Day 032 - Exodus 1-4

Exodus follows on directly from the end of Genesis reminding us of where we're at in the development of the Israelite people. The story is a familiar one with many passages being Sunday School favourites, Moses in the bullrushes, the burning bush and God turning Moses' stick into a snake. The wider narrative was somewhat lost on me as a kid and it's was only later that I was able to see some of the bigger picture of what God was doing.

One of the interesting things that leaped out from this passage was the story of Moses' time in Midian. He meets his future wife and her sisters and through helping them effectively wins her hand in marriage. Given God's commands later on about not intermarrying it's somewhat strange that this first great leader of the Israelites was married to a foreigner albeit one who many generations back came from Abraham's family.

The passage that we never read as kids was the one where God comes to kill Moses and Zipporah his wife averts this by circumcising their son. My immediate thought when I read this was to wonder what God was up to, but then I remembered that the covenant of circumcision had been established with Abraham and Moses would have known about it. As I said before this book is a direct continuation of the previous one and just in case you thought God had changed or forgotten the past, this pops up to remind you that this is the same guy. It's also reassuring too because this means that the covenant promises that God made to Abraham are still in place.