Exodus 4:14-17

"And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Moses, and he said, Is there not Aaron thy brother the Levite? I know that he can speak well And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee: and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart. And thou shalt speak unto him, and put the words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people; and it shall come to pass, that he shall be to thee a mouth, and thou shalt be to him as God. And thou shalt take in thy hand this rod, wherewith thou shalt do the signs."

"The anger of Jehovah ..." This was directed against what had become the stubborn unwillingness of Moses, and, as a result, the greatness of Moses was diminished in that he would share the leadership role with Aaron, who as the spokesman would appear the greater in the eyes of some of the people. This has been called, "The partition between the two (Moses and Aaron) of a gift that Moses might have had all by himself"[16]

"Is there not Aaron thy brother the Levite ..." God's mention of Aaron as, not merely the brother of Moses, but as the Levite, indicates that, from that very moment, God ordained that the priesthood should reside not in Moses but in Aaron and the Levites. Thus, he was called "the Levite" by anticipation. However, some are unwilling to receive such a view. Calvin and others were followed by Keil who stated that, "There is not any allusion to the future calling of the tribe of Levi."[17] Dummelow's view is our own view: "The title (Levite) is here used by anticipation."[18]

"I will put the words ..." This passage teaches much about inspiration and how we should regard the Bible. Note that it was "words" which God gave to Moses, and that those same words were conveyed from Moses to Aaron. Nothing in any part of the Bible indicates that God gave His prophets some general or nebulous idea, and that they then put it into THEIR words. We either have the Word of God in the Bible, or we have nothing at all!

"I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth ..." God's providence would guard the faithfulness and accuracy of those charged with being his spokesmen. In this, God still left Moses in the more honorable position, although it is possible that some of the people might have considered Aaron as more honorable due to his being the spokesman.

"Thou shalt take in thy hand this rod wherewith thou shalt do the signs ..." A classical example of the type of trifling pettiness that one finds among certain critics is the following:

"The `rod' appears quite abruptly in Exodus 4:17. Moses is to use it to `do the signs'. This remark does not fit at all with Exodus 4:1ff, according to which Moses will need his rod only for one of the two signs!"[19]

We would like for it to be noted that the rod did not appear abruptly at any time or place. The rod was Moses' shepherd's staff from which he was almost never separated, except on those occasions when Moses entrusted it to Aaron along with instructions on what to do with it! Furthermore, God had indicated from the very first that what Moses had in his hand ("What is that in thine hand?") would be the instrument by which victory would come to Moses. It was never indicated that Moses would need the rod for ONLY ONE sign. Scholars who can find multiple authors of this chapter should examine the Constitution of the United States, or the Declaration of Independence. If their skill here is any indication, they would find a hundred authors of either document! The primary thought ever to bear in mind is that the sole purpose of alleging multiple sources of Biblical books is that of facilitating the denial that what we actually have here is God's Word, as our Lord Jesus Christ has told us. As Fields warned us, "Such theories wind up by contradicting the idea that Moses wrote Exodus."[20]

Keil explained why the plural for signs is used in Exodus 4:17, despite the fact that only one sign was wrought with it in Exodus 4:3,4. "The plural in Exodus 4:17 points to the penal wonders (against Egypt),"[21] the Ten Great Plagues, the record of which dominates the next several chapters, all of them making prominent and repeated mention of "the rod," the "rod of God."

"Behold, he cometh forth to meet thee ..." We learn from Exodus 4:27 that Aaron did not start to meet Moses until instructed so to do by God; and if the present tense is here to be stressed, it would mean that God had already so instructed Aaron, thus anticipating the events just related. It appears to us that the better explanation is that the words are used prophetically for what God had ordained to occur.