Bible Question: "Why did God try to kill Moses when He was on the way back to Egypt, doing what God had told him to do?"

Bible Answer: The occasion is one of the more puzzling in the Bible, for it seems that Moses was doing exactly what God told him to do, go back to Egypt and command Pharaoh to set the Jews free.

We have to read the context surrounding this passage to fully understand what it was Moses had done to make God so angry.

The story begins with God's commandment to Moses to go to Egypt and command Pharaoh to set his people free from slavery.

"And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him.

"Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses' feet and said, 'Surely you are a husband of blood to me!' So He let him go. Then she said, 'You are a husband of blood!' - because of the circumcision," Exodus 4:24-26 says.

Zipporah was Moses' wife who he married in Midian during his 40 years of exile when he fled from Egypt after he killed an Egyptian.

He married the daughter of the priest of Midian, Jethro, who obviously was not Hebrew, and they had a son he named Gershom.

Gershom means "Stranger There" and Moses named him so because "I have been a stranger in a foreign land," Exodus 2:22 says.

But we don't learn that Moses had not circumcised his son until he begins to leave the land of Midian and head back to Egypt. That's when the events we refer to happen, when God tried to kill Moses.

Apparently Zipporah, and perhaps her father the priest of Midian, had protested the circumcision when Moses' son was born, but this was a commandment God had given Abraham for all Jewish males.

When God made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17, He promised to make him "a father of many nations," and to give his descendants the land of Canaan "as an everlasting possession."

But a covenant is an agreement between two parties. God had told Abraham what He would do. Then He told Abraham what he had to do as a sign that he would keep his covenant with God.

"This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised," the Lord told Abraham in Genesis 17:10.

And God adds some very strong language in Genesis 17:14 about the consequences for any Hebrew male who is not circumcised.

"And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

Therefore, what Moses had done by bowing to the wishes of his foreign wife and probably her father, the priest of Midian, by not circumcising his son was in direct disobedience of Abraham's covenant with God. And the penalty for that disobedience was to be cut off, or literally cast out from the nation of Hebrews as a Jew.

Could Moses have been an effective leader of the nation, to bring them out of slavery in Egypt, if he had not personally obeyed the commandment of God concerning his own son's circumcision?

Certainly not. Practice what you preach applies to this situation.

So Moses had to make a choice. Did he want God angry with him, or his wife? He chose the latter, which was certainly prudent; as God was so angry with him He tried to kill him for disobedience.

The lesson here is that God takes His word very seriously. And He holds the people He calls to His service to the very highest of standards. If we wish to lead God's people, we must be first willing to let God lead us, to do what He tells us, before we can lead others.

If Moses had gone down to Egypt to try to lead God's people to freedom when he himself had disobeyed God's commandment concerning circumcision of his own son, they would have rightly called him a hypocrite and refused to listen to him.

That's why God was angry enough with him to try to kill him.

Submit Bible questions by email to writeme@johnwmyers.com

(John Myers has been a Christian lay speaker, Sunday School adult teacher and newspaper Bible study columnist for more than 20 years.)