Sunday morning, we noted the connections between the Exodus and the book of Joshua. Among them was the circumcision of the nation in Joshua 5:1-2-9 and how it is an echo of several aspects of circumcision connected to the Exodus, one of which is the circumcision which Moses’ wife Keturah performs that ends up saving, it would seem, Moses’ own life (Exo 4:24-31). This is a very enigmatic passage. Why does God seek to kill the very man he has just finished appointing to rescue His people from Egypt? When I preached the passage several years ago, I took an interpretative position that I thought fit best with the text even though it was a minority position. Only later I realized that this interpretation was the same as that of Stephen Charnock, one of the greatest Puritans. He wrote on Exodus 4:24-31,
“But his unbelief still took its progress, in taking Zipporah and his children along with him, which he would not have done in that condition, had he believed the promise of God, Exod. 3:12, that the people should come to that place where he then was, in Midian, and serve God upon that mountain. Had he believed that promise, he would have left them still with Jethro till his return. For this distrust God sought to kill him, Exod. 4:24, and not for the delay of circumcision, as some think, since God bore with the Israelites in the wilderness so long in the neglect of this ordinance, because of their frequent travel. If a particular distrust of God doth so incense him against his people, how must a gospel unbelief inflame him, which is a refusal or neglect of his Son, and the riches of his grace in him?” (Charnock, The Complete Works, vol. 4).
Having studied Joshua 5, I am somewhat strengthened in this view. Circumcision in Joshua 5 is about rolling away the reproach of Egypt–namely that the nation had refused to go into the land promised, desired to return to Egypt (Num 14), and that because of this they had shamefully wandered in the desert in a liminal place between slavery and inheritance. Moses does something similar in Exodus 3. His family lies outside of Egypt and its world empire influence, but he takes his family back to Egypt before God intervenes. The intervention is through circumcision, which communicates a putting off of the flesh and the world of the flesh.
I don’t always write out my sermons, but I did on Exodus 4:24-31, and you can read it below.