Exodus 3:1-22 - Exposition

THE MISSION OF MOSES . After forty years of monotonous pastoral life, affording abundant opportunity for meditation, and for spiritual communion with God, and when he had attained to the great age of eighty years, and the hot blood of youth had given place to the calm serenity of advanced life, God at last revealed Himself to Moses "called him" ( Exodus 3:4 ), and gave him a definite mission. The present chapter is' intimately connected with the next. Together, they contain an account of that extraordinary and indeed miraculous interchange of thought and speech between Moses and God himself, by which the son of Amram was induced to undertake the difficult and dangerous task of freeing his people, delivering them from their bondage in Egypt, and conducting them through the wilderness to that "land flowing with milk and honey," which had been promised to the seed of Abraham more than six centuries previously ( Genesis 15:18 ). Whatever hopes he had entertained of being his people's deliverer in youth and middle life, they had long been abandoned; and, humanly speaking, nothing was more improbable than that the aged shepherd, grown "slow of speech and of a slow tongue" ( Exodus 4:10 )—his manners rusticised—his practical faculties rusted by disuse—his physical powers weakened—should come forth from a retirement of forty years' duration to be a leader and king of men. Nothing less than direct supernatural interposition could—one may well believe—have sufficed to overcome the natural vis inertiae of Moses' present character and position. Hence, after an absolute cessation of miracle for more than four hundred years, miracle is once more made use of by the Ruler of the Universe to work out his ends. A dignus vindice nodus has arisen; and the ordinary laws of that Nature which is but one of his instruments are suspended by the Lord of All, who sees what mode of action the occasion requires, and acts accordingly.