[Translation: EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses. Commentary is mostly Sinaite indicated by S6K ; additional commentary from P&H/Pentateuch & Haftorah and AST/ArtScroll Tanach. Reformatted for posting.—Admin1.]
————————-
S6K: Ugly duckling to swan; absent-minded professor to suave debonair lady’s man; skinny awkward teen with two-left feet to premiere ballerina. Transformation from inferior to superior is the predictable plot of success stories with happy endings. And so it is with the beginning part of the transformation of the reluctant Mosheh.
He starts with no self-confidence and no eloquence of speech, needing human reinforcement (brother Aharown) and backing from the God of his people’s patriarchs. He needed a miracle if he was at all going to succeed in this divine mission that he himself did not think he could carry out on his own.
God accedes, knowing the frailties of His chosen instrument but more so because this was the appointed time for Him to demonstrate to one and all He was the One True God. It was time for Him to make a mockery of the gods of men’s making (Egypt) and show Pharaoh, Egyptians and their multi-national slaves His power over the forces of nature and Egypt’s non-gods, including Pharaoh who, like other kings and emperors, are perceived to be divine themselves.
The biblical narrative is quite clear, needing no interpretation (reformatted for easier reading).
Image from yhwhleads.wordpress.com
Exodus/Shemoth 4
———————————————————————
S6K: Read that last line once more:
and you will be to him as ‘Elohiym.
Exactly what does that mean? How could Mosheh be “as ‘Elohiym” to Aharown? Isn’t that word ‘Elohiym one of the proofs Christians use to show that God is a trinity? Yet Moses is ‘one’ (and obviously not a trinity) who will be to Aaron “as god.”
The other Hebrew translation AST translates the same verse differently:
you will be his leader.
Christian translations:
- NASB: you will be as God to him.
- NIV: as if you were God to him.
- NLT: you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say.
- ESV: and you shall be as God to him.
- KJV: and thou shalt be to him instead of God.
Not to belabor the point, the NLT translation actually best interprets the verse:
you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say.
The mouthpieces of God, Moses and Israel’s prophets, are as ‘Elohiym to the people of God, and in extension, to those such as ourselves who have come to know and worship the God of Israel.
—————————————————————————-
S6K: Christian translations use the word “harden” and not “strengthen.” There is a difference between the two word choices; while “harden” is understandable in the context where Pharaoh is not fazed by the plagues one after another, choosing each time not to give in to the request that he allow the Israelites to worship their God in the wilderness, “strengthen” has more to do with being given boldness to defy God HImself. Hardening one’s heart is Pharaoh’s choice; strengthening Pharaoh’s heart comes from God? Where then is Pharaoh’s fault in this? The answer might be in the use of literary device in narratives. Man’s consistent choice to disobey or defy God’s commands becomes a pattern in his life; if he consistently chooses the same direction (his own), there is a point that God gives in to man’s consistent choice and lets man go his chosen way. Divine grace, mercy and patience have their limits, at some point justice is allowed to take its natural course.
P&H: This does not mean that God on purpose made Pharaoh sinful. For God to make it impossible for a man to obey Him, then then punish him for his disobedience, would be both unjust and contrary to the fundamental Jewish belief in Freedom of the Will.
The phrase most often translated ‘hardening of the heart’ occurs 19 times; 10 times it is said that Pharaoh hardened his heart; and 9 times the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is ascribed to God. There thus seem to be two sides to this hardening. When the Divine command came to Pharaoh, ‘Set the slaves free,’ and his reply was, ‘I will not,’ each repetition of Pharaoh’s persistent obstinacy made it less likely that he would eventually listen to the word of God. For such is the law of conscience: every time the voice of conscience is disobeyed, it becomes duller and feebler, and the heart grows harder. Man cannot remain ‘neutral’ in the presence of Duty or of any direct command of God. He either obeys the Divine command, and it becomes unto him a blessing; or he defies God, and such command then becomes to him a curse.
‘It is part of the Divinely ordered scheme of things that if a man deliberately chooses evil, it proceeds to enslave him; it blinds and stupefies him, making for him repentance well-nigh impossible’ (Riehm).
Thus, every successive refusal on the part of Pharaoh to listen to the message of Moses froze up his better nature more and more, until it seemed as if God had hardened his heart. But this is only so because Pharaoh had first hardened it himself, and continued doing so. The Omniscient God knew beforehand whither his obstinacy would lead Pharaoh, and prepared Moses for initial failure by warning him that Pharaoh’s heart would become ‘hardened.’
The modern mind whilst agreeing that all things are ultimately controlled by God’s will does not attribute results to the immediate action of God. Not so the Biblical idiom. Events, whether physical or moral, which are the inevitable result of the Divine ordering of the universe, are spoken of as the direct work of God (Dillmann, Driver, Jacob).
——————————————————————————–
S6K: Notice the manner in which God calls His chosen people (plural): My son, My firstborn, he, him (singular). This will be repeated in the Isaiah references to Israel as My servant, My suffering servant. Bear this in mind when you read through the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures that the God of Israel fondly calls His people “son” and “servant” in the singular, collectively as one.
Now this next part is a bit baffling unless we remember that circumcision is the sign of the covenant with Abraham; and that it was kept by both Isaac and Ishmael, and presumably the generations that were born and grew up in Egypt. Why Moses failed to circumcise his firstborn is reflective of how careless he must have been about this particular inherited commandment; after all he was raised as an Egyptian, though surely he must have been circumcised if he was nursed by his own mother Jocheved.
If wikipedia is to be believed: “The oldest documentary evidence for circumcision comes from ancient Egypt.” We’d have to think: who inflluenced whom? Was the earlier presence of Joseph and the 70 in Egypt a significant influence in the ‘good’ Pharaoh’s court or was circumcision already a practice of Egyptians even before then? Whichever, how could Moses been amiss, whether as natural Hebrew or adopted Egyptian in applying circumcision to his firstborn? Perhaps it was not the practice among the Midianites with whom he settled. At this point, he is made aware of the gravity of his own oversight and responsibility of keeping the covenant of circumcision; his Midianite wife Tsipporah understands and does the procedure herself to save husband and son. At this point in his preparation to be Israel’s greatest prophet and leader, Moses appears to be unimpressive, even clueless!
Reader Comments