Day 27: Moses becomes leader

Always, God's plans seem to be in jeopardy. He chose a 70 year old man with a barren wife to be father of a nation, his descendants had to leave the Promised Land because of famine, and now, to lead them back, God's picked someone with clinical depression. God works with such unlikely material. Howe can he possibly turn Moses into a leader?

Moses returns to Egypt and contends with Pharaoh
Exodus 4:19-5:3
Pharaoh increases burdens
Exodus 5:4-23
Final instructions to Moses
Exodus 6:1-13, 26-30, 7:1-6
Second meeting with Pharaoh
Exodus 7:7-13
The ten plagues
1: Rivers turned to blood
Exodus 7:14-25


I had to stop reading chapter 4 when I got to verses 24&25, because it didn't make any sense to me. So I reached for a commentary, which reassured me by saying, "this is an obscure passage." But it's no good just skipping over bits that don't make sense, we need to try to understand what's going on. What puzzled me was why God should appear to Moses and try and kill him, just after he's given him a very important job to do. The answer seems to be to do with the significance of circumcision, which God had give to Abraham as a sign of his covenant, his promise. The commentary suggested that Moses' sons had not been circumcised, since they were born away from the Hebrews, to a non-Jewish wife. The importance of circumcision is not the thing itself, but what it signified: it was a sign of God's promised blessing in setting apart a race of people for himself. It meant a purification and a stripping away of sinful things so that this race could be dedicated to God. So it must be taken seriously. If Moses is going to grow into a leader, he needs to strip away the things that would keep him away from God.
Moses and Aaron meet - presumably for the first time as grown men, and worship when they realise that God has called them both, and has chosen to act to rescue his people from their hardship. This is a poignant moment.
Things don't go well when Moses and Aaron speak to Pharaoh. He simply makes the Israelites' burden heavier, and predictably, Moses complains to God "You've just made things worse, and now everyone blames me."
Have faith, Moses, have faith.
6:9 shows that the rest of the Israelites are feeling much like Moses: "they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labour." Now Moses has a crisis of confidence - Pharaoh won't listen to me, "because I speak with faltering lips." It's not looking good.
God gives Moses a pep talk, and sends him and Aaron back into the fray, this time, to do some magic with their staff to convince Pharaoh that God is with them. Pharaoh isn't impressed, his sorcerers know that trick too, and so the stage is set for a power struggle. "Blood was everywhere in Egypt." The suffering is going to be great.