made as if he would kill him. The very obscurities of this strange incident help to mako it more impressive and admonitory. Consider- !. WllAT THERE MAY BE IN THE NARRATIVE TO THROW LIGHT ON TITE CAUSE OF THE OMISSION. It cwnnot have been that Moses was completely ignorant of Gor.Cs rer1ufrement. Had not God recalled the covenant to the particular attention of Moses 1 He had done JO in a sufficieutly suggestive way, not by repeating the terms of the covenant in full, but simply by referring to himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and ,Jacob. Having thus been reminded of the· covenant, Moses was bound to make himself correctly acquainted with every provision and detail of it. This covenant had been delivered to Abram once for all, and was of such a. kind that nothing but the most flagrant neglect could allow the sign of it on its human side to fall into disuse. It was a. covenant written in the very body of every 'true Israelite. Doubtless Moses himself had been circumcised; yet here he is, going as the messenger of God to make progress in fulfilling God's part of the covenant, and yet his own pa.rt, as a. member of Israel, he is unmistakably neglecting. Hence we see that he could not have been ignorant; an<! more than that, neither could he have been forgetful. We are led to infer that easy- going compliance with his Midianite wife, Zipporah, was at the bottom of this neg~ected duty. It would appear indeed as if Moses had circumcised one son and then left the other uncircumcised. If so, he had shown gross inconsistency. More might have been said for him if both had been uncircumcised. ·Probably Zipporah, having seen the pain of her firstborn, had ·&truggled and pleaded only too successfully for exemption in•the case of the second.'• II. Tl!E EXTREMELY MENACING MODE BY WHICH GoD BRINGS MOSES TO A SE:)!SE 01!' THE OMISSION, "He sought to kill him." When God proceeds to such an extremity as this, it must be either because of some monstrous breach of duty, or to impress a.n important commandment by the most efficacious mea.ns that ca.n be adopted. There is no need to suppose that Moses, knowing full well the importance of circumcision., yet deliberately omitted it. If so, his conduct would have been very bad indeed. There is a more reasonable and instructive aspect. He was ·brought nigh to death so that ho might learn the truth-and learn it so as never to forget, never to neglect it-that no human being, whatever its claims and whatever its supplications, was to come between God and him. Let Moses now take his choice between pleasing his wife and obeying his God. He could only do God's work by the most hearty obedience and attention. Nor was he here only as the messenger of God to Israel and Egypt ; he was also the responsible head of a household. Leaders who are husbands and parents are watched in all their home relations. If Moses was going to let Zipporah rule and prevail by her womanly wiles in one instance, why not in others? The only way to keep things right was for Zipporah to take her orders from him, and as Moses was to choose between hi,i wife and his God, so Zipporah between her husband and her child. She has to put her child to a. passing pain in order that she may spa.re her husband from impending death. Indeed, poor woman, she had been greatly tried of late: compelled to leave her father and her <.iear native land, and go on an expedition the reasons of which would be but indifferently comprehended by her. Whichever way she turns, and whatever she does, there is something to vex her soul. Dearly had she paid for that chivalrous service which Moses had rendered her.and her sisters so many years before. The awkwardnell& of being unequally yoked is felt by the unbeliever as much as the believer.-Y.
EXPOSITION. Vere 27, 28.-The scene -suddenly shifts. and was to assist M05es as spokesman in Moses is left in the wildemess to recover his his enterprise (eh. iv. 14-16). We naw strength and make such arrangements with find God revee.l.ing himself to Aaron e.lso, respect to his wife and children as he thinks and directing his movements, as ho had th011e best under the circumstances. We IL!'e carried of M05es. Aaron he.d perhaps already formed awe.y to Egypt and introduced to AILl'on, the design of visiting his brother (see ver. 14 ), M05es' elder brother, of whom we he.ve only and would have sought him in Midian but nea.rd proviously the.t he could " spee.k well," for the direction now given hiJ:n.. Tboi IIXODUS. I 114 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. [oa. 1v. 27, 28,
direction we.s probably more definite than is' eh. iii. 1, which sboWll that Horeb is meant. expressed in the text, and enabled him Horeb seems to have been the no.me for tho to set forth confidently, without the fear entire mountain region, of which Sinai wo.s a p11rt. Kissed him. So Esau kissed Jo.cob of missing his brother. At any rate, under after their long separation (Gen. x.xxiii. 4), God's guidance he went and met him in the o.nd Joseph, Benjamin and his other brethren Sinaitic district. The joy of meeting is (ib. xiv. 14, 15). In the ESBt men are more briefly described in the single phrase "he demonstrative tha.n with us. Aaron's kiss kissed rum." The meeting "'SB followed by a showed the gladness that was in his heart (supra, ver. 14). full explan11t.ion, on tbe part of Moses, both of Ver. 28.-Moaea told Aaron all the words the nature of his own mission and of the part of the Lord. Perfect confidence between the ·which Aaron ""SB to take in it. two brothers wns absolutely necessary for the success of their enterprise ; and Moses wisely, Ver. 27.-Go into the wilderness. It is at their very first interview, made Aaron scarcely possible that this can have been the acquainted with the entire series of Divine whole of the direction given, since the wilder- revelations that had been mQde to him, keep- ness extended from the shores of the Mediter- ing nothing back, but communicating to him ranean to the extreme point of the Sinaitic "all the words of the Lord." Who had sent peninsula. The sacred writers study brevity, him. Rather," which he had laid upon him." and leave much to be supplied by the com- (So il1e LXX.. the Vulgate, Knobel, Kalisch, mon-sense of the reader. He went and met and others.) All the signs. Compare verses him in the moUJlt of God. Compare above, 3-9 and verse 23.