Day 7 - Moses Saved by Foreskin when God tries to Kill Him (Spooky/Scary/Weird stories from the Bible)

Day 7 - Moses Saved by Foreskin when God tries to Kill Him (Spooky/Scary/Weird stories from the Bible)

Biblical stories that could make good horror/paranormal movies

Today we get what I think is one of the weirdest stories from the Bible. Moses has left Egypt (after he killed the guy and fled), married a woman named Zipporah, and is now working for her father tending sheep. One day, he encounters God in a burning bush (one that is not consumed by the fire), and in that exchange God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh. Most people, even non-religious ones, know of Moses and the burning bush an the command to go to Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go!” 

But not many, even people in the church, know of these three little verses that happen after Moses and God are done talking and Moses agrees to do what God has called him to do:

Exodus 4:24 On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him and tried to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, touched his feet with it, and said, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26 So he let him alone. It was then that she said “a bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.

There you go. A little treasure of God trying to kill the guy that God just spoke with, which attack is then stemmed by Zipporah circumcising their baby and doing a proxy circumcision on Moses.

Why is this story here? No one really knows. In my first Old Testament class in seminary, this was one of the four texts (all equally weird) that we could do our first exegesis paper on. I chose this passage. And did a lot of research. And found out, no one really knows why it’s here, and almost no one is at all clear about how to interpret it. Some think that maybe this had been part of a larger story, and over the years, the rest of the story get left out until only this nugget remains. But so far as I know, no one has ever found any old fragments that might be whatever that theoretical larger story was. 

So I guess the lesson is that if you are an uncircumcised male, it might be good to always travel with a flint. You know, just in case.

All text is from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.