Exodus 4:14

14. Aaron the Levite now first appears, and behind him Moses for the time retires . This is just and natural, for during forty years Aaron had been among his brethren, and living in the atmosphere of the highest civilization of the time, while Moses had been tending sheep for a Bedouin priest in the wilderness; but again we ask, what follower of the Sinai legislator would ever have dreamed of this? Aaron is God’s spokesman to the people; it is Aaron’s rod that buds; Aaron is Jehovah’s high priest; it is his sons that come to honour and wear the splendid vestments of the tabernacle, the chosen servants of Jehovah’s altar, while the children of Moses vanish into obscurity. Yet the slow, stammering, vailed prophet is the soul of Israel.

Behold, he cometh forth to meet thee Events had been ripening in Egypt also, and the people as well as the leader had been preparing for the critical hour. He will be glad in his heart to see thee, and ready to unite with thee in the work of national deliverance. So we afterwards read that “he met and kissed him in the mount of God.” The Egyptian traditions of the exodus, though broken and confused, are deemed by some historians to show traces of dynastic rivalries and convulsions which favoured the exit of Israel; but this is extremely uncertain. It is certain, however, that Moses, Pharaoh, and Israel, though all freely acting, were all providentially used in this crisis. See on Exodus 4:21.