected.  Second, maybe Zipporah had wanted Moses to circumcise his sons (she was also a descendant of Abraham by way of Midian whose mother was Keturah), but Moses did not do so(perhaps only refusing on one of the sons).  Both of these explanations would explain why Zipporah was the one to perform the circumcision here when Moses was apparently unable to do so.  Another factor in our trouble understanding this account is that it was written in Hebrew more than 3,000 years ago.  We may lack some understanding of the words used which may have been common at that time which would have made the meaning more clear.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.