Exodus 4:1

Yahweh Provides Signs and Help for Speaking

1 And Moses answered, and he said, "And if they do not believe me and they do not listen to my voice, but they say, 'Yahweh did not appear to you?'"

Exodus 4:1 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 4:1

And Moses answered and said
In reference to what Jehovah had declared to him in the latter end of the preceding chapter: but, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken to my voice;
this seems to contradict what God had said to him, ( Exodus 3:18 ) that they would hearken to his voice; but it can hardly be thought, that so good a man, and so great a prophet as Moses was, would directly fly in the face of God, and expressly contradict what he had said. To reconcile this it may be observed, that what the Lord says respects only the elders of Israel, this all the people; or Jehovah's meaning may be, and so this of Moses, that neither the one nor the other would regard his bare word, without some sign or miracle being wrought; for as his call was extraordinary, so it required something extraordinary to be done that it might be credited: for they will say, the Lord hath not appeared unto me:
in the bush, as he would affirm he did, and might do it with the greatest assurance; yet the thing being so marvellous, and they not eyewitnesses of it, might distrust the truth of it, or be backward to receive it on his bare word; and this Moses might rather fear would be the case, from the experience he had had of them forty years ago, when it was more likely for him to have been a deliverer of them.

Exodus 4:1 In-Context

1 And Moses answered, and he said, "And if they do not believe me and they do not listen to my voice, but they say, 'Yahweh did not appear to you?'"

2 And Yahweh said to him, "What [is] this in your hand?" And he said, "A staff."

3 And he said, "Throw it onto the ground." And he threw it onto the ground, and it became a snake, and Moses fled from it.

4 And Yahweh said to Moses, "Reach out your hand and grasp [it] by its tail"--" (And he reached out his hand and grabbed it, and it became a staff in his palm.)--

5 "so that they may believe that Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, appeared to you, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."