Exodus 4 — But Who Am I? God Answers the Reluctant

Today’s Passage: Exodus 4

Sit with me for this next chapter, because it is one of the most human passages in all of Scripture, a long and honest back-and-forth between a hesitant man and the God who will not let him go. Yesterday, at the burning bush, the LORD called Moses to go down to Egypt and lead His people out, and Moses has been finding reasons to say no ever since. Today the LORD answers his fears one by one. He gives Moses three signs to prove that heaven has truly sent him: a shepherd’s staff that turns into a serpent and back again, a hand made leprous and then healed inside the fold of his cloak, and water from the Nile that will turn to blood on the dry ground. When Moses still protests that he is slow of speech, the LORD reminds him Who made the human mouth in the first place, and provides his brother Aaron to speak alongside him. Then Moses sets his face toward Egypt, carrying the staff of God in his hand, and the chapter turns sober and strange before it turns to worship. Watch, as you read, how patiently God bends down to meet a frightened man, and how the God who made the mouth is not troubled by a stammering tongue.

As you read, hold this: God does not choose Moses for his strength but equips him in his weakness, and the same LORD who made the mouth promises to be with it.

Exodus 4:1–5 (BSB)

¹ Then Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to my voice? For they may say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’” ² And the LORD asked him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he replied. ³ “Throw it on the ground,” said the LORD. So Moses threw it on the ground, and it became a snake, and he ran from it. ⁴ “Stretch out your hand and grab it by the tail,” the LORD said to Moses, who reached out his hand and caught the snake, and it turned back into a staff in his hand. ⁵ “This is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.”

Notice where the LORD begins. Moses fears that the people will not believe him, and instead of a lecture God asks a question about the one ordinary thing already in the old man’s grip: what is that in your hand? It is only a staff, a shepherd’s stick worn smooth by forty years of leaning and herding, the plainest tool a poor man owns. But when Moses obeys and throws it down, it becomes a serpent, and he does the very thing we would all do, he runs from it. Then comes the harder command, to reach out and take the writhing thing by the tail, the most dangerous place to seize a snake, and in the moment of his obedience it stiffens back into the familiar staff in his hand. There is a lesson hidden in the whole exchange. God delights to take what is already in our hand, however humble, and turn it into an instrument of His power, but only as we obey Him past our fear.

And do not miss the purpose God gives for the sign in verse five. It is not for spectacle but for belief, so that the people may know the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has truly appeared to Moses. The God of the burning bush is the God of the old promises, and the sign is meant to tie this new deliverance back to the covenant made with the fathers long ago.

Exodus 4:6–9 (BSB)

⁶ Furthermore, the LORD said to Moses, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” So he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, his hand was leprous, white as snow. ⁷ “Put your hand back inside your cloak,” said the LORD. So Moses put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his skin. ⁸ And the LORD said, “If they refuse to believe you or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe that of the second. ⁹ But if they do not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. Then the water you take from the Nile will become blood on the ground.”

The second sign is stranger and more tender than the first, and it is worked upon Moses’ own body. He slips his hand inside the fold of his cloak, and when he draws it out it is leprous, white as snow, the dread disease that meant slow death and exile from the camp. Then at God’s word he tucks it back and draws it out whole again, restored like the rest of his skin. Here God shows that He is Lord over the deepest corruption a body can carry and over its healing besides, and He shows it not on some far-off object but on the very hand that will lift the staff and stretch out over Egypt. The messenger himself must know, in his own flesh, that the power belongs entirely to God.

And see the patience woven through verses eight and nine. If they will not believe the first sign, God says, perhaps the second, and if not the second, then the third, the Nile water poured out to become blood upon the ground. The LORD anticipates the hardness of the human heart and provides witness upon witness, mercy layered upon mercy, so that no one will have an honest excuse for unbelief. That third sign strikes at the very heart of Egypt’s pride, for the Nile was the river they trusted for life, and it is the first low rumble of the judgment that is coming.

Exodus 4:10–12 (BSB)

¹⁰ “Please, Lord,” Moses replied, “I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant, for I am slow of speech and tongue.” ¹¹ And the LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Or who makes the mute or the deaf, the sighted or the blind? Is it not I, the LORD? ¹² Now go! I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say.”

Now Moses moves from the outward signs to the inward fear that has been troubling him all along. Please, Lord, he says, I have never been a man of words, I am slow of speech and tongue. It is an honest confession, and perhaps a true one, for Moses knows his own weakness and dreads standing before Pharaoh with a halting tongue. But watch how the LORD answers, because His reply reaches far past the immediate problem and lands on something we all need to hear. Who gave man his mouth, He asks. Who makes the mute or the deaf, the seeing or the blind? Is it not I, the LORD? God does not deny Moses’ weakness; He simply reminds Moses Who made him, weakness and all, and Who therefore is more than able to use him.

There is deep comfort here for every timid soul who has ever felt unfit for what God asks. The Maker of the mouth (פֶּה) peh, pronounced PEH. Strong's H6310, mouth. When Moses pleads that he is slow of speech, the LORD answers with a question built on this small, ordinary word, peh, which simply means “mouth.” Who gave man his peh, God asks. It is the plainest word imaginable, the opening in the face through which we eat and breathe and speak, and yet God lays hold of it to overturn Moses’ whole objection. Moses is looking at his mouth and seeing a defect; God is looking at that same mouth and remembering that He formed it. The word carries the sense of the very source of speech, the opening from which words come, and the LORD is saying, in effect, that the fountain of your speaking is My own workmanship, so how could its weakness ever be beyond My repair? is not stumped by a stammering tongue. The One who fashioned the ear and the eye can surely put His words into a slow speaker and make them land. And then the command and the promise together, tied so tightly they cannot be pulled apart: now go, and I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say. God rarely removes our weakness before He sends us; more often He sends us straight into the task with the promise of His presence, so that in the end the glory of what happens will be plainly His and not ours.

Hold onto this, for it reaches far past Moses. The same God who made your peh promises in the next breath to be with it: I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say. He does not hand Moses a new and golden tongue. He takes the slow tongue Moses already has and pledges to fill it. And the wonder of the whole book of Exodus is that He kept that promise, for out of this reluctant, halting mouth would come the words of the law and the songs of deliverance that God’s people have carried on their lips ever since. When you feel unequal to what God asks, remember that the Maker of the mouth is not looking for your eloquence. He is looking for your obedience, and He will supply the words.

Exodus 4:13–17 (BSB)

¹³ But Moses replied, “Please, Lord, send someone else.” ¹⁴ Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and He said, “Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well, and he is now on his way to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. ¹⁵ You are to speak to him and put the words in his mouth. I will help both of you to speak, and I will teach you what to do. ¹⁶ He will speak to the people for you. He will be your spokesman, and it will be as if you were God to him. ¹⁷ But take this staff in your hand so you can perform signs with it.”

Here Moses reaches the end of his objections and simply asks the LORD to send somebody else. It is the plainest refusal of all, no longer a question about his fitness but a request to be excused altogether, and the text tells us that the anger of the LORD was kindled against him. We should not rush past that, for it is a real thing; the God who had answered every fear so patiently is rightly grieved when patient answering is met with a flat no. Yet look carefully at what that kindled anger does next, because it is one of the most striking mercies in the chapter. God’s displeasure does not fall on Moses as punishment. Instead it comes wrapped in a gift: is not Aaron the Levite your brother? Even here, God provides. He gives Moses the very help he keeps asking for, a brother who can speak well and who is already on the road to meet him, coming with gladness in his heart.

So the LORD arranges the partnership. Moses will receive God’s words and pass them to Aaron, and Aaron will speak them to the people, and God will be with both their mouths. It is a picture worth pausing over, for it shows how God often meets our weakness not by removing it but by joining us to others who supply what we lack. And notice, at the very end, that God brings Moses back to the staff. Take this staff in your hand, He says, the same plain shepherd’s rod, now the appointed instrument of signs. Moses had wanted out; God gives him a brother, a task, and a staff, and sends him on his way.

Exodus 4:18–20 (BSB)

¹⁸ Then Moses went back to his father-in-law Jethro and said to him, “Please let me return to my brothers in Egypt to see if they are still alive.” “Go in peace,” Jethro replied. ¹⁹ Now the LORD had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who sought to kill you are dead.” ²⁰ So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey, and headed back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.

Now the wrestling gives way to obedience, and it begins in the quiet, ordinary way that real obedience so often does. Moses goes to Jethro, the father-in-law who took him in and gave him a home and a family through all these years, and asks leave to return to his brothers in Egypt. There is a gentle humility in it, an old man asking permission before he uproots the household, and Jethro sends him off with a blessing: go in peace. God had already spoken the assurance Moses needed to hear, that all the men who once sought his life were dead, so the fear that had driven him into the wilderness forty years before need not hold him back now. The road home is clear.

And so Moses sets out, and the scene is almost tender in its plainness. He puts his wife and his sons on a donkey and turns his face toward Egypt, a family on a long dusty road toward a hard calling. But the last line lifts the whole picture, for the Bible tells us what was in his hand: the staff of God. The same worn stick that was only a shepherd’s staff a chapter ago is now called the staff of God, because God has claimed it and charged it with His power. Moses walks back into Egypt not as a prince and not as a fugitive, but as a servant carrying the rod of the Almighty in his fist.

Exodus 4:21–23 (BSB)

²¹ The LORD instructed Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put within your power. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. ²² Then tell Pharaoh that this is what the LORD says: ‘Israel is My firstborn son, ²³ and I told you to let My son go so that he may worship Me. But since you have refused to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son!’”

Before Moses even reaches Egypt, the LORD tells him plainly how the long struggle will go, and He does not hide the hard part. Perform all the wonders I have given you, He says, but I will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will not let the people go. This is a sobering word, and we do well to let it stand as the text states it, without softening it or explaining it away. God is telling Moses in advance that the road will be long and the refusals many, so that when deliverance finally comes it will be seen for what it is, the mighty work of God and not the cleverness of a spokesman. Moses is being prepared for resistance, so that he will not lose heart when Pharaoh says no again and again.

And then the LORD gives Moses the very words to carry, and they change everything about how we see this rescue. Israel is My firstborn son. Egypt thinks it holds a nation of slaves, a cheap labor force to be worked and beaten. But God calls that people His firstborn son, claiming them with the tenderest and most binding of family words, and He commands Pharaoh to let His son go so that the son may worship Him. The warning that follows is grave, that the firstborn of Egypt will answer for the firstborn of God, and it looks ahead to the last and heaviest of the plagues. Hear the heart of the whole book in it: this is not merely a labor dispute but a Father coming for His son, and no throne on earth will hold that son against the will of God.

Exodus 4:24–26 (BSB)

²⁴ Now at a lodging place along the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. ²⁵ But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched it to Moses’ feet. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. ²⁶ So the LORD let him alone. (When she said, “bridegroom of blood,” she was referring to the circumcision.)

Here we come to one of the briefest and most mysterious passages in all of Scripture, and I will not pretend to more than the text plainly gives. On the road home, at a lodging place, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. The Bible does not spell out every reason, and the wisest readers through the ages have handled this account with a holy caution, so we will do the same. What the text does make clear is that Zipporah acts at once. She takes a flint knife and circumcises their son, touching the sign of the covenant to Moses, and speaks the strange words, a bridegroom of blood, and then the danger passes and the LORD lets him alone.

What we can safely carry away is this. Circumcision was the appointed sign of the covenant given to Abraham, the mark that a household belonged to the LORD, and it seems this sign had been neglected in Moses’ own family. And here is the sobering weight of it: the man who is being sent to call Pharaoh to obey God cannot himself hold back obedience in his own tent. The one who will carry God’s covenant to a nation must first honor that covenant at home. It is a short and shadowed episode, but its lesson is not shadowed at all. God is holy, and He takes His covenant seriously in the life of His servant, more seriously even than in the palace of Pharaoh.

Exodus 4:27–31 (BSB)

²⁷ Meanwhile, the LORD had said to Aaron, “Go and meet Moses in the wilderness.” So he went and met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. ²⁸ And Moses told Aaron everything the LORD had sent him to say, and all the signs He had commanded him to perform. ²⁹ Then Moses and Aaron went and assembled all the elders of the Israelites, ³⁰ and Aaron relayed everything the LORD had said to Moses. And Moses performed the signs before the people, ³¹ and they believed. And when they heard that the LORD had attended to the Israelites and had seen their affliction, they bowed down and worshiped.

Now the chapter turns from the shadow of the road to the joy of reunion. God had already spoken to Aaron out in Egypt, telling him to go and meet his brother, and the two of them come together at the mountain of God, the same holy ground where Moses met the burning bush, and Aaron kisses him. Think of what this meeting held: eighty years and a lifetime of separation, one brother raised in Pharaoh’s palace and driven out to the desert, the other left behind in the misery of the brickyards, and now the LORD draws them together for the work of deliverance. Moses pours out to Aaron everything God has said and every sign God has given, and the promise that God would put words in Aaron’s mouth begins to come true in the simplest way, brother speaking to brother.

Then the two of them do exactly what God commanded. They gather the elders of Israel, Aaron speaks all the words the LORD had given to Moses, and Moses performs the signs before the eyes of the people. And here the whole long chapter of hesitation and provision bears its first fruit: the people believed. But notice most of all what moved them, for it is the tenderest note in the whole passage. When they heard that the LORD had attended to them and had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped. It was not chiefly the wonders that broke them open but the news that God had seen. After four hundred years in the dark, the great discovery is that they were never forgotten. The God who saw Leah, the God who sees the lowly and the enslaved, had bent down to look upon His people in their misery, and the only fitting answer was to fall down and worship.