Prior Book | Prior Chapter | Prior Verse | Next Verse | Next Chapter | Next Book | Viewing NASB and Amplified 2015 | |
NASB | Exodus 4:24 ¶ Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Exodus 4:24 ¶ Now it happened at the lodging place, that the LORD met Moses and sought to kill him [making him deathly ill because he had not circumcised one of his sons]. [Gen 17:9-14] |
Bible Question:
Who was God going to kill? Had anyone else seen this verse translated differently? That God sought to kill Gershom (Moses first born son.) and that Zipporah touched Gershom’s feet with the foreskin, and that she said, "Surly you are a bride groom of blood to me" to the LORD God (as apposed to Moses)? The Hebrew is not specific. Just curious if anyone else has seen anything similar. I am still studying this one. MJH |
Bible Answer: Many translations boldly write the word “Moses” instead of “him”. Thus: “Along the way they stopped for the night. The LORD met Moses and tried to kill him“ (God's Word). NIV and NLT indicate it could be either Moses or his son. Matthew Henry acknowledges the ambiguity but suggests it was the son who was going to die: “The account in this and the two following verses, although rather obscure, seems to imply, that on their way to the land of Egypt, an angel appeared to Moses, and sought to kill his son, on account of his father’s non-observance of the Lord’s positive command to Abraham, that every man child of the Jewish nation, or born in his house in servitude, should be circumcised on the eighth day; and the Zipporah, at the command of Moses, immediately fulfilled the injunction, and thus averted the wrath of God, denounced against the disobedient: ‘The uncircumcised man child, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people.’“ Genesis 17:4 (quoted above) leads us to think it was the uncircumcised son who would have been killed. Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:7, Numbers 14:18, and Deuteronomy 5:9 would indicate it would have been God’s way at that time, to punish the son for the sins of the father. Ezekiel 18:4 leads us to think it was Moses who was responsible and guilty and worthy of death. All in all, it seems not to matter. God was not going to kill either one of them (Jonah 3:10; 4:3). Moses in writing might have chosen his words as Luke did (24:28) perhaps, but we suppose the Holy Spirit would have him to write as he did and that he would have us to look to the other passages and to combine them, as we did here, in order to get the bigger message. |