Again, in Moses, there is the curious interweaving of Hebrew and Egyptian. Moses, like Joseph, will be taken into the home of the Pharaoh and will become a prince of Egypt. He is willing to give up so much for his people, to sacrifice for them. What did his mother teach him while she raised him for Pharaoh's daughter? She taught him something that made him take up the cause of his people.
I'm intrigued, too, that God lets Moses first work for Him fail and bring more suffering to the Hebrews. But that's coming up in the next reading.
Moses' reluctance is obvious. Maybe he, too, wondered why God would pick someone who'd murdered, someone who'd run away. Did he wonder if the Lord knew? Maybe Moses was really just afraid that his crime would be revealed and punished when he returned to Egypt. Does he know that God knows?
And what about the signs God gives him -- turning his staff into a snake and making his hand leprous? We have a record of Moses doing the staff-into-a-snake trick but, to my knowledge, he doesn't do the leprous-hand thing. Did this trick frighten him? He draws his hand from out of his cloak the first time at God's direction. Was he warned about what to expect? Or did God just tell him to do it as it is recorded? Imagine Moses' horror. Leprosy was such a horrible thing. It removed you from the community, separated you. You were exiled and forced to live a life apart. Imagine Moses' horror when he drew his hand from his cloak and he found himself condemned. The snake trick was safer. It didn't require him to dishonor himself. Perhaps he worried that the hand wouldn't change back. For some reason, Moses isn't eager to perform the leprosy trick again.
Are we willing to lower ourselves, to give in to illness, to become a total outcast for God's glory?
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