"and the Lord Sought to Kill Him" (exod 4:24): yet Once Again

The central question regarding the strange and mysterious incident of the encounter at the lodging place (Exod 4:24-26), the resolution of which determines our interpretation of the passage as a whole, is: who was subject to the deadly attack of God, Moses or Moses' (and Zipporah's) son? This paper argues that the redactor has structured the present narrative in which Exod 4:24-26 is embedded so as to allow for and indeed compel both readings, this despite the fact that they are mutually exclusive. The redactor has strung together three narrative units: vv. 18-20; 21-23; 24-26. If the second unit is bracketed and the first and third units are linked, then it emerges that it is Moses who was subject to God's attack. If, on the contrary, the first unit is put aside and the second and third units read as a whole it becomes equally clear that it was Moses' son who was subject to the attack. The paper concludes by offering some tentative suggestions as to the literary function of this built-in, double, mutually contradictory meaning. The strange and mysterious incident of the encounter at the lodging place (Exod 4:24-26) is certainly one of the most obscure and most discussed texts in the entire Bible. Its problems, difficulties and ambiguities are well-known, as are the wide variety of solutions that scholars have offered, none fully satisfactory, and it would seem that at this late date there is little that can be added. 1 Most modern scholars, however, have focused on a presumed "original meaning" of the text. Moreover, some have gone so far as to argue that to attempt to interpret the text within its present context is to distort this primary meaning and significance (Kosmala, 1962, p. 14; Morgenstern, 1963, p. 43). As a result, as Brevard Childs (1974, p. 98) has noted, most scholars failed to pay sufficient attention to "the redactor's intention with I. For bibliographical guidance, see Talmon (1954, p. 93 note I) and Childs ( 1974, p. 90),