The Staff of Moses

Aaron’s Rod by James Tissot

I recently heard a teaching which has spurred me to both prayer and study. I think it was Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who said, “God speaks to us in revelation and expects us to listen. We speak to Him in prayer and expect Him to listen.” It is absolutely mind-blowing that we are invited into dialog with the Living God! What better motivation is there to contemplate holy revelation? I would imagine the the Lord desires us to listen as closely to His self-revelation as we desire Him to hear our prayers. There is intimacy in the exchange.

Being that scripture is the primary revelation of God to mankind, and that scripture is limited in length, it can be easy to think we have read it - that we know the story. It is easy to convince ourselves that we have “heard” as He has to say. This temptation is often expressed by relegating God’s self-revelation to the realm of theology. Once we feel reasonably secure in what we believe, we feel free to move on to our litany of requests. But God’s revelation in scripture is not like that. While the Word is assuredly solid and unchanging, it is simultaneously living and active. If we are listening, the Holy Spirit will aways show us new aspects of God’s story. These mini-revelations may not always seem significant. They may simply be a connection with another passage in scripture we have never noticed before. They may be a word which feels highlighted in a new way. We may not fully understand why the Spirit is emphasizing a certain point a story, but it is import to pay attention. I try to remember these little flashes of insight in the same way I treasure hearing a new story from an old friend. They are gifts which, taken together, help us understand the Storyteller.

This week my new insight came from listening to the Bible Project. https://bibleproject.com/explore The speaker said that the sign which God gave Moses in the wilderness harkened back to the curse upon the serpent, the Deceiver.

“And I will make enemies of you and the woman,
And of your offspring and her Descendant;
He shall bruise you on the head,and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”

To Moses the LORD said,

Then Moses said, “What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? For they may say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you.’”  The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” And he said, “A staff.” Then He said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it turned into a serpent; and Moses fled from it.  But the Lord said to Moses, “Reach out with your hand and grasp it by its tail”—so he reached out with his hand and caught it, and it turned into a staff in his hand— “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.”

Moses did not crush the serpent’s head. That was a privilege reserved for the Son of Man. But inasmuch as Moses was a prefigure of Jesus, he was given the honor of taking the serpent by the tail. He took authority over the serpent. It did not harm him, in the same way that the disciples of Jesus were able to tread on serpents without harm.

Another interesting parallel between Moses and Jesus is this: the mother of each of these men is emphasized in scripture. Jochebed is the one credited with saving Moses’ life, not Amram his father. It was Jochebed who saw that Moses was “beautiful” and thus hid him from Pharaoh. Mary is the one to whom Gabriel announced the good news that she would bear a son called the “Son of the Most High.” Mary is the one that knew before all others that Jesus was the “fairest of men,” a child to be hidden from the wrath of Herod. The “seed of a woman” plan was at work in each of the men who would take authority over the serpent.

So what is the LORD saying in this parallel? I am still waiting for more revelation. I do not yet see the full picture, but I believe that is part of the point the Spirit is making. When Moses’ staff, in Aaron’s hands, turned into a serpent, that was a sign for Pharaoh and the Egyptian people. Moses had authority not only over the serpent which came from his rod, but over the serpents which the Egyptian sorcerers produced. His God had authority over the land of Egypt and over its gods, even though Pharaoh said, “I do not know YHWH.”

As Christians, we commonly believe that Jesus crushed the head of the serpent when He rose from the dead. Certainly, it is true that Jesus has authority over death. But I wonder if Jesus is not holding the Satan by the tail right now, rather like Moses did in the wilderness before the burning bush? The first time Moses’ staff turned into a serpent, there was no audience. It was a secret of sorts between him and the LORD. In a similar way, the resurrection happened in secret. There were no human witnesses to the moment. Of course, people saw Jesus after He rose from the grave. We believe their testimony, and as a result, we believe that death will not hold us in the grave. But as a people we are not yet completely free from the power of death, just as the Israelites were not yet free from Pharaoh’s cruelty when Aaron’s staff ate up the sorcerers’ staff. Theologically, were they free? I think the answer is yes, because the Lord had spoken His intention. However, the reality of their deliverance was not yet sight.

Having come to know the Storyteller to some degree, I do not believe He will be content to leave the crushing of Satan hidden from human eyes. I cannot imagine Satan’s final defeat to be a purely theological trouncing. I’m betting Satan’s final defeat will be a public, visible humiliation so that the earth may know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not only the master of prefigurement, but of grand finales as well.