SUMMARY
As MosesProphet who led Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land and received the law at Sinai. travels back to Egypt from Midian with his wife and child, the LORD tries to kill him. His wife, ZipporahWife of Moses., performs a ritual involving circumcisionCircumcision is an act of cutting off part of a male (or female) sex organ for religious or health reasons. In the Bible circumcision was performed on males to indicate inclusion into the Jewish religious community. Some church calendars commemorate January 1 as the Circumcision..., which saves him.
ANALYSIS
This is a strange episode in Moses’ story. Having been convinced after much hesitation to go back to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh let God’s people go, Moses is nearly killed by God on that very journey. The antecedents of the pronouns in these three verses are ambiguous, so that it is actually not entirely clear whether the LORD is trying to kill Moses or his son. Similarly, when Zipporah touches their son’s foreskin to “his feet,” Moses is the most likely one whose feet are meant, but the son cannot be ruled out. Moreover, “feet” is sometimes a euphemism for “genitals” in Hebrew, so which body part is involved is not clear, either. In any case, this scene has significant ritual overtones, perhaps as a vestige of an older apotropaic (that is, warding off demons) understanding of circumcision. It is possible that the later writer/editor of this scene has inserted an older tradition wherein a demonA demon is an evil spirit often depicted in human or animal form. Sometimes frightening, sometimes alluring, the unclean spirit represents destructive power. tried to kill Moses, but in keeping with the clearer monotheism of later periods of biblical history, the writer/editor has eliminated all references to any divine being other than the LORD.
A similar phenomenon is at work in Genesis 6-9, where the ancient Near Eastern accounts of a deluge have been reworked for the monotheistic Israelite worldview. The older polytheistic stories had antagonistic gods responsible for destruction, and gods more sympathetic to humanity were responsible for saving the humans. In both Genesis and Exodus, having only one God means that the same God is responsible for both creationCreation, in biblical terms, is the universe as we know or perceive it. Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of Revelation (which speaks of end times) the author declares that God created all things and... and destruction.
