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Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Exodus, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
God’s Identity and Power
Redemption and Deliverance
The Covenant
Mediators and the Priesthood
Summary
Analysis
Moses asks God what he should do if the elders do not believe that God appeared to him. God orders Moses to throw the staff he’s holding onto the ground. When Moses does, the staff turns into a snake. God tells Moses to grab the snake by its tail, and when he does, the snake turns back into a staff. This sign will demonstrate that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob really did send Moses.
God gives Moses miraculous signs that will demonstrate his God-given authority to his fellow Israelites and persuade them to listen to Moses’s message. The signs also serve to reassure Moses himself. The staff-to-snake sign will reoccur later, when Moses goes before Pharaoh himself.
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God gives Moses another miraculous sign. He tells Moses to put his hand inside his cloak; when Moses withdraws his hand, it is white and leprous. When he puts his hand inside his cloak again, the skin is restored. If the elders don’t believe Moses’s first sign, they might believe this one. If they believe neither of these signs, then Moses should pour some water from the Nile onto the ground, and the water will become blood.
Subsequent signs—of a diseased hand and water turned to blood—might persuade skeptical holdouts of Moses’s authority. All three of the miraculous signs show God’s power over creatures, people, and elements. These signs also foreshadow God’s deliverance of Israel through miraculous “plagues.”
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But Moses is still troubled. He tells the LORD that he’s never been eloquent—he’s “slow of speech.” The LORD replies that he is the one who gives human beings the power of speech, and he will help Moses speak. But Moses begs God to send somebody else instead. God is angry, but he tells Moses that his brother, Aaron the Levite, who is a fluent speaker, can speak on Moses’s behalf.
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God assures Moses that the Egyptians who’d threatened Moses’s life are dead, so Moses prepares his family for the journey back to Egypt. God also tells Moses that when he performs wonders before Pharaoh, God will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he won’t let the people go on their journey. Then Moses must tell Pharaoh that because Pharaoh won’t release God’s “firstborn son,” meaning Israel, God will now kill Pharaoh’s firstborn son.
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On the way to Egypt, when Moses’s family stops to spend the night, the LORD tries to kill Moses. His wife Zipporah cuts off her son’s foreskin and touches Moses’s feet with it, calling Moses her “bridegroom of blood.” Then God leaves Moses alone.
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The LORD tells Aaron to meet Moses at Mount Horeb. Moses tells Aaron everything that God has commanded him. Then Moses and Aaron gather the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron speaks the words that God had spoken to Moses and performs the signs. The elders believe, and they worship God, knowing he has heeded their misery.
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