Exodus 4:18

The passage follows directly on the burning bush. In Exodus 3 God reveals his name and sends Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 3:10). Moses answers with one objection after another, about his own weakness, the people’s unbelief and his slow speech, and God meets each of them with signs, with assurances, and with Aaron as his spokesman (Exodus 4:1–17). Verse 18 is the first thing Moses does afterwards, and it is a plain, practical step.

Moses had lived in Midian for forty years, ever since he killed an Egyptian and fled from Pharaoh (Exodus 2:11–15). Midian lay in the Arabian Peninsula, east of the Gulf of Aqaba, among peoples who lived by their flocks. There Moses had married Jethro’s daughter Zipporah and kept his father-in-law’s sheep. The two verbs that open the verse are ordinary ones. “Went” is yâlak, to walk, and “returned” is shûwb, to turn back or return, the verb Moses uses again when he asks to “return unto my brethren”. The man who ran from Egypt is now turning back toward it.

In verse 19 the LORD speaks to Moses again, this time in Midian, and repeats the command: “Go, return into Egypt”. The name used is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God, the self-existent and eternal one, who is faithful to his people and personally involved with his servant. With the command he gives a reason that reaches an old fear: “for all the men are dead which sought thy life.”

Moses never raised this fear among his objections at the bush, yet it must have weighed on him. He had left Egypt as a fugitive under sentence of death, and a return would have looked like walking to his own execution. “Dead” is mûwth, the plain word for dying. “Sought thy life” joins bâqash, to search out or strive after, with nephesh, the word for a breathing creature, a life, a soul or a person. To seek someone’s life is the Hebrew way of saying that you mean to kill him.

Verse 20 is the moment of obedience. The verb “took” is lâqach, the common word for taking, and Moses does two things with it. He takes his wife and his sons and sets them on an ass, and he takes the rod of God in his hand. The ass was the ordinary way for a family to travel a long distance, which tells us this was a prepared and deliberate journey. The man who fled Egypt as a fugitive is going back as God’s messenger. Like Abraham, he leaves a settled place at God’s word (Genesis 12:1–4).

As Moses goes, the LORD tells him what to do and what to expect. He is to “do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand”. A wonder, môwphêth, is a miracle, a sign or a token, something God does to show that he is present and that his messenger speaks for him. “Put in thine hand” shares the English word “hand” with verse 20 and makes the same point, that the power is given by God and only carried by Moses.

Then comes the warning: “but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.” The verb is châzaq, which means to make strong, to strengthen, to make firm or to harden. The heart, lev, in Hebrew thought covers the mind, the will and the moral character as well as the feelings. God is telling Moses that Pharaoh’s resolve to refuse will be made firm, and he tells him beforehand so that Moses will understand the refusals when they come. The wonders are commanded and the resistance is foretold in one breath, and both serve what God is about to do.

Verse 22 gives Moses the words he is to speak. “Say” is ʼâmar, the ordinary verb for saying, which also covers telling and commanding. Here it is the LORD’s instruction to his messenger, and the same verb returns in verse 23: “And I say unto thee”. The weight lies in what follows. “Thus saith the LORD” is the form in which the prophets deliver God’s own word. Moses comes to bargain over nothing. He comes to announce what the LORD has said to a king who believed himself divine.

The message is a claim of family. “Son” is bên, and God applies it to the whole nation. Israel is his child, loved and cared for and protected, and Israel belongs to him and to no other master. “Firstborn” is bᵉkôwr, the firstborn, the eldest, the chief. In a family of that time the firstborn son held first place, led the household after his father and received a double share of the inheritance. Scripture also gives the place of the firstborn to one chosen for honour whatever the order of birth, as with Jacob over Esau and David over his older brothers. So the title speaks of Israel’s standing with God, his chosen and treasured people.

Scripture returns to this again and again. Moses tells Israel that they are the children of the LORD their God, chosen to be his own special people (Deuteronomy 14:1–2). Through Jeremiah God says, “for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9), and through Hosea, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” (Hosea 11:1). At Sinai he calls them his peculiar treasure and a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:5–6). Spoken to Pharaoh, the claim also sets the true God against the king who held Israel as slaves, and the plagues of Exodus 7–12 settle whose people they are.

Verse 23 carries the demand and the warning. “Let my son go, that he may serve me” tells us what the deliverance is for. God frees Israel from Pharaoh’s service so that they may serve him, in worship and obedience. Freedom from the slave master leads straight to belonging to their Father, and the road out of Egypt runs to Sinai, where God gives his redeemed people his covenant and his law (Exodus 19).

The warning matches the claim word for word. Israel is “my son, even my firstborn”, and if Pharaoh refuses, “behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.” God states the last and heaviest judgment before the first wonder has been done. When the tenth plague comes and the firstborn of Egypt die (Exodus 12:29), Pharaoh has been told long beforehand, and the plagues in between are so many answers to a refusal he was warned against.

Moses left a settled life and went into danger to bring God’s people out of slavery, and in this he points forward to Jesus Christ. The Son of God left the glory of heaven and was made flesh (John 1:14), obeying his Father all the way to the cross. Moses carried a rod as the token of a power lent to him. Jesus holds all power in heaven and in earth as his own (Matthew 28:18) and showed his glory in his miracles (John 2:11).

The removal of Moses’ enemies in verse 19 has its greater counterpart at the cross. Through his death Christ destroyed the devil, who had the power of death, and set free those who lived all their lives in bondage to the fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). He triumphed over the powers that held us (Colossians 2:15), delivered us from the power of darkness and gave us redemption through his blood (Colossians 1:13–14), so that there is now no condemnation for those who are in him (Romans 8:1–2). Jethro wished Moses peace. Christ gives his own peace to his disciples (John 14:27), and he himself is our peace, who has reconciled us to God by the cross (Ephesians 2:14–16), a peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

Most of all, the name “firstborn” finds its fullness in him. Israel was God’s firstborn among the nations, and Jesus is “the firstborn of every creature” (Colossians 1:15) and “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), the Son whom God brings into the world for the angels to worship (Hebrews 1:6). Matthew applies Hosea’s words about God’s son called out of Egypt to the child Jesus (Matthew 2:15), because he is the faithful Son who obeyed where Israel so often failed. Paul counts the adoption among Israel’s privileges (Romans 9:4), and in Christ that adoption is opened to all who believe. Those who receive him are given power to become the sons of God (John 1:12), they receive the adoption of sons (Galatians 4:5), and he becomes the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

The judgment on Egypt’s firstborn also points to him. On the night it fell, the blood of the Passover lamb sheltered Israel’s firstborn from death (Exodus 12). Jesus is the Lamb of God (John 1:29), whose blood delivers all who believe from sin and death.

These verses show a God who prepares the way for those he sends. He dealt with Moses’ old fear before Moses ever named it, he gave him a blessing from his father-in-law, and he put into his hand the sign of a power that was God’s own. He also told Moses the truth about how hard the road would be, so that Pharaoh’s refusals would come as something already promised. We can take up what God gives us to do in the same confidence, knowing that long resistance may itself be part of his plan to show his power.

They show how God regards his people. He calls them his son and stands between them and the mightiest king on earth. All who are in Christ share that sonship, and with it the same fierce and faithful care.

And they show what freedom is for. “Let my son go, that he may serve me” is as true of our deliverance from sin as it was of Israel’s from Egypt. We were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20), and the life that is set free belongs gladly to the Father who freed it.