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Moses dismissed by Jethro
v. 18. And Moses went and returned to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. The faithfulness, the sense of duty in Moses would not have permitted him to leave the flocks in the wilderness and to go to Egypt without leave-taking, even for a short while. He told Jethro as much of the truth as the latter needed to know at that time, for he would hardly have found a complete understanding of his object and of the divine revelation in the home of his relatives by marriage. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace.
v. 19. And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, for Moses apparently delayed his journey even now, Go, return into Egypt; for all the men are dead which sought thy life. This disclosure was intended to reassure Moses, to take away the last shred of his hesitation, although his mind had been made up even before.
v. 20. And Moses took his wife and his sons, Gershom and Eliezer, Exo_18:4, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt, he started out on his trip to the country of his birth, and Moses took the rod of God in his hand, for so he regarded the staff with which he was to perform miracles.
v. 21. And the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in thine hand. The first commission was here repeated and explained, in order to impress every detail upon Moses' mind. After his return to Egypt he was to perform all the wonders, all the terrible signs, which the Lord had placed in his hand to do. There would be need of great firmness and courage in dealing with Pharaoh. But I will harden his heart that he shall not let the people go. In His omniscience the Lord here anticipates. He knew that Pharaoh would harden his heart willfully and maliciously, would refuse to heed the successive appeals that would be made, and therefore God announces the final judgment upon the Egyptian king, the condemnation which would make it impossible for him to be converted in the end.
v. 22. And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is My son, even my first-born;
v. 23. and I say unto thee, Let My son go that he may serve me; and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy first-born. This threat looks forward to the last of the Egyptian plagues. The fact that Israel is called God's first-born son suggests, even here, that the Lord would later choose others, that He would gain spiritual children out of the heathen nations.
v. 24. And it came to pass by the way in the inn that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. In the place where Moses and his family encamped for the night while on the journey, the Lord threatened to take his life by a sudden disease, because he had neglected to circumcise his second son, Eliezer. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant between God and His people, and could not be omitted without grave consequences.
v. 25. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, a stone knife, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, laid it down so that it touched the feet of Moses, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. The entire incident seems to have been a source of great displeasure to Zipporah, and her words indicate that she considered her husband regained by the blood of her child.
v. 26. So He let him go. Then she said, A bloody husband, or bridegroom, thou art, because of the circumcision. She vented her displeasure after the recovery of Moses was assured. It seems that this incident caused Moses to reconsider his intention of taking his family along to Egypt. At any rate, it was not until his return to the peninsula of Sinai that his father-in-law brought his family to him, Exo_18:2. As circumcision was a sacrament in the Old Testament, so Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, and the Lord's zeal for the use of the means of grace is as great as ever.