BROADCASTS.com

Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 841 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
A Tale of Courage We Never Teach - Wisdom Wednesday


Thank you for joining us for our five days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. Today is Day 841 of our Trek, and it is Wisdom Wednesday.  The past several months on Wednesday we have been focusing on interpreting current events through a Biblical Worldview.  To establish a Biblical Worldview, it is important that you also have a proper understanding of God’s Word.  Especially in our western cultures, we do not fully understand the Scriptures from the mindset and culture of the authors.  In order help us all have a better understanding of Gods Word we are investing the next several months on Wednesday reviewing a series of essays from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars Dr. Micheal S. Heiser which he has compiled into a book titled  ’I Dare You Not to Bore Me With the Bible.’

We are broadcasting from our studio at ‘The Big House’ in Marietta, OH.   There were some practices during the Old Testament timeframe and culture that is difficult for us to understand today.  As we continue to explore the Old Testament, our topic today is one such situation.  Many preachers and Bible scholars avoid such passages, but we will look at one today in our essay titled:
A Tale of Courage We Never Teach
Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus 4:21-26 is arguably one of the strangest, most confusing events recorded in the Bible. In this passage. Moses is heading back to Egypt.  Seemingly following God’s call to deliver the Israelites from Pharaoh’s vice-like grip. But then something shocking happens:

And the Lord told Moses, “When you arrive back in Egypt, go to Pharaoh and perform all the miracles I have empowered you to do. But I will harden his heart so he will refuse to let the people go.  Then you will tell him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son.  I commanded you, “Let my son go, so he can worship me.” But since you have refused, I will now kill your firstborn son!’” 

On the way to Egypt, at a place where Moses and his family had stopped for the night, the Lord confronted him and was about to kill him.  But Moses’ wife, Zipporah, took a flint knife and circumcised her son. She touched his feet with the foreskin and said, “Now you are a bridegroom of blood to me.”  (When she said “a bridegroom of blood,” she was referring to the circumcision.) After that, the Lord left him alone.

This passage is not only difficult and confusing, but it raises numerous questions. Why would God want to kill Moses right after calling him to deliver Israel? In addition to this theological conundrum, there are other uncertainties. We are startled and confused when Zipporah, Moses wife (Exodus 2:21), deals with this threat by immediately circumcising her son Gershom and touching the foreskin to Moses “feet.” What does that mean? And why would her action pacify God’s wrath?
·       Doing the Wrong Thing: Moses’ Negligence
If we look at the original Hebrew text of this passage, we would notice that the name Moses does not actually appear in the phrase translated as “touched Moses' feet.” The text literally reads, “touched his feet.” Consequently, Zipporah could have taken the foreskin and touched either Moses or Gershom, which would affect our interpretation. However, since Moses is the major character in the wider context, it seems logical to conclude that God is angry with Moses, not Gershom.

Why is God angry? We can infer the answer from two considerations: the difference between Egyptian circumcision and that prescribed by the Abrahamic covenant (Joshua 5:2-9: see Gen 17), and the circumstances of Moses' birth and childhood (Exodus 1-2).