This strange little story has baffled scholars for centuries. Having just told Moses to go to Egypt, Jehovah meets him on the way with the intent of killing him. Why? The standard explanation is that Moses had not circumcised his son, as Jehovah had ordered for all descendants of Abraham. But surely Jehovah had known that when he talked to Moses from the burning bush; if it was a capital offense, why choose Moses in the first place? And why not remind him then? The Hebrews had, after all, been slaves for 400 years, and had so forgotten their religious roots that they did not even know Jehovah’s name. Can Moses really be held to blame? Besides that, how did Zipporah know what to do? She wasn’t even a Hebrew!

Those and other questions have caused many to write the passage off as fragmentary, a leftover piece of some more complete story. Understood spiritually, however, it’s clear that it illustrates an important moment in the formation of the Israelitish Church.

The Lord’s second great church, the Ancient Church, had fallen prey to human pride. At its height, it had possessed a vast knowledge of the correspondences between the natural world and the spiritual world, and had understood how things in the natural world served as forms and containers for spiritual things. As it fell, though, that knowledge turned into idolatry and magic, and even human sacrifice. The Lord needed to form a church that would preserve the proper natural forms so that when He later came to earth as the human Jesus, He could start filling in those forms with their true spiritual meaning again.

The Lord’s intent was to form that church among the descendents of Jacob. That group, however, was as hard-hearted and external in its thinking as any of the people around it – which is represented by Moses staying in a lodging-place. It was so hard-hearted, in fact, that it reacted with hostility to the leading of the Lord, represented by Jehovah’s intent to kill Moses.

Zipporah, however – who represents a remnant of the Ancient Church which still worshipped the Lord – used teachings from the Lord (the flint) to remove the most external loves of self and the world (the foreskin) and expose the people’s internal loves to the Lord. Those loves were as hellish as the external ones – represented when Zipporah called Moses her “bridegroom of blood” – but having them exposed allowed the Lord to control their external worship so that they could represent spiritual things.

That is pretty deep stuff and somewhat abstract, but as with all things in the Bible it also represents a stage we all go through in life. In many ways the “Children of Israel” represent all of us as children. Once past the innocence of infancy and the wide-eyed absorptive stage of toddler-hood, children – much as we love them – are relatively external in their interests and self-absorbed in their desires. At that age we force rules and structure on them, generally against their will, with the idea that they will eventually grow to see and embrace the deeper purposes behind the rules – which is very much what the Lord did with the Children of Israel.

This story, then, to some extent represents the foundation we lay with our children, the basic idea that we are in charge and they must obey, that they cannot control us and enforce their will. Their belief that they are and should be in control of their own lives has to be cut away for further rules to have any effect.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 7040)

6948. 'And He said, Throw it to the earth. And he threw it to the earth' means an influx of the power of the Lord's Divine Natural into the sensory level. This is clear from the meaning of 'rod' as power in the natural, and - when used in reference to the Lord - as the power emanating from His Divine Natural, dealt with immediately above in 6947; from the meaning of 'throwing', or sending forth, as emanating, which is influx; and from the meaning of 'the earth' as the external part of the human mind, dealt with in 82, 917, 1411, 1733, here the sensory and bodily levels of it, which are the most external, for the rod was made into a serpent and 'a serpent' means the sensory and bodily levels of a person's mind.

[2] By the Lord's Divine power one should here understand Divine Truth emanating from the Lord, for power resides within Divine Truth to such an extent that it is power itself, 3091, 4931, 6344, 6423. Divine Truth emanating from the Lord flows into every person by way of his interiors into his exteriors, right down into the external sensory and the bodily levels, and everywhere it flows it stirs to life things attuned to it in their proper order - on the sensory level things attuned to it such as appear in the world around and on earth. But things that exist in the world around and on earth are different in appearance from what they really are, and so they are full of illusions. When therefore the sensory level relies solely on those appearances ¹ the thought which takes place there is inevitably opposed to any good or truth of faith because that thought is based on illusions, and when Divine Truth flows in the sensory level turns it into falsity. The fact that a person's thought is based on illusions if he does not rise above the sensory level but confines himself to that Level and thinks on it can be demonstrated by the following examples:

[3] There are for instance illusions regarding a person's life - that it belongs essentially to the body, when in fact it belongs to the spirit within the body. There are illusions about sight, hearing, and speech - that they belong to the eye, ear, tongue and mouth, when in fact the spirit is what sees, hears, and speaks, through those organs of the body. Then there are illusions about life - that it is innately present in a person, when in fact it flows into him; and illusions about the soul - that it is unable to exist within a human form, or to have human senses and affections. There are also illusions about heaven and hell - that the one is above a person and the other beneath, when in fact they are within him; illusions that there is an influx from objects to interior things, when in fact what is external does not flow into what is internal, but what is internal into what is external; illusions about life after death - that it is not possible without the presence also of the physical body; not to mention illusions involving natural phenomena which lead to conflicting conjectures made by so many people.

[4] Can anyone fail to see the predominance of illusions and consequently of falsities over truths simply from the dispute that had gone on for a long time about the circulation of the blood, which in spite of so much convincing evidence nevertheless remained open to doubt for a long time? That predominance of illusions may also be recognized from the dispute about the sun, that it revolved each day around this earth, and not only the sun but also the moon, all the planets, and the whole starry sky, and from the dispute which continues to exist regarding the soul - how it is joined to the body, and where it is seated there. When the illusions of the senses prevail in such matters, even though the true nature of these is evident from so many phenomena and effects, how much more will they prevail in the kinds of things that belong to heaven, which, being spiritual ones, do not make themselves plain except by means of correspondences?

[5] From all this one may now see what the sensory level of a person's mind is like regarded in itself and left to itself - that it is full of illusions and consequently falsities and so is opposed to the truth or good of faith. This is why when a person does not rise above the sensory level and sees things in the inferior light which shines on that level he is completely in the dark so far as things belonging to the spiritual world are concerned, that is, things which dwell in light from the Divine. And that inferior light on a sensory level is turned into thick and utter darkness when light from heaven penetrates it. The reason for this is that truths which belong to Divine light cannot exist together with illusions and consequent falsities; it snuffs them out and in so doing causes thick darkness.

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