Exodus 4:29

These verses follow straight on from the long exchange at the burning bush. Moses had pleaded that he was a poor speaker (Exodus 4:10), and the LORD in his patience appointed Aaron, Moses’s elder brother, to speak for him and help him (Exodus 4:14–16). Moses then set out for Egypt with God’s blessing (Exodus 4:18–20). Now the LORD speaks to Aaron: “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.”

The meeting is God’s arrangement from beginning to end. The name used is the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of the self-existent, eternal God who has bound himself to Israel, and it is his command that sends Aaron out. Aaron’s answer is three words in English, “And he went”, and he finds his brother where God has led them both. The God who called Moses has also been preparing the partner Moses needed, and he brings them together at the right time and in the right place.

The wilderness, midbâr, is open country beyond the settled land. The word covers pasture where flocks are driven as well as desert, and here it is the wide, empty region between Egypt and the mountain. In Scripture the wilderness is often where God meets people, as he met Hagar (Genesis 16:7) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:4), and it is also a place of testing and preparation.

“And Moses told Aaron all the words of the LORD who had sent him, and all the signs which he had commanded him.” The word “all” stands twice in verse 28, once for the words and once for the signs, and together they cover the whole of what Moses had received. He passes every part of it to his brother.

The verb for told, nâgad, has the root idea of standing out in front of someone, and it is used for announcing or explaining something by word of mouth to a person who is present. Moses tells his brother face to face, plainly and in full.

The words, dâbâr, are what the LORD had said at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–12): who he is, his remembrance of his covenant, his purpose to deliver Israel, the instructions for facing Pharaoh, and the goal of worshipping God at this mountain. dâbâr means a word or speech, and in a separate sense a matter or thing, and here “all the words” takes in the whole message.

The signs, ʼôwth, are signals or tokens, marks that point beyond themselves to the one who gives them. God had given Moses these signs because Moses feared that Israel would doubt him. His staff became a serpent, his hand became leprous and was healed, and water was to be turned to blood (Exodus 4:1–9). “Which he had commanded him” shows that the signs were God’s own appointment for this mission.

“The LORD who had sent him” names where Moses’s authority came from. A messenger in Scripture spoke with the authority of the one who sent him, and that is why Moses needed both the words and the signs, for his own people, who had long suffered under foreign rule, and for the court of Egypt. God had told Abraham long before that his descendants would be afflicted for four hundred years and then delivered (Genesis 15:13–14), and the time had come.

Aaron needed to hear all of it for the work God had given him. He would speak the message as Moses’s mouth, so he had to know it accurately, and he would do the signs, as he went on to do many of them before Pharaoh. The full telling made the brothers one in understanding before they faced anyone else.

Verse 29 carries out the command the LORD gave at the bush: “Go, and gather the elders of Israel together” (Exodus 3:16). “Moses and Aaron went” uses yâlak, the same verb as Aaron’s going in verse 27, and now the brothers go together. After all of Moses’s hesitation, he acts as soon as he reaches his people.

The verb for gathered together, ʼâçaph, means to gather for any purpose, and it can also mean to receive or to take away. The purpose here is the one God gave when he told them to bring the elders together.

The elders, zâqên, are literally the old or aged men. In Israel they were the heads of families, clans and tribes, men whose age and experience gave them standing. They led their communities, judged disputes, gave counsel and spoke for the people. Moses and Aaron go to them first because they were the people’s recognised leaders, and through them the message would reach the whole nation and be received in good order. God himself chose this way of working through the leadership Israel already had, and he had promised Moses that the elders would listen to him (Exodus 3:18). “All the elders” means every leader is included, so the whole people is represented when the message is given.

“The children of Israel” uses bên, son, a word that reaches in the widest sense to descendants and members of a people, and Yisrâʼêl, the name given to Jacob and carried by his family after him. The phrase names Jacob’s descendants as one family, God’s covenant people, set apart from the Egyptians among whom they were slaves.

Elders appear again and again in the years that follow. The LORD later has Moses gather seventy of them to help him lead the people (Numbers 11:16), and in the church Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every congregation (Acts 14:23). This first gathering begins the work of uniting Israel that leads to the exodus itself (Exodus 12) and to the great assembly at Sinai.

“And Aaron spake all the words which the LORD had spoken unto Moses.” “Spake” and “had spoken” are the same verb, dâbar, the ordinary word to speak, mention or tell, so what Aaron speaks is exactly what the LORD spoke. His task was to deliver the whole message just as he had received it, as a faithful herald does. The words are again dâbâr, the same word as in verse 28, and again “all” of them are given. The name Moses, Môsheh, means drawing out, the one drawn out of the water and rescued, and the LORD’s words came first to him. The LORD’s message passes from the LORD to Moses, from Moses to Aaron and from Aaron to the people, and it stays whole all the way.

“And did the signs” uses ʻâsâh, the broad verb to do or make, and the signs are again ʼôwth, the same word as in verse 28. The verse names Aaron as the one who speaks and as the one who does the signs. These are the signs God gave Moses at the bush, and they were meant for exactly this moment, when Israel would ask whether the LORD had really appeared to Moses.

“In the sight of the people” uses ʻayin, the eye, and ʻam, a people gathered as one body. The elders had been called together, and the signs were done before the people’s own eyes. What they heard, they also saw, and the whole company could bear witness to it together.

“And the people believed.” This is the very thing Moses had doubted at the bush, when he feared that Israel would refuse to believe him, and God’s promise that the elders would listen comes true at once. The verb ʼâman is the word for believing, and its wider senses take in supporting, nourishing and being firm or faithful. Here it means the people took the message as true and trusted the God who sent it. Their faith rested on what they heard and saw, and it would be tested on the road ahead. Scripture says that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and Israel’s deliverance begins with a people who believe.

The message that moved them was this: “the LORD had visited the children of Israel, and … he had looked upon their affliction.” The verb for looked, râʼâh, is the ordinary word to see, and their affliction, ʻŏnîy, is their misery and trouble. In this setting God’s seeing is the look of one who understands their pain, cares, and means to act on it. Before Moses was ever called, God heard Israel’s groaning, remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and looked on them (Exodus 2:23–25). A psalm looks back on the same mercy, God remembering his covenant for his people (Psalm 106:44–45).

Moses was a prophet sent with God’s words and confirmed by signs, and God promised to raise up a prophet like Moses and put his words in his mouth (Deuteronomy 18:18). Jesus is that prophet. He said, “I speak not of myself; but the Father that sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak” (John 12:49). God, who spoke in many ways through the prophets, has now spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). The Son is himself the Word who was with God in the beginning and made all things (John 1:1–3), and he is counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as a son over his own house is greater than a servant in it (Hebrews 3:1–6).

Jesus also did signs before the people. He healed every kind of sickness (Matthew 4:23) and called Lazarus out of the tomb (John 11:43–44). He said that his works bore witness that the Father had sent him (John 5:36), and John wrote his signs down so that we would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life through his name (John 20:30–31). God went on confirming the message of salvation with signs and wonders through those who first heard it (Hebrews 2:3–4).

The LORD’s visit to Israel in Egypt points ahead to his greatest visit. Jesus was named because he would save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21), and in him the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He announced that he had come to preach good news to the poor, heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free (Luke 4:18–19). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the good shepherd who knows his own sheep (John 10:14), and when he was lifted up he drew all people to himself (John 12:32). As Moses and Aaron gathered Israel to hear of deliverance, Christ gathers his people out of the bondage of sin into the freedom of God’s children, and our answer to him is the answer Israel gave here, belief and worship.

This passage shows us a God who arranges the meeting of two brothers in the wilderness, puts his message into the mouths of his servants, and supplies the very help a fearful man asked for. He works through ordinary order, through a brother’s welcome and a council of elders, and his word reaches his people whole.

Most of all it shows us the God who sees affliction. Israel had suffered for generations, and the news that broke their silence was that the LORD had visited them and looked upon their misery. He had seen it all along, and he came at the time he had promised. The people answered with belief and bowed their heads in worship before any chains were broken. That same God has visited us in his Son, and the faith and worship of verse 31 are still the fitting answer to his coming.