4- The confirmations of the Lord to Moses As a response of the murmur of the people, “Moses returned to the Lord and said, ‘Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Why is it You have sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people; neither have You delivered Your people at all” (Exod. 5.22- 23). How nice for a minister to enter into admonishment with the Lord when he feels as though his ministry has failed, presenting then an account of his work! God accepted that admonishment, and responded to the bitterness of his servant’s heart. If Pharaoh had proclaimed his ignorance of God saying, “I do not know God” (Exod. 5.2), God’s confirmations to Moses all the time have been “I am the Lord” (Exod. 6.2, 7, 8, 28). He is the Lord who worked in the fathers of the old, who appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob (Exod. 6.3); and still works in the present, listening to the groaning of his people, to bring them out of the cruel bondage (Exod. 6.5-6) and prepares for them the future to get them to the land He swore to give them (Exod. 6.8). He is the Lord, Who works for the sake of His Holy Name opposed by Satan, and for the sake of His promises to His children, as He remains faithful, working to set for Himself a holy people. He enters with His children in unity saying, “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God” (Exod. 6.7). 5- The heads of their fathers’ houses After God confirmed to Moses that He would set the people free from their bondage, the Holy Bible mentioned the names of the heads of their fathers’ houses. The Lord wants to confirm that He cares not only for the people as a congregation but He also cares for each single person by name. God’s relationship with His people is always both on the collective as well as the individual level. In His care for them as the Holy Body of the Lord Christ, not even a single hair will fall down without His permission. Some fathers found several meanings in these names, of which we mention what the scholar Origen1 saw in the names of the sons of Korah: Assir, Elkanah and Abiasaph (Exod. 6.24), who wrote down a beautiful prayer of praise, with one harmonious spirit, with the following opening: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God” (Ps. 42.1). The secret of their harmony in praying and praising was that the name ‘Assir’ means “learning”; ‘Elkanah’ means “God’s possession”; and ‘Abiasaph’ means in Greek “congregation of the Father.” When the soul is like ‘Korah’, and has such sons: persistent love for learning, the feeling of dedication to God and clinging to the spirit of the one congregation. Then, the heart becomes flooded with a poem of love and a prayer that God accepts and in which He finds pleasure. 1 In Matt. Hom. 3:1. 54 6- I am of uncircumcised lips Moses tried to find excuses for himself and said to the Lord, “I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh heed me” (Exod. 6.30)? But the Lord confirmed to him that He is the Lord, and that He will save. How beautiful it is for man to feel that his spiritual weakness and his sins are the cause of the failure of his ministry, and to say with Moses, “I am of uncircumcised lips”, that his lips are not sanctified enough to act with authority against the devil! Likewise, when the prophet Nehemiah heard the sad news about the ministry he said, “Both my father’s house and I have sinned” (Neh. 1.6). He neither put the blame on the circumstances, nor on other people; he did not complain that God has forgotten His children but placed the blame upon himself, together with his father’s house, because they sinned. Moses understood the concept of circumcision on an inner spiritual level; he considered his lips to be in need of inner circumcision. Then came Jeremiah to speak of the secret circumcision of the heart (Jer. 4.4), and of the circumcision of the ear (Jer. 6.4). The apostle Paul spoke more clearly of the need for spiritual circumcision in Baptism, when the believer takes off the works of the old man, to put on the new, and be according the image of his Creator.
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