What Does Exodus 4:27 Mean?

The LORD said to Aaron, "Go into the wilderness to meet Moses." So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him. The divine direction to Aaron runs in parallel with the divine direction to Moses: just as God spoke to Moses at the burning bush in Horeb, now God speaks to Aaron wherever Aaron is and sends him to meet Moses at the same mountain. The two brothers are being drawn together by the same God from their different starting points. Moses is coming from the Midian side; Aaron is coming from the Egypt side; God is orchestrating the meeting at Horeb before Moses enters Egypt.

The kiss of greeting between Moses and Aaron is the first recorded meeting between brothers who have been separated for forty years. Brothers who grew up in the same household were separated by Moses' flight: Aaron remained in Egypt, in slavery, for the decades Moses spent in Midian.

What Aaron's experience of those forty years was like, whether he knew Moses had survived, what it meant to be the brother of the man who killed an Egyptian and disappeared, the text does not say. But the reunion at Horeb is marked by a kiss that communicates the depth of the reconnection: this is rather than a professional meeting between the prophet and his spokesman but a reunion of brothers across four decades of separation.

The meeting at the mountain of God (Horeb) is significant: the same mountain where Moses received his commission is now the meeting place for the two-man mission team. Horeb is already established as the place of divine encounter from chapter 3; now it becomes the place of human partnership enabled by the divine commission. The mission that began with God alone speaking to Moses at the burning bush has expanded to include Aaron, and the expansion happens at the same holy mountain. The two brothers who will stand before Pharaoh first meet each other in the presence of the God who sent them both.