The recognition of the covenant of blood in the rite of circumcision, throws light on an obscure passage in the life of Moses, as recorded in Exodus 4 : 20-26. Moses, himself a child of the covenant, had neglected the circumcision of his own first-born; and so he had been unfaithful to the covenant of Abraham. While on his way from the Wilderness of Sinai to Egypt, with a message from God to Pharaoh, concerning the un-covenanted first-born of the Egyptians,[461] Moses was met by a startling providence, and came face to face with death--possibly with a bloody death of some sort. “The Lord met him, and sought to kill him,” it is said. It seems to have been perceived, both by Moses and his wife, that they were being cut off from a farther share in God’s covenant-plans for the descendants of Abraham, because of their failure to conform to their obligations in the covenant of Abraham. “Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at [made it touch] his [Moses’] feet; and she said, Surely a bridegroom of blood [one newly bound through blood], art thou to me. So He [the Lord] let him [Moses] alone [He spared him, as one newly true to the covenant of Abraham, and newly safe within its bounds]. Then she [Zipporah] said [again], A bridegroom of blood art thou, because of the circumcision;” or, as the margin renders it: “A bridegroom of blood [art thou] in regard of the circumcision.”[462] The Hebrew word, _khathan_ (חָתָן), here translated “bridegroom,” has, as its root idea, the binding through severing, the covenanting by blood;[463] an idea that is in the marriage-rite, as the Orientals view it,[464] and that is in the rite of circumcision, also. Indeed, in the Arabic, the corresponding term (_khatan_, ختن), is applied interchangeably to one who is a relation by the way of one’s wife, and to one who is circumcised.[465] Hence, the words of Zipporah would imply that, by this rite of circumcision, she and her child were brought into blood-covenant relations with the descendants of Abraham, and her husband also was now saved to that covenant; whereas before they were in danger of being covenanted with a bloody death. It is this idea which seems to be in the Targum of Onkelos, where it renders Zipporah’s first word: “By the blood of this circumcision, a _khathna_ [a blood-won relation] is given to us;” and her second speech: “If the blood of this circumcision had not been given [to us; then we had had] a _khathna_ [a blood-won relation] of slaughter [of death].” It is as though Zipporah had said: “We are now newly covenanted to each other, and to God, by blood; whereas, but for this, we should have been covenanted to slaughter [or death] by blood.” 4. THE BLOOD COVENANT TESTED.