Exodus 4: The God Who Humbled Himself and Circumcision

"The LORD said, 'When you do this and show them the signs, they will believe that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you.' At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it. 'You are a bridegroom of blood to me,' she said. The people believed. And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped." (Excerpts from Exodus 4:5, 24-25, 31)

The calling at the burning bush now enters the concrete realm of reality. God places miraculous signs into Moses' hands. A staff becomes a serpent, a hand afflicted with leprosy is healed. People witness these inexplicable events and acknowledge divine intervention. Yet these signs are not displays of God's raw power. Rather, they represent kenosis—the self-emptying of the infinite God who compresses Himself into the limited comprehension of finite humanity. Like a parent who babbles baby talk to communicate with a cooing infant, God is willing to convey His holy will even through what resembles marketplace magic tricks. The miracles are not exhibitions of power, but expressions of God's humility—His willingness to do whatever it takes to persuade and save His people.

Yet behind God's merciful companionship lurks a chilling terror. "The LORD met him and was about to kill him" (v. 24). This verse seems so abrupt, so out of context, that it leaves readers bewildered. Why would the God who just commanded Moses to go to Egypt suddenly try to kill him on the road? Within this bewildering passage lies the agonizing historical struggle of the Israelite community. For the exilic authors weeping by the rivers of Babylon, the cause of their nation's fall was not lack of military might but the breaking of covenant. "Even the great leader Moses could die without the sign of the covenant." Through this shocking event, the author desperately wanted to engrave deep into the bone that the Law and circumcision were not mere rituals but a lifeline between life and death.

In this moment of crisis, it was Zipporah, a foreign woman, who saved Moses. She cut her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet (genitals) with it, declaring, "You are a bridegroom of blood to me." The circumcision she performed was like a preview of the tenth plague that would later fall upon Egypt. The angel of death would not distinguish between Israelite and non-Israelite. It would only look for one thing: whether the lamb's blood had been applied to the doorposts or not. What Zipporah demonstrated was the universality of salvation that transcends bloodlines. Death passes over only through the covenant of blood (Pass-over).

Circumcision is an act of cutting away the very source from which masculine life-force springs. It is a devastating self-denial, a confession of powerlessness: "I cannot create life by my own strength." When Moses at forty tried to save his people through his own ability and passion, he failed. Now at eighty, reduced to an old man leaning on a staff, God demands that he cut away even this last vestige of trust in his own flesh.

God's work is accomplished not through human excellence or burning zeal, but through absolute obedience and covenant faithfulness. That strange assault in verse 24 was perhaps a sacred rite of passage, meant to kill the self-righteousness remaining in Moses and force him to depend solely on God's staff.

We wrestle with Scripture's perplexing passages and feel overwhelmed. Yet at the end of this fierce interpretive struggle, what we encounter is the God who comes to us beyond our understanding. Where my strength ends, where I become completely powerless and can depend only on the blood of Jesus Christ—that is where the true exodus begins. A circumcised heart, a confession of powerlessness—this was the true identity of ancient Israel, and it remains ours today.