Exodus 4:24-26

Exodus 4:24 J. Moses Threatened with Death Decause Uncircumcised. This is an old and strange boulder of tradition. The incident here follows Exodus 4:20 a. It appears to relate in strongly anthropomorphic phrase a grave illness which Moses's wife interpreted as a punishment for neglect of the rite of circumcision, and remedied by symbolically substituting the circumcision of his son. The rite appears here as one preliminary to marriage, and not in the milder form of Genesis 17*, administered in infancy (cf. pp. 83, 99f.). The use of flint is, no doubt, a survival of an archaic practice, begun before metal knives were in use (Joshua 5:2 *). Ritual is ever conservative.