Signs for a Reluctant Messenger
1Moses answered, “But suppose they do not believe me and will not listen to me — suppose they say, ‘Yahweh did not appear to you.’” 2Yahweh said to him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he answered. 3“Throw it on the ground,” he said. Moses threw it down, and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4Yahweh said to Moses, “Reach out and grab it by the tail.” So he reached out and caught it, and it turned back into a staff in his hand — 5“so that they will believe that Yahweh, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6Then Yahweh said to him again, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” He put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, his hand was leprous, white as snow. 7“Put your hand back inside your cloak,” he said. He put his hand back inside, and when he took it out again, it had returned like the rest of his skin. 8“Now if they will not believe you or heed the first sign, they will believe the message of the second sign. 9And if they will not believe even these two signs, or listen to you, take water from the river and pour it on the dry ground — the water you take from the river will become blood on the dry ground.” 10But Moses said to Yahweh, “Please, my Lord, I have never been a man of words, not yesterday, not before, and not now since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” 11Yahweh said to him, “Who gave a mouth to man? Who makes a person mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, Yahweh? 12Now go — I will be with your mouth and teach you what to say.” 13But he said, “Please, my Lord, send someone else.” 14Then Yahweh’s anger burned against Moses, and he said, “Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. And look — he is already coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, his heart will be glad. 15You will speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach both of you what to do. 16He will speak to the people for you; he will be your mouth, and you will be as God to him. 17And take this staff in your hand — with it you will perform the signs.”
Moses Returns to Egypt
18Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me go back to my own people in Egypt, to see whether they are still alive.” “Go in peace,” Jethro said to him. 19Yahweh had said to Moses in Midian, “Go, return to Egypt, for all those who sought your life have died.” 20So Moses took his wife and his sons, set them on a donkey, and returned to the land of Egypt, carrying the staff of God in his hand. 21Yahweh said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, and he will not let the people go. 22Then you will say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what Yahweh says: Israel is my son, my firstborn, 23and I told you: Let my son go, that he may serve me. But you refused to let him go — so now I will kill your son, your firstborn.’” 24On the way, at a place where they stopped for the night, Yahweh met Moses and sought to kill him. 25Then Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched it to his feet. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. 26So he let him alone. It was then she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” referring to the circumcision. 27Yahweh said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went, and he met him at the mountain of God, and kissed him. 28Moses told Aaron everything Yahweh had said in sending him, and all the signs he had commanded him to do. 29Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered all the elders of the Israelites, 30and Aaron repeated everything Yahweh had said to Moses, and performed the signs before the eyes of the people. 31The people believed, and when they heard that Yahweh had attended to the Israelites and had seen their misery, they bowed low and worshiped.
