God Speaks Again to Moses (Exodus 6:1-10)
At the end of the last lesson, Moses became downcast. Pharaoh had rejected God’s words (through Moses) to let the Israelites go and Moses began to think that it was all for naught. It’s at this point where we pick up God’s response to Moses.
Read Exodus 6:1-8
– Right at the outset, what does God say Pharaoh will be compelled to do?
– What has God heard from His people?
Yahweh as the Rescuer of God’s People
God tells Moses, “By my name, ‘the LORD’ I did not make myself known to” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Yet, in Genesis 12 and 13, Abraham built an altar to Yahweh and called on His name. In Genesis 15:7 and 28:13, God said, “I am Yahweh” to Abraham and Jacob respectively, each time when connected with the promise of the land to their descendants.
So, God did reveal Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as Yahweh! Yet, something must be different for God to say that He did not make Himself known to them by the name Yahweh. And it is this: With Moses, God will not simply speak His name but also carry out His promise of redeeming His people and bringing them to the land that He had promised them.
In its fullest expression, the meaning of Yahweh and His redemption is not known apart from Jesus Christ. For Jesus is the fullness of God’s redemption for His people. Yet, in the short term, that is in the Old Covenant, God reveals a fuller understanding and meaning of who He is as Yahweh, and what that name means, in His rescue of His people from Egypt.
- God will liberate His people from their oppression.
- The people will come to know that Yahweh is their God because He will free them.
- God will bring the people into the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and it will become their own.
- And through God’s work of rescue and redemption, He will take them as His people and He will be their God.
God said that before He revealed Himself Yahweh (which means, “He Is”), He had primarily revealed Himself as “El Shaddai.” We don’t know exactly what Shaddai means. El is short for Elohim, the “generic” name for God in the Old Testament. But if we go by the Septuagint, as it’s the oldest translation of the Old Testament, Shaddai is translated as Pantokrator. Pantokrator means “almighty Creator,” which is what we confess in the English translations of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds when we say that we “believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker …”
That makes sense. For before God revealed who He was as redeemer and rescuer, He revealed Himself by being “God, almighty Creator.”
– Yahweh means “He Is” or “He Is the Existing One.” Yet, the name Yahweh is also tied to God as Redeemer and Rescuer. What does that state about who God is in His being?
Read Exodus 6:9-13
– How do the Israelites respond to Moses when He tells them what God had revealed to him?
– How is Moses again affected by the despondency of the Israelites?
“Uncircumcised lips”
Moses used an expression, “uncircumcised lips,” to express that his words lacked power. Because of that, Pharaoh would not listen to them. To get to the root of this expression is to understand that circumcision fully exposes the head of a man’s penis. After all, circumcision brought a man into the Old Covenant with God by removing the barrier, his foreskin, which kept him out. Thus to be uncircumcised in some way, even when circumcised, is to note that something is still getting in the way of one’s speaking, believing, or doing.
- In Jeremiah 6:10, Jeremiah realized that the Israelites would not receive his warnings of God’s judgment because they had “uncircumcised ears.” A spiritual foreskin blocked their ears from hearing God’s Word.
- Scripture speaks in multiple places about “uncircumcised hearts.” This expressed that an unbelief encircled one’s heart, keeping faith and belief from residing there (Leviticus 26:41; Jeremiah 4:4; Jeremiah 9:26; Ezekiel 44:7, 9; and Acts 7:51).
When Moses said he had “uncircumcised lips,” he meant that he couldn’t speak God’s Word to Pharaoh. Moses wasn’t imply referring to his “slow speech and tongue” (Exodus 3:10), but that his words lacked the faith to speak God’s Word again to Pharaoh.
The Genealogy of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 6:14-28)
Read Exodus 6:14-25
For us, the genealogy seems out of place, as it gets in the way of the greater narrative. But it only seems out of place because we don’t immediately see the purpose this genealogy served. The purpose of this genealogy is to give Moses and Aaron their historical and priestly significance. It is not to serve the same function we have for genealogies today.
The genealogy takes place right after Moses tells God why he can’t speak to Pharaoh: He has uncircumcised lips. This genealogy shows why he and Aaron can! Thus, this genealogy achieves several purposes:
- The genealogy begins with Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn son. This traces Moses and Aaron’s lineage back to Jacob, who was renamed Israel. This shows Aaron and Moses to be true sons of Israel.
- It ends with Aaron’s grandson, Phineas, bringing the genealogy into the time of the Judges (Judges 20:28). He would also receive a covenant of perpetual priesthood (Numbers 25:6-13).
- This after-the-fact insertion of such a genealogy allows the first hearers of Exodus, with Israel in the Promised Land, to link their own leaders back to Moses and Aaron.
- It shows that both Moses and Aaron were from a priestly family and tribe. (Yet, this is before God set up the tribe of Levi to as ac His priests, giving us a preview of what is to come.) This authorized them to be bearers of God’s divine message, even to the Pharaoh of Egypt, as they carried out the tasks that God had given them.
Read Exodus 6:26-30
– What does this section do?
– Imagine being the children of Israel now living in the Promised Land and hearing all of chapter 6 in one reading. What would be a likely response to this section?
Moses will be God to Pharaoh
Read Exodus 7:1-5
In the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text, God tells Moses that he will be God the Pharaoh. Most of our translations say something like this: Moses will be like a god to Pharaoh. There’s just one problem–that’s not what the text says. The first Old-Testament translation, the Septuagint, also says that Moses will be God to Pharaoh.
– Why do you think the various translators added “like” or “as”?
– What is the difference between being like God and being God to another?
To be like something is to be similar to it but not it or part of it. For Moses to be like God would be for Moses to have God-like characteristics or power apart from God. But since the text does not say that Moses would be like God but be God, Moses and God become inextricably linked in God’s dealing with Pharaoh. As far as Pharaoh is to be concerned, Moses is God to him. Not to listen to Moses is not to listen to God; to listen to Moses is to listen to God. To obey Moses is to obey God, to disrespect Moses is to disrespect God.
That makes perfect sense. Right before God makes that declaration to Moses, we heard Moses’ repeated words that he had “uncircumcised lips.” Moses was saying he was unable to do God’s bidding before Pharaoh.
In response, God says that Moses can, for it will not be Moses doing it (or Moses being like God doing it) but God will be doing His bidding through Moses. God and Moses will be so inextricably linked that to see Moses is to see God “in, with, and under” Moses.
Jesus brought out this same principle of someone being God to another in Luke 10.
Read Luke 10:1-16
– What did Jesus say to those whom He had sent out? Who would they be hearing?
What Luke 10 and Exodus 7 show us is that God works through means, through some part of His creation. In these two examples, God worked through His people. When the people were faithfully doing what God had given them to do, the people were to hear and see God in and through them. Moses and the 70 sent ones were not like God but were being God to others as they faithfully carried out the vocations that God had given them to do.
– Discuss a mother faithfully carrying out her duties as mother. When that is being done, who is the mother to her child?
– Now discuss the 4th Commandment (honor your father and mother) in light of this understanding.
– When the pastor faithfully preaches the Word, who are you hearing from the pulpit?
Of course, this being God to another is not being God in essence or being but in activity. What this means is that we become the arm of God in this world as we faithfully carry out what He has given us to do. In no way do we ever stop being created beings and become God the creator.
Read Exodus 7:6-7
In the next lesson, we begin looking at the ten plagues
