Exodus 4:2-5
What is that in thine hand
The first sign uses something he already owns. Taking a serpent by the tail is the least safe way to do it, and that is the instruction.
Objects of the Bible
The staff of Moses
A shepherd’s stick he already had in his hand, and he is asked what it is before anything happens to it.
The question is almost comic in its simplicity. What is that in thine hand. He answers a rod, because it is a rod, the ordinary working tool of a man who has kept sheep for forty years. He is told to cast it on the ground, it becomes a serpent, and he flees from it. Then he is told to take it by the tail, which is the wrong end and the whole point, and it becomes a rod again in his hand.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The staff of Moses
- 01
- 02
Exodus 7:8-13
Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods
The magicians do the same trick with their enchantments. The difference is not in the trick, it is in what happens afterwards.
- 03
Exodus 14:15-16
Lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand
The sea is opened by a gesture with a stick. The account never suggests the wood did anything; it says what the wind did.
- 04
Exodus 17:8-13
His hands were steady until the going down of the sun
The rod is held up on a hill through a battle. When his hands are heavy, Aaron and Hur put a stone under him and hold his arms up.
- 05
Numbers 20:7-12
He smote the rock twice
He is told to take the rod and speak. He takes the rod and strikes, and the water still comes, which makes the sentence that follows harder rather than easier.
Why it matters
From that moment the object is never described as remarkable in itself. It is stretched out over the sea and the sea opens, held up on a hill while a battle goes on below and the fighting turns with his arms, and struck against a rock at Horeb until water comes out. Twice it is called the rod of God. The last thing it does is the thing that costs him: at Meribah he is told to speak to the rock, and he lifts up his hand and smites the rock twice with the rod that has always worked, and it works, and he does not enter the land.
9 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
