On the road to Egypt, one of the strangest scenes in the Torah unfolds. The Hebrew is terse to the point of confusion: the Lord met him and sought to kill him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan untangles it with a full backstory: the angel of the Lord met him, and sought to kill him, because Gershom his son had not been circumcised, inasmuch as Jethro his father-in-law had not permitted him to circumcise him.
The Targum supplies three crucial pieces of information that the Hebrew leaves dangling. First, it is not God directly but an angel — a malach — who confronts Moses. Second, the one whose life is threatened is Moses himself. Third, the cause is Gershom's uncircumcision, which Moses had postponed under pressure from his father-in-law Jethro.
The Compromise That Almost Cost Moses His Life
The Targum adds the detail that saves the story's moral coherence: Eliezer had been circumcised, by an agreement between them two. Moses and Zipporah had agreed that one son — Eliezer — would be circumcised, while the older son, Gershom, would remain uncircumcised to appease Jethro, a Midianite priest.
The sages of the Targumic tradition are merciless on this point. A man about to redeem Israel from Egypt cannot arrive at Pharaoh's court with a son outside the covenant of Abraham (Genesis 17:10-14). The angel stops the redeemer in his tracks because the redeemer's own house is not yet in order.
The takeaway: prophecy does not excuse compromise with family pressure. The man who will carry the sapphire staff must first carry his own son across the boundary of the covenant. The inn on the road becomes the place where Moses learns that liberating a nation begins with the smallest, most intimate acts of faithfulness.