Exodus 4-9

The Facts

4:20 - Moses takes his wife and sons back to Egypt with him.
4:24-26 - The Lord tries to kill Moses. But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched it to Moses' feet and said "Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!" And God left him alone. Zipporah continued, "A bridegroom of blood by circumcision."

Exodus 5 - No mention of any women.

6:14 - Shaul was the son of a Canaanite woman.
6:20 - Amram married Jochebad his father's sister and she bore him Aaron and Moses.
6:23 - Aaron married Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon, and she bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.
6:25 - Aaron's son Eleazar married one of the daughters of Putiel and she bore him Phinehas.

Exodus 7 - No mention of any women.

Exodus 8 - No mention of any women.

Exodus 9 - No mention of any women.

My Comments

So a lot of nothing in this section. Only 2 chapters have any women, and one is a really random Moses and Zipporah story and the other is just genealogy. And seriously, why does God try to kill Moses in chapter 4? I mean, what did Moses do? He was going to Egypt just as God says and then suddenly one night while they're camping bam, God's there to kill him. At least Zipporah was thinking on her feet with that weird bridegroom of blood thing. Works every time.

What I find weird is Zipporah saves Moses and doesn't seem to get any sort of thank you or anything. You never even hear about this when the Moses story is told. It's like she saved Moses, the savior of the Israelites, and yet she gets no recognition for this. Maybe no one wants to include a random side note about God randomly trying to kill Moses when they tell the story. Or maybe people get put off by Zipporah rubbing her sons freshly cut off foreskin on Moses' feet. I will admit, that is super weird and would probably make a lot of people a bit uneasy. But still! The first lady in the Bible to save a man and she saves a BIG pivotal dude in the Bible and yet where's her parade?

And a random side thought: Why the hell is God hardening Pharaoh's heart throughout this? God puts all these plagues and curses on Pharaoh and his people and basically FORCES Pharaoh to keep saying no. Who knows, maybe Pharaoh would have let Moses and his people go after only the first two or three plagues. God's basically MAKING a bad guy here by actually going down and hardening Pharaoh's heart. It's like God was afraid Pharaoh would let them go too easy and God wouldn't get his chance to rain hellfire and brimstone and kill all the first born sons and other "cool" almighty godly stuff. God always wants to have a reason to show off, it seems, and apparently most of his showing off involves pain and suffering for the little people on Earth. And to add to that the people that seem to get the brunt of damage during this onslaught of plagues are the slaves. The slaves not only get to participate in the boils and flies like everyone else, but they get the special honor of being left outside by their asshole owners during the hail and thunderstorm. The WORST hail and thunderstorm in the history of Egypt, apparently. But does God care that all these innocent slaves are left outside to die? Nope. Does he maybe lighten the hail a bit to show some mercy on the slaves or at least protect them like he does the Isrealites? Nope. So the moral of the story is: God doesn't care about slaves at all. They are basically right on par with livestock, since God doesn't care at all that all those animals are also pointlessly killed when their asshole owners don't bring them in either. Seriously, God is such a jerk.

Monday: Exodus 10-15