Chapter Overview
Summary
Exodus 4 continues the commissioning narrative — the staff-to-serpent and leprous-hand signs, Moses' eloquence complaint, Aaron's appointment as spokesman, the return to Egypt, the 'I will harden Pharaoh's heart' declaration (4:21), the 'Israel is my firstborn son' oracle (4:22–23), and the obscure 'bridegroom of blood' episode (4:24–26). Two of the chapter's verses — 4:21 on Pharaoh's hardening and 4:22 on Israel as God's firstborn — are theologically among the most consequential in Exodus for later Christian and Jewish theology.
Notable Variants
The ischnophōnos ('thin-voiced, stammering') vocabulary at 4:10 that became standard Greek for speech disability; the LXX's direct 'I will harden' at 4:21 that Romans 9:17–18 builds the sovereignty-argument on; the firstborn-son oracle at 4:22 that feeds the Hosea 11:1 / Matthew 2:15 Christological typology; the LXX's ho angelos kyriou ('the angel of the LORD') at 4:24 in place of MT's 'the LORD' — softening the shocking Hebrew that God himself sought Moses' death.
Structural Notes
LXX Exodus 4 preserves MT's 31-verse structure.
Moses answered, "But what if they do not believe me or listen to my voice? They may say, 'The LORD did not appear to you.'"
Moses' 'what if they do not believe me' is rendered closely in LXX.
The LORD said to him, "What is that in your hand?" He said, "A staff."
The staff-in-hand exchange follows MT without variation.
He said, "Throw it on the ground." So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses fled from it.
The staff becoming a serpent (ophis) tracks MT; same word later at the bronze serpent (Num 21:9).
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Reach out your hand and grasp it by the tail" — so he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand —
Reaching out the hand and grasping the serpent's tail — direct LXX rendering.
"so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob — has appeared to you."
The patriarchal triad (God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) recurs here in its standard LXX form.
Then the LORD said to him, "Put your hand inside your cloak." He put his hand inside his cloak, and when he drew it out, his hand was leprous, white as snow.
The leprous-hand sign is rendered with lepra ('leprosy') — the LXX vocabulary the NT inherits for the disease Jesus cures (Matt 8:2–3, Mark 1:40–42, Luke 5:12–13). The connection between Moses' sign and Jesus' healings becomes visible only through LXX vocabulary.
He said, "Put your hand back inside your cloak." He put his hand back, and when he drew it out, it was restored like the rest of his flesh.
The restoration of the hand is rendered directly in LXX.
"If they do not believe you or heed the first sign, they may believe the second sign.
The two-signs provision tracks MT.
But if they do not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you take from the Nile shall become blood on the ground."
The water-to-blood preliminary sign follows MT; the same verb (esetai haima) recurs at the first plague (7:17).
Then Moses said to the LORD, "Please, Lord, I have never been a man of words — not yesterday, not the day before, and not since You have spoken to Your servant. I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue."
Masoretic (WLC)
כִּי כְבַד־פֶּה וּכְבַד לָשׁוֹן אָנֹכִי
I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue
Septuagint (LXX)
ἰσχνόφωνος καὶ βραδύγλωσσος ἐγώ εἰμι
I am thin-voiced and slow of tongue
The Hebrew idiom 'heavy of mouth, heavy of tongue' (kevad-peh u-kevad lashon) is rendered with two precise Greek adjectives: ischnophōnos ('thin-voiced, faint-voiced, stammering') and bradyglōssos ('slow of tongue').
Ischnophōnos became the standard Greek medical/rhetorical term for speech impediment in Hellenistic and later usage. The LXX's specific vocabulary shaped Hellenistic Jewish readings of Moses as the reluctant-but-equipped prophet — a model that Paul invokes at 2 Corinthians 10:10 ('his speech is of no account').
The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes a person mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
The rhetorical chain ('who gave man his mouth … is it not I, the LORD?') tracks MT closely.
Now go. I Myself will be with your mouth and will teach you what to say."
The 'I will be with your mouth' promise (egō anoixō to stoma sou in LXX) anticipates Jesus' Matthew 10:19–20 promise to the disciples: 'do not worry how or what you are to speak … for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father.'
But Moses said, "Please, Lord, send someone else."
Moses' final plea ('send someone else') is rendered directly in LXX.
Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses. He said, "Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and when he sees you, his heart will be glad.
The LORD's anger (thymōtheis) and Aaron's appointment follow MT.
You shall 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 you both what to do.
The doubled 'I will be with your mouth and with his mouth' preserves Hebrew parallelism.
He shall speak for you to the people, and he will be your mouth, and you will be as God to him.
Masoretic (WLC)
וְאַתָּה תִּהְיֶה־לּוֹ לֵאלֹהִים
you will be as God to him
Septuagint (LXX)
σὺ δὲ αὐτῷ ἔσῃ τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεόν
you will be to him the things that pertain to God
The LXX softens the MT's startling 'you will be le-Elohim (as/for God) to him' by paraphrasing as 'you will be to him the things that pertain to God' — a more oblique construction that avoids the shocking literal assertion.
The MT's bold statement (Moses is 'God' to Aaron) and the LXX's softening reveal the interpretive tension: the Hebrew's functional divine-representative claim embarrassed the Greek translators, who distanced it with the paraphrase.
The same pattern recurs at Exodus 7:1, where MT's 'I have made you God to Pharaoh' is similarly softened in LXX.
Take this staff in your hand, for with it you shall perform the signs."
The command to take the staff and perform signs is rendered directly.
Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, "Please let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive." Jethro said to Moses, "Go in peace."
Moses' request to Jethro (Iothor in LXX) for leave follows MT. The 'go in peace' blessing formula (poreuou hygiainōn) is preserved.
The LORD said to Moses in Midian, "Go back to Egypt, for all the men who sought your life are dead."
The note that the men who sought Moses' life are dead tracks MT.
So Moses took his wife and his sons, set them on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand.
Moses' return to Egypt with his family and the 'staff of God' (rhabdos tou theou) is rendered closely.
The LORD said to Moses, "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have placed in your hand. But I will harden his heart, and he will not let the people go.
Masoretic (WLC)
וַאֲנִי אֲחַזֵּק אֶת־לִבּוֹ
But I will harden his heart
Septuagint (LXX)
ἐγὼ δὲ σκληρυνῶ τὴν καρδίαν αὐτοῦ
But I will harden his heart
Romans 9:17–18 builds a complete doctrine of divine sovereignty on LXX Exodus's hardening-of-Pharaoh language: "the Scripture says to Pharaoh … 'For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you' … So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens (sklērynei) whomever he wills."
The LXX uses sklērynō ('I will harden') consistently across the Exodus hardening-narrative (4:21; 7:3; 7:13, 22; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7, 12, 34, 35; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8, 17). The Hebrew uses three different verbs (chazaq, kaved, qashah) that LXX often uniforms into sklēryn-. This lexical leveling has obscured theological nuance in the Hebrew (sometimes Pharaoh hardens himself, sometimes God hardens him).
Romans 9:18's 'he hardens whom he wills' uses the exact LXX verb sklēryn-. The whole double-predestination strand of Western theology descends from this LXX lexical choice.
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the LORD: Israel is My son, My firstborn.
Masoretic (WLC)
בְּנִי בְכֹרִי יִשְׂרָאֵל
Israel is My son, My firstborn
Septuagint (LXX)
υἱὸς πρωτότοκός μου Ισραηλ
Israel is my firstborn son
Prōtotokos ('firstborn') is the LXX Greek term that becomes a major NT Christological title: Romans 8:29 ('firstborn among many brothers'), Colossians 1:15 ('firstborn of all creation'), Colossians 1:18 ('firstborn from the dead'), Hebrews 1:6, Revelation 1:5.
The Israel-as-firstborn identification at Exodus 4:22 is the textual template for reading Israel, and then Christ, in firstborn-covenantal categories. Hosea 11:1 ('out of Egypt I called my son') rereads this verse as the basis for Israel-as-son Christology, and Matthew 2:15 then applies it to Jesus.
The three-layer typology — Israel as God's firstborn son (Exod 4:22), out of Egypt I called my son (Hos 11:1), and this fulfilled in Jesus (Matt 2:15) — is only readable as a unified argument through LXX vocabulary.
I said to you, Let My son go so that he may serve Me, but you have refused to let him go. Now I will kill your son, your firstborn.'"
The 'let my son go' / 'I will kill your firstborn' escalation tracks MT; 'firstborn' (prōtotokos) repeats the verse 22 term.
On the way, at a lodging place, the LORD met him and sought to put him to death.
Masoretic (WLC)
וַיִּפְגְּשֵׁהוּ יְהוָה וַיְבַקֵּשׁ הֲמִיתוֹ
the LORD met him and sought to put him to death
Septuagint (LXX)
συνήντησεν αὐτῷ ἄγγελος κυρίου καὶ ἐζήτει αὐτὸν ἀποκτεῖναι
an angel of the Lord met him and sought to kill him
The MT has YHWH himself meeting Moses and seeking his death — one of the Bible's most shocking and theologically uncomfortable passages. The LXX substitutes 'an angel of the Lord' (angelos kyriou), softening the direct-divine-aggression problem.
The LXX's move is typical of its treatment of divine anthropopathisms: where MT has God doing something troubling, LXX inserts an angel as mediator.
Targum Onkelos makes a similar interpretive move. Jewish and Christian exegetes alike have debated whether the MT's direct divine agency is original and the LXX is an ameliorating revision, or whether the LXX preserves an older tradition that understood the encounter as angel-mediated.
Zipporah took a flint knife and cut off her son's foreskin and touched it to his feet. She said, "You are a bridegroom of blood to me."
Zipporah's flint-knife circumcision and the 'bridegroom of blood' is rendered closely (nympheios haimatōn in LXX).
So the LORD let him alone. It was then that she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to the circumcision.
The 'LORD let him alone' conclusion and the 'bridegroom of blood' etymology track MT.
The LORD said to Aaron, "Go into the wilderness to meet Moses." So he traveled and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him.
Aaron's divinely-directed meeting with Moses at Horeb and the brotherly kiss follow MT.
Moses told Aaron all the words of the LORD with which He had sent him and all the signs He had commanded him to perform.
Moses' report to Aaron of the divine words and signs tracks MT.
Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered all the elders of the sons of Israel.
Moses and Aaron's gathering of the elders of Israel is rendered directly.
Aaron spoke all the words that the LORD had spoken to Moses, and he performed the signs in the sight of the people.
Aaron's speech and performance of the signs tracks MT.
The people believed. When they heard that the LORD had visited the sons of Israel and that He had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshipped.
Israel's belief, recognition of divine visitation (episkopē), and worship (prosekynēsan) tracks MT. The verb episkeptomai ('visit' in the theological sense) recurs at Luke 1:68, 7:16 of the Messiah's visitation of his people — drawing on LXX-Exodus vocabulary.