NOTES for Exo 4:13

Moses does not want to go to Egypt. He does not want to take up the work God has entrusted to him. This is understandable, and in this case hardly anyone would condemn Moses. Moses knows that he is not a prophet. When he says of himself that he is "slow of speech," Moses hardly meant some problem with speech as such. The matter was most likely something else: he did not possess the gift of prophetic speech. In those days, the path of a prophet was noticeably different from the path of an ordinary person, and the differences appeared rather early. Usually a person experienced a prophetic calling in adolescence or early youth, and after such a calling his life no longer resembled the life of an ordinary person.

The prophet would go into the wilderness, usually becoming a disciple of some other prophet, and would live with him until his death; then he himself would become a prophet and his teacher's successor. His life seemed mysterious and unusual to others: ecstasies, visions, inspired preaching, usually in poetic form, often severe, carrying warnings of coming disasters. There was nothing like this in Moses' life; he was an ordinary man. If he had come to his own people and told them that he was a prophet, they would not have believed him.

That is why God gives him the power to demonstrate certain "wonders" which, in essence, are nothing other than simple tricks with some magical element, but which were supposed to make an indelible impression on Moses' kinsmen. The matter, however, was not only in them, but also in Moses himself. He, too, is a man of his time. For him, too, prophetic ministry is associated with a definite, concrete form, outside of which he cannot imagine it. He, a prophet?

Such a thing would not fit into Moses' mind. It simply could not be. That is why Moses asks God to "find someone else." God answers His future servant that it is not the form that makes a person a prophet, but He, the God of Israel; it is He who gives a person both speech and everything else needed in order to be a prophet. Moses is still afraid all the same: habit is second nature, and it is very hard to free oneself from familiar stereotypes.

In time this will happen, but for now God calls Aaron to help Moses. Judging by the fact that Aaron had lived for a long time somewhere in the wilderness, and by the fact that he "can speak," Aaron was a "real," "proper" prophet, the kind a prophet was supposed to be according to the ideas of that time. If Moses still cannot bring himself to go alone, then so be it: he will go to carry out God's work together with his brother. The main thing is that he still goes and takes up the task entrusted to him by God.

No plan of God was ever carried out without the direct participation of the people of God. But no plan of His was ever carried out without that one person, chosen by Him Himself, on whom, so to speak, personal responsibility for carrying out God's plan was laid. And now Moses was to become such a person (Exod. 3:10).

And here Moses becomes afraid. He asks God a completely natural question in such a situation: "And who exactly am I, to take on this task?" (Exod. 3:11). And immediately he receives a completely unambiguous answer: "The point is not who you are. I am sending you, and therefore, whoever you may be, you will return to Egypt and do everything I command you to do" (Exod. 3:16-20).

But it is not easy for a person to accept such a commission on such terms. And Moses tries to refuse the commission.

It begins with a completely natural question: what if they do not believe me (v. 4)? This could indeed have happened, but God resolves this problem without any difficulty (vv. 2-9). At first glance, these "miracles" resemble either circus tricks or magical techniques more than anything else; but the level of religious consciousness of the overwhelming majority of Moses' tribesmen in those days was such that it was impossible to convince them of the reality of God's intervention in any other way.

Next come statements about his own "slowness of speech," which could hinder Moses from fulfilling the commission God had given him (v. 10). This is hardly about some physical defect. Most likely, Moses wanted to say that he did not know how to speak the way the prophets of those times spoke, prophets who, feeling the nearness of higher powers, entered ecstasy and uttered inspired prophecies, often in poetic form. Moses knew perfectly well that he was not a prophet, because prophets were completely different. But God tells Moses that He is the One who gives inspiration and the gift of prophetic speech, and therefore Moses has nothing to be troubled about (vv. 11-12).

And then Moses asks directly: send someone else (v. 13). At this point it becomes clear: the issue is not that Moses is afraid they will not believe him, or that he doubts his prophetic calling. He simply cannot bring himself to rely on God alone, throwing aside all human conventions and ideas. And then he feels what God's anger is, while at the same time receiving his brother as a helper, a brother about whom we learn that he was a genuine, "proper" prophet (v. 14).

And yet, by sending Aaron to help Moses, God does not remove responsibility from Moses himself, leaving the leading role to him (vv. 15-16). Now Moses has nothing left to say against God, and he goes to fulfill the commission given to him (v. 18).

When a person touches the eternal, when he meets God, he faces a choice: to trust the Unknown or turn away. To all Moses' arguments that he is unable to carry out the mission entrusted to him, that he is a fugitive, a criminal, that he has a speech defect, finally, that he knows too little about his new God, the Voice answers him only one thing: "I will be with you."

This is very little, and very much. Little, because these are only words, or rather a promise, which one can believe or not believe. Much, because if one believes it, an astonishing path opens before a person. Moses takes the risk: he believes God, thereby allowing Eternity to act in the world through his hands, his tongue, his life...