Here is a paper I wrote on the topic once, FWIW. It’s an incredibly complicated text in Scripture. Footnotes available on request.
When Moses departs Midian for Egypt, he is met at night by “the Lord,” who tries to kill “him.” Moses’ wife circumcises her son and touches Moses’s (or somebody’s) “feet” with it. She makes a declaration and the Lord no longer seeks to kill Moses. This passage is so incredibly ambiguous and dense it is not possible to offer any definitive interpretation, but it is clear that it plays an important role in the Book of Exodus nonetheless by providing an example of how important covenants are to God.
Literary and Theological Context of Exodus
The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible which recount the pre-history of humanity, the proto-history of the Hebrew people, God’s covenants with His chosen people, their exodus out of Egypt, their journey into the desert and finally into the Promised Land. It also contains legal and ceremonial prescripts, not to mention many moral laws as well. It is one of the most important and richest series of texts in world history.
The Book of Exodus is the second book of the Pentateuch. Traditionally it has been ascribed to Moses as the author (along with the other four). There is good reason to suspect that Moses, while probably not the direct author, was the grand architect or main commissioner of the text which could have been written under his direction. The Pontifical Biblical Commission says, “[It is] a legitimate hypothesis that he conceived the work himself under the guidance of divine inspiration and then entrusted the writing of it to one or more persons, with the understanding that they reproduced his thoughts with fidelity and neither wrote nor omitted anything contrary to his will, and that finally the work composed after this fashion was approved by Moses, its principal and inspired author, and was published under his name.”3 This seems to be a likely case due to the constant testimony of the Jewish people and early Christians that Moses was indeed the author while also accounting for the textual oddities (like speaking of him after his death). Some critics say that the Pentateuch was composed (or at least pieced together) in the post-Exilic period (as late as the third century B.C.), but, “Judeo-Christian tradition records that Moses penned the Torah at God’s dictation in the fifteenth century B.C.E.”4 The debate between the traditional and documentary hypotheses is too complex to investigate here, but the modern trend is toward the documentary hypothesis. There are, however, major issues with its central claims and arguments. It is not at all a settled matter in the academy, on the whole.
The most cursory reading of the text will make clear that there are several purposes of its existence, including the memorialization of the events of a people, the annunciation of moral and civil laws, and teaching about God in Himself and as an actor in world history, in particular in the history of the Hebrew people. From a brief glance at the New Testament, it is clear that the Pentateuch provided the basis for Jewish law, worship, and historico-cultural identity. In other words, it was everything to the Jews. It was read in the synagogues, ruled the Temple rites, and gave the Hebrews their moral and legal codes which they used every day of their lives. It was absolutely indispensable.
Exodus recounts the journey of the Hebrews out of their slavery in Egypt toward the Promised Land, which had been sworn by God to the progeny of Abraham. “Although it is part of a continuous narrative that runs through the Pentateuch, the Book of Exodus shows signs of having been intended as a distinct unit.”5 This somewhat “distinct unit” consists of an introduction and three sections. The introduction is “a brief summary of the history of Jacob [and] connects Genesis with Exodus,” the first section “treats of the events preceding and preparing the exit of Israel from Egypt,” the second recounts “the journey of Israel to Mt. Sinai and the miracles preparing the people for the Sinaitic Law,” and the third is the “conclusion of the Sinaitic covenant and its renewal.”6 It is the first section in which 3:24-26 occurs. This section can be subdivided further into four parts. Maas does so thus:
“Exodus 1:8 – 2:25; the Israelites are oppressed by the new Pharaoh ‘that knew not Joseph,’ but God prepares them a liberator in Moses. Exodus 3:1-4 – 4:31; Moses is called to free his people; his brother Aaron is given him as companion; their reception by the Israelites. Exodus 5:1 – 10:29; Pharaoh refuses to listen to Moses and Aaron; God renews his promises; genealogies of Moses and Aaron; the heart of Pharaoh is not moved by the first nine plagues. Exodus 11:1 – 13:15; the tenth plague consists in the death of the first-born; Pharaoh dismisses the people; law of the annual celebration of the pasch in memory of the liberation from Egypt.”7
It is in the second sub-section in which the verses under consideration appear. Moses has been spending the second forty years of his life in Midian with his wife Zipporah. God appears to him announcing out of a burning bush that he, Moses, will be the one to liberate the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors and bring them into the land that had been promised to Abraham. Just after Moses has received this special mission from God, he begins to return to Egypt with his wife and two children (Gershom and Eliezer) to speak to the Hebrew people about God’s plan for the sojourn to the Promised Land. There is a strong theme of hope and vocation connected with the events just prior to what appears to be a complete contradiction of God’s freshly announced purpose for Moses and His design for the liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery.
