Firstly,
Happy Xmas to all my readers (yep, all two of you), and all the best for 2015.
I have been reading an interesting volume which I got for myself for the
holidays, which I recommend: Forming God: Divine Anthropomorphism in the
Pentateuch (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2014). On pp. 237-38, we have
the following quote which adds light to why Moses is referred to as “god” (אלהים
) in Exo
7:1:
[The Priestly source] is not so explicit regarding the
means by which YHWH brought the people out of Egypt. YHWH and his glory do not
appear in P until Sinai, so there was no visible manifestation to lead the
people physically out of Egypt and to Sinai. P explicitly establishes Moses’
and Aaron’s roles as divine mediators in Exod 7:1-5 . . . In effect, Moses
takes the role of YHWH and Aaron of Moses, which involves Moses speaking
commands to Aaron who carries them out. The source of the actions, their true
agent, remains YHWH, as the passage makes clear by the summarising the entire
process as YHWH stretching his hand out over Egypt and removing the Israelites.
In the way, Moses and Aaron act out which is otherwise obscured from human
observation, YHWH attacking Egypt and rescuing his people. Divine action here
is both mediated by human proxies and represented typologically by human action.
