Category Archives: Old Testament

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When Most Prophets are Wrong—1 Kings 22

When God gives a promise, we are right to believe it with all our hearts. Some biblical promises, though, are about collective judgment or impending hardship. These promises, too, we must take to heart so we may prepare for them (Gen 41:30, 36; 2 Kgs 8:1). This perspective may not appeal to a generation accustomed to having speakers cater to our wants as consumers. We need, however, to break that consumer habit when it comes to God, who is not an employee of a service industry.

Sometimes we idealize the past, say, the time of Elijah. Sometimes we idealize the future, expecting everything to get better just around the corner. Things do sometimes get better, especially when people turn to the Lord, but we need to be discerning about glowing promises concerning the future.

It is possible to live in a generation where a consensus of people speaking for God declares that everything is well, that we are now on the right track, and that everything is about to get better. There are some circles in my country today where that seems to be the dominant message. One would expect God’s spokespeople to communicate what God is saying, not just what people want to hear. One would also expect them to hear from God directly and not to just follow the trend of other prophets they respect.

Unfortunately, leaders themselves are vulnerable to being misled. If we do not immerse ourselves in God’s voice in Scripture, we can sometimes miss the voice that is genuinely God’s when His Spirit speaks to us. That happened in Jeremiah’s day: the consensus of prophets was that everything would be well with God’s people; God would defend them from their enemies, who were far worse than they (Jer 6:14; 8:11). Among the prophets, Jeremiah stood virtually alone, for years, in warning the nation of coming judgment. Jeremiah was an outlier; who would believe his ornery preaching against the consensus of prophets that God would defend His special people? The consensus of prophets, however, was illusory; too many were stealing God’s words from one another (Jer 23:30).

We encounter the same sort of setting in 1 Kgs 22, back in the time of Elijah the prophet. There all the king’s court prophets unanimously promise that King Ahab will win back the city he is trying to capture (22:6). Yet the God-fearing King of Judah, King Jehoshaphat, is uncomfortable with their unanimous message. That he wants to inquire from a prophet of the LORD (22:7) suggests that he recognizes that the prophets on Ahab’s payroll are not speaking for God alone. King Ahab seems to view prophets the same way that some people view “positive confession”: speak what is positive in the Lord’s name and so help bring it to pass. Without a genuine message from God’s Spirit, however, that is a sure formula for false prophecy (cf. Lam 3:37).

Ahab’s false prophets use symbolic gestures just like true ones do (1 Kgs 22:11). They claim to speak in the LORD’s name, just like true ones doe (22:11-12). Formal features do not distinguish the false prophecies from true ones; only truth can do that. But Jehoshaphat insists on hearing an independent witness, so Ahab reluctantly summons the prophet Micaiah, who consistently confronts Ahab with unpleasant messages (22:7-9). Why should Ahab believe this isolated, grumpy prophet who prophesies coming judgment on Ahab, when despite Micaiah’s past prophecies Ahab remains alive? Micaiah will just put a damper on confidence for the battle!

Ahab’s messenger thus warns Micaiah what the consensus of prophets is, and invites him to speak accordingly (22:13). It is easy to hear what we want to hear, whether under political pressure or favor or personal desire. Micaiah at first seems to echo the other prophets (22:15), yet in such a way that it seems clear that he does not believe it (22:16). Micaiah is committed to speak what he hears from God (22:14). Thus Micaiah prophesies that the king will die (22:17), and that God himself, as a means of judgment, ordained a false message for Ahab’s prophets in order to lure him to destruction (22:19-23). Not every feeling of inspiration that anyone has is from God’s Spirit.

As far as Ahab is concerned, this is just characteristic, contrarian Micaiah, trying to oppose him (22:18). Moreover, Zedekiah, one of the other leading prophets, strikes Micaiah, challenging him. Why should anyone suppose that Zedekiah, a renowned royal prophet, heard wrongly whereas isolated Micaiah heard correctly (22:24)? Micaiah informs him that he will know when the Lord’s true word comes to pass, and Zedekiah has to hide in a time of judgment (22:25). The king takes precautions to forestall any bad luck from Micaiah’s prophecy (22:26-27), as if Micaiah rather than the LORD is the source (22:28). (Against what others sometimes suppose, those who prophesy judgment may not personally want it to happen; Jer 28:6; Luke 19:41-44.) Yet Micaiah’s word comes to pass (1 Kgs 22:34-37), as does an earlier prophecy of Elijah that had been deferred for a time on account of Ahab’s remorse (22:38; cf. 21:19, 27-29).

Not all dreams are from the Lord (Jer 23:27, 32); some messages come only from people’s own minds (23:26, 36). It is often easier to get popular by telling people what they want to hear (2 Tim 4:3) and then attributing the corporate emotional thrill to God’s anointing. Yet cheap thrills from rhetoric alone are not the same as the stirring power of the true word of the Lord in one’s heart (Jer 5:14), and imitations of prophetic form are not the same as the true word of the Lord (Jer 23:28).

The biblical solution is not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, to discard Micaiah or Jeremiah along with the prophets who curry favor. The biblical solution is to use discernment (1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:20-22). Even Israel’s false prophets could have become true prophets had they truly feared and heeded God first (Jer 23:21-22).

Consensus of people genuinely seeking God is important (Acts 15:28; 1 Cor 14:29), but when a generation becomes too corrupted by its own desires we must heed instead the transgenerational succession of the true prophetic word (Jer 28:8). If prophets have been announcing judgment for a land and no major transformation has occurred, then the burden of proof is on prophets who prophesy peace (28:9).

It is too easy to go along with what others tell us, rather than stand for what God alone is saying. One true prophet who believed another prophet’s “white lie” ended up paying for this error with his life (1 Kgs 13:11-25). Let us immerse ourselves in what we all can agree is God’s Word—Scripture—so we will rightly discern God’s voice when He speaks to us in other ways. Otherwise, we may follow an entire generation toward destruction, silencing the erratic yet genuine voices that warn of less pleasant realities.

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Punished for Hope in God—Exodus 5:4-9

Pharaoh insults God (Exod 5:2) and orders his slaves to just get back to work (5:4-5). He treats their request for a religious festival as nothing but an excuse to get off work. Even though most people in antiquity allowed for the existence of other people’s gods, Pharaoh assumes that the Hebrews’ god must be very weak, since powerful Egypt, with its powerful gods, has enslaved the Hebrews.

Moses and Aaron do not yet offer signs—perhaps they were ushered from Pharaoh’s presence before they could do so (or perhaps we just do not receive enough details to understand that the instructions are for later; cf. 7:20, “as the Lord commanded”). But Pharaoh in any case offers a response much more massive than signs such as turning a rod into a snake or making one’s hand look leprous. He punishes all the Israelites because they have put forward leaders asking for a holiday. Egypt had festivals for its gods, but Israel could have none for theirs. It seems highly unlikely that Pharaoh was giving them their weekly sabbath either. Pharaoh acts with a firm hand to quell any thought of asking for concessions.

After all, “the people of the land are many” (5:5), a problem that generated their enslavement to begin with (1:9-11). Their being “many” also meant that asking for a holiday would interrupt the productivity of a great work force. To teach them not to look for time off, Pharaoh shows them that even requesting such concessions will only result in further punishment, a heavier yoke. Now they had to gather their own straw for the bricks without reducing their brick quota. Although Pharaoh was not doing the work himself, he was ready to demand a humanly impossible output from those he oppressed.

Pharaoh complains that the Israelites are “crying out” to him for relief (5:8); soon they will instead “cry out” to him because of the very order he now gives (5:15). (Ironically, when Egyptians cried to an earlier Pharaoh, he sent them to Joseph for relief, Gen 41:55.) Yet it is the Lord who has truly heard his people’s “cries” (Exod 3:7, 9), because he hears the cries of the oppressed (22:23, 27; cf. Gen 4:10). Likewise, it is to the Lord that Moses will continue to cry (Exod 8:12; 15:25).

And because the Lord hears the oppressed, soon there will be a “cry” of agony in Egypt as the roles of suffering are reversed (11:6; 12:30).

So Pharaoh increases their “work” (Exod 5:9; already harsh in 1:14; 2:23), undoubtedly assuming that he is ensuring that they will not ask for relief again. Pharaoh undoubtedly congratulates himself on making his point to the slaves, and probably is congratulated with hearty laughter from his courtiers.

The slave-drivers employ a formula not unusual for decrees: “Thus says [the king],” in this case, “Thus says Pharaoh” (5:10). This formula highlights, however, the extent to which Pharaoh is defying and challenging the authority of YHWH, for it evokes YHWH’s own command in 5:1. When Moses and Aaron had come to Pharaoh, they had declared, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go …’” (cf. also 4:22).

To the Israelites themselves, it must appear as if the flesh-and-blood Pharaoh holds the real power that their invisible God does not. But the Lord will soon surprise everybody with his works for which no one yet had much faith. His chosen time to act had come.

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When People Belittle God—Exodus 5:1-5

Presumably presented by the elders as representatives of Israel or Israel’s God, Moses and Aaron obtain entrance before Pharaoh (cf. 5:15). The Israelites were a significant work force, and their leaders, even if not favored, would be able to bring petitions before Pharaoh on behalf of the people. Moses and Aaron deliver the word of the Lord, but it is no minor request (5:1). They ask only for a festival in the wilderness. Nevertheless, as far as Pharaoh is concerned, this could be a pretext for escape or (cf. 1:10) even revolt. Though Pharaoh could quickly overtake them and quash any rebellion, he has the complete upper hand and lacks reason to cooperate to begin with.

So Pharaoh responds with disdain (5:2). Had Pharaoh heard that Israel had a god? Probably. Did he know that this God’s name was YHWH? Probably not. But the issue here is not so much this God’s name as his power. Pharaoh believes that he has many gods, powerful gods that made Egypt a mighty empire, and Israel’s God had not protected them from slavery. “Who is …?” and “I do not know …” were both sometimes ways of denigrating someone, treating them as unworthy of respect or knowledge (cf. 1 Sam 25:11; Matt 7:23; 25:12; Luke 13:25, 27).

Moses and Aaron elaborate: if they disobey the command of their God who appeared to them, God might be angry with them and punish them with plague (davar) or sword (charev). Perhaps they are too timid at this point to speak of judgment against Pharaoh, but surely he could recognize that judgment on the slaves would hurt Egypt’s economy. Egyptians offered massive sacrifices in official temples; they would understand that people had to supply what their gods demanded. Yet Pharaoh is unwilling to negotiate with slaves or even with the gods of slaves; he acts as if Israel’s God is nothing, and so begins his open defiance of Israel’s God.

Moses and Aaron are surely disappointed by Pharaoh’s response—even though it is exactly the response that God already warned about. Should we be surprised that only some of those who witnessed Lazarus raised from the dead in John 11 believed? Should we be surprised if some people reject God’s signs today and the most logical arguments for him? I have often struggled with self-doubt when anyone is not persuaded by my arguments (that’s why in my more academic books I work hard to make a strong case).

But over the years I have learned that just because someone isn’t persuaded doesn’t mean that it’s a bad argument. (If that were the case, almost all arguments would be bad, because very rarely is there an argument, at least in the humanities, that persuades everyone!) And just because someone isn’t convinced by something God does—whether in creation or in special divine acts today—doesn’t mean that God has not given them enough evidence to hold them responsible for their choices. The Bible speaks of moral blindness. Pharaoh’s theology keeps him blind; he cannot submit to Israel’s God and yet regard his own gods—and himself as a god—as more powerful than Israel’s God.

In the end, Pharaoh will be proved wrong. But in the meantime, will God’s people, oppressed and abused by Pharaoh, keep the faith? Likewise, when the arrogant browbeat God’s children today, we should continue to trust God, who will in due time vindicate his name as he has done repeatedly through history.

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Excitement versus Tested Faith—Exodus 4:30-21

Moses and Aaron gathered the elders of the people, who would have at least heard of Moses, the Hebrew who had been adopted by an Egyptian but ultimately sided with the Hebrews. The elders presumably then gathered the people (4:29-30).

When the people heard the long-for message of liberation and saw the signs, they believed (4:30-31), so grateful to discover that YHWH had seen their suffering and had determined to act (4:31). But this is what many interpreters of John’s Gospel call preliminary “signs-faith.” Certainly they believe now; but when hardship increases and their faith is tested, they will complain against Moses and Aaron for misleading them (5:20-21). And Moses—also not yet a model of great faith—will ask YWHW why he had misled Moses (5:22-23).

It’s often easy to trust God and his plan when initial signs kindle our hopes. But hardship often crushes such hope, and our elementary faith is revealed for what it really is. Sometimes when we are tested we tend to yearn for our pre-tested level of faith. But it is faith that has endured testing that is truly mature faith. Testing offers us opportunities to mature in our relationship with God, uncomfortable as the growing pains are. Sometimes just clinging to God for dear life in the midst of testing is a greater demonstration of faith than our apparent faith when everything is going well!

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Aaron’s obedience and God’s call—Exodus 4:27-28

Quite in contrast to Moses’s reticence to return to Egypt, the narrative in 4:27 appears to assume (or at least does not qualify) Aaron’s ready obedience to God’s command. Instead of explaining his divine commission and risking shame if it fails, Moses has told Jethro that he will go to Egypt to see if any of his brothers remained alive (4:18). Here God undermines that excuse, sending Moses’s brother to meet him while Moses is still in the wilderness at the mountain of God. God is well able to communicate with us even very specific information when we need that.

When did Aaron meet Moses at the mountain (4:27)? Perhaps it was before Moses started on the journey (4:18, 24) and surely before he returned to Egypt (4:20). Exodus 4:24, however, suggests that they met after the journey has begun (Aaron does not appear in that account); perhaps Moses and his family had started their journey from the side of Mount Horeb further from Egypt, the mountain lying between Egypt and where Jethro’s tents were currently located. Aaron’s sending was already announced in 4:14, but the meeting is finally mentioned here in 4:27 to prepare for the ministry of Moses and Aaron together in 4:28—5:1. (The awkward chronology of this section might reflect the stitching together of separate sources or stories, but, with many narrative critics, I am suspicious of our ability to reconstruct these very securely.)

Moses recounted to Aaron what the Lord had shown him (4:28). Even when we hear from God, he usually reveals to us only part of the message; God sent Aaron, but Aaron still needed to hear from Moses the details of God’s revelation to Moses. Again we see God’s right to choose as he sees fit. Aaron seems more obedient than Moses here, so why is Moses the main agent? Yet God knows what he will make of Moses, as well as knowing Aaron’s future weakness under distress (32:1-5). We are wise not to despise or be jealous of others’ gifts or callings; we should each do our best with the particular mission God has entrusted to us. (Compare similarly John 21:19-22, climaxing the apparent friendly rivalry between a young Peter and beloved disciple.)

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The Bible Exposes Sexual Harassment

The media is currently awash with public exposures of sexual harassment, harassment that had been going on behind closed doors for a long time. Its victims knew it all along, but “polite” society tended to avoid the topic publicly.

The Bible reflects a culture very different from our own. Genesis recounts stories from an ancient Middle Eastern culture in which women lacked many of the rights that we take for granted today. Nevertheless, Genesis reveals quite openly the dangers that some women faced. Granted, Genesis recounts these stories to show God’s protection of Israel’s ancestors, and thus to affirm how the Israelites owed even their very existence to God. In their world, attacks on women’s sexuality also entailed attacks on the men to whom the women were attached.

Yet no one could hear these accounts and not recognize that harassment was an ever-present danger. When Abraham goes to Egypt, Sarah faces severe threats to her sexual security there (Gen 12:14-15). In Egypt, Joseph faces threats to his sexual security (Potiphar’s wife held less direct physical power to enforce her harassment, but because Joseph was a slave she exercised plenty of coercive power in other respects). When Isaac stays in Canaan, Rebekah also faces potential threats to her sexual security (26:7, 10). The Bible also reports terrible incidents of sexual violence (Gen 34; 2 Sam 13) and God’s punishment on David for his affair with, and abuse of power regarding, Bathsheba. Such actions always appear negatively in Scripture.

Cultures have changed, but human nature has not. Biological impulses designed for procreation are not bad; we owe our existence to them. But they need to be controlled and channeled appropriately (biblically, within marriage in which one who wants access to another’s person also commits one’s life to them). Scripture opposes people overstepping their bounds and demanding from others something not their due, action that effectively reduces another human being to merely an object of gratification for one’s biological urges. God summons us, and welcomes us, to something better than that.

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The bloody foreskin—Exodus 4:24-26

In Exod 4:23, God warns that he will kill Pharaoh’s son because Pharaoh has refused to release God’s son, namely his people (4:22). Why then does the text move directly from this threat to kill Pharaoh’s firstborn (4:23) to the Lord seeking to kill Moses (4:24)? And what does the Lord’s plan to kill Moses have to do with Moses’s own son (4:25)?

Stubborn Moses’s encounter with the Lord here contrasts starkly with the Lord’s benevolent appearance to faithful Abraham in Gen 18. Likewise, Jacob struggled at night with the angel of the Lord and came out with a limp, but he at least persevered until he got a blessing. Moses’s confrontation with God here nearly precipitates his death. This account in Exod 4 is so concise that its meaning seems ambiguous, perhaps clearer to earlier hearers who had heard fuller versions of the story. But the connections between Pharaoh’s son and Moses’s son may suggest a meaning.

Apparently Moses’s offense is not circumcising his firstborn son (4:25); such circumcision would mark Moses’s son as a member of the covenant people that are God’s own son (4:22). God would slay Egypt’s firstborn to redeem God’s own firstborn (4:23), but Moses has not surrendered his own son to God. Moreover, Moses’s resistance is apparently because of his wife’s refusal to allow the circumcision (although she surrenders, she seems quite unhappy about the Lord’s demand in 4:25). (Even in Egypt, Israelites practiced circumcision, as Josh 5:5 testifies; Egyptians also used flint knives when they circumcised, although for them it was not a sign of the covenant. Although Gen 25:2 lists Midian as a child of Moses and Moses presumably circumcised all his children [17:12-13, 26-27], Midianites, or at least Zipporah, did not want to follow the practice.)

If Zipporah has been the one resisting circumcision, why is Moses the one to face punishment? Moses is the Israelite and the one to whom the Lord has spoken, so he is responsible to act on God’s will; the Lord is going to punish him, not his wife, if he refuses to obey. So Zipporah has to sacrifice her son’s foreskin to save Moses’s life. We don’t know the son’s age at this point, but it is not clear that he is merely a baby. He may well have been old enough to voice his own concerns. Of course, even a baby can communicate his displeasure with pain vocally even if he cannot do so verbally.

Zipporah touches the bloody foreskin to Moses’s feet, by this blood from her firstborn apparently atoning for Moses. This act may resemble the way that God later accepted the Passover lamb’s blood in the place of the death of Israel’s firstborn when God struck the firstborn of Egypt. (God later required Israel to redeem every human firstborn with the firstborn of a donkey or a lamb; Exod 13:13; 34:20.) Why she touches Moses’s feet is hard for us to understand at this remove. Perhaps it was because feet were considered one of the dirtier and more disgusting parts of the body; or because they were traveling (though it is not clear that YHWH’s attack on Moses involved this); or as a sign of submission (given the association of the soles of feet with conquest; also cf. 1 Sam 25:41); or an accusation of violence (1 Kgs 2:5); or, perhaps likelier, because of an association with marital duties (cf. Deut 25:9; Ruth 3:4, 7-8) connected with her complaint about him being a “bridegroom involving blood.”

God would defend God’s son by killing Pharaoh’s son. Moses needed to circumcise his own son, identifying fully with God’s covenant, or God could kill him as God could kill Pharaoh’s son. Whatever else this may mean, it offers us a warning. The servant of God with a mission remains responsible to obey God’s covenant at home as well as in public.

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God’s son versus Pharaoh’s son—Exodus 4:22-23

The Lord continues to reaffirm his commission to Moses to perform the wonders God had commanded, but also warns that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21). The Lord also gives Moses a difficult message to give to Pharaoh when he refuses to release Israel. Israel is like a firstborn son, precious and special to God (4:22). YHWH says to Pharaoh: I told you to send away my son that he might serve me (4:23a). Pharaoh had been making Israel serve Pharaoh (1:13-14; 6:5), and planned to continue to do so (5:18). Now, however, YHWH demanded that Pharaoh let them serve YHWH (7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3, 26). The LORD alone is God, and his people must serve and worship him alone (Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9; 6:13).

In some ancient Near Eastern legal customs, whatever one did to another’s child could be done to one’s own child; but certainly one dare not do harm to anyone precious to a powerful deity. Because Pharaoh (whose predecessor had drowned Israel’s babies) refused to release God’s firstborn, God would kill Pharaoh’s firstborn (4:23). In God’s mercy, he provided various warning plagues first; but the final plague, the one that would break Pharaoh’s resolve enough to let the Israelites leave the land, would be the death of the firstborn, both Pharaoh’s and his people’s (11:5; 12:29).

The Bible is very realistic: in this world, people do wicked things to other people. But those who do such things had better watch out. And especially when they do it to God’s own children, to those special to God because of their special trust in him, they had really better watch out. God does things different ways every time, so this is no prediction that God will always slay the sons of Pharaohs. It does remind us, however, that justice will ultimately come about (cf. also Rev 18:20-24).

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Dreams and Destiny: the Lord is in control—Genesis 37:9

In Genesis 37:9, Joseph dreamed that the sun, moon, and twelve stars bowed down to him. Joseph was just seventeen years old, and there was no way that he himself could have planned his destiny and imposed it onto a dream. This was God’s plan for him, God’s choice, no less than God’s choice of Jacob when he and Esau were both in the womb (25:23). These dreams are God-initiated rather than Joseph-initiated; God remains the main Actor behind the scenes.

It made sense neither for Joseph to boast as if it were his own plan (though the text does not specify that Joseph was boasting) nor for Joseph’s brothers to be jealous as if they could control their own destinies. It was God’s plan—and ultimately it would prove to bring about the deliverance of them all.

As in the case of Cain’s jealousy of Abel, however, there was something in the character of the human actors that would be consistent with God’s plan. Sin was crouching in Cain’s heart, leading to his murder of Abel (4:5-8), and many of Joseph’s brothers would want to kill him (37:20). Joseph, by contrast, kept serving the Lord, (39:9) and in his hardship continued attributing the honor to the Lord (40:8; 41:16). God has planned it so that human responsibility is part of his plan; God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are complementary, not mutually exclusive, options.

Yet despite the grandeur of the sun-moon-and-stars imagery—a step above his brothers’ sheathes bowing to him in 37:7—God does not reveal that all Egypt and Canaan will bow down to Joseph. Joseph will not need advance warning about that; when it happens, Joseph will have no reason to refuse it! God reveals only that his family will bow down to him, because Joseph will later need to recognize that as God’s plan.

Joseph’s exaltation over Egypt would rescue his generation of Egyptians and Canaanites. Yet the restoration of his family was a key part in God’s plan, since God had a special plan for his family that would extend beyond that generation and through history. Joseph may have been satisfied to be exalted over Egypt, but when his brothers unknowingly bowed down to him in Gen 42:6, Joseph remembered his dreams (42:9). God calls us, but we do not know all the details in advance. He is the one who orchestrates our lives, and he works through our obedience even when we do not understand.

We tend to exalt the human heroes of the stories when we retell them to children. But the real hero, though often behind the scenes, is the Lord himself. Let’s neither be proud of ourselves nor jealous of others that God exalts. Let’s praise the wise Lord of history and embrace gladly his wise plan.

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Obedience even before much faith—Exodus 4:18-21

God’s signs had put the fear of God in Moses, enough to make him obey. But Moses’s obedience is still half-hearted, and (as will become obvious in the next lesson) incomplete.

After receiving this astonishing commission and these signs from God, Moses returns to his father-in-law and asks permission to go visit his siblings in Egypt (Exod 4:18). Moses owes respect to his father-in-law (e.g., 18:7), and it was respectful not to take leave of one’s family service prematurely (Jethro is a much friendlier in-law to Moses than was Laban the Aramean to Jacob; Gen 31:27-31). Did Jethro by now (vs. Exod 2:19) understand that Moses was an Israelite rather than an Egyptian? It may not have made a difference, but certainly by Exodus 18:1 Jethro knows, so it is not unlikely that he understood this earlier.

While Moses dare not disobey this God who called him, however, he says nothing to Jethro about God’s commission. He is still half-hearted, not knowing what will happen in Egypt. He says he wants to go to see if his relatives are alive (4:18). (His concern as to whether his relatives remain alive may also be legitimate; Moses is about eighty in this narrative, and his brother and sister are even older; 7:7. Many Israelites Moses knew may have by now passed away.)

Possibly a more urgent concern regarding survivors of his generation is whether those who wanted him killed are still alive. Thus, before Moses leaves Midian, the Lord again calls him to return to Egypt, informing him those who had sought his life are now dead (4:19).

Yet the Lord does not make Moses’s calling easier at this point by watering down what Moses will face. In fact, he warns him up front what he is in for. God will harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21) and Moses is to warn Pharaoh that God will kill Pharaoh’s son for his disobedience (4:23). One needs little imagination to envision how Pharaoh, who fancied himself divine, would take an ultimatum and threat from the god of his slaves.

What God calls us to do often leads through serious hardships. Our hearts may not even be in his calling at first. That can be true whether we are thinking of God’s calling for all of us to make disciples, or of more specific aspects of our calling. But God has a plan, and one dare not disregard God’s commands—as Moses will soon discover. Confronting Pharaoh may be dangerous, but disobeying God nearly gets Moses killed (4:24).