Moses in Midian
Moses in Midian
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Moses’s Crime
After Moses grew up, he went out to his people and watched them being forced to work. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. He looked around and saw no one. So he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
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Moses grew up as a grandson of the pharaoh, but he considered “his people” to be the Israelites instead of the Egyptians. As Hebrews 11:25 says, “He chose to share the suffering of God’s people rather than enjoy the temporary pleasure of sin.” At the age of forty, he traveled to one of the locations where the Egyptians forced the Israelites to work.1
As his people labored, Moses watched. But then he saw one of the Egyptian taskmasters beating an Israelite. As if working without pay wasn’t bad enough! This extreme injustice proved too much to bear. After checking if anyone could see him, Moses attacked and killed the Egyptian. Then he buried the body in the sand.
Moses wanted to rescue his people. He believed God had miraculously saved him as a baby so he could accomplish that task.2 But he went about it the wrong way, reacting in anger and killing a man out of pure vengeance. He grew up learning human leadership skills among Egypt’s elite. But before he could lead God’s people, he needed further lessons in godly leadership.
Running Away
[Moses] went out again the next day. This time two Hebrews were fighting! He asked the one who started it, “Why would you hit your companion?”
The man replied, “Who made you our ruler and judge? Do you intend to kill me like you killed the Egyptian?”
Then Moses was afraid because he realized people knew what he’d done. When the pharaoh heard about it, he sentenced Moses to death. But Moses fled from him.
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Confident his crime had gone unnoticed, Moses went to observe his people again the next day. He thought he could serve God without facing the consequences of unrepented sin. But he quickly found out God would not allow that.
When he arrived at the work site, he saw two Israelite men fighting each other. But this time instead of feeling angry, he felt surprised. He didn’t understand why they would fight among themselves instead of fighting the Egyptians. So he tried to intervene. But the man who started the fight called Moses out for his hypocrisy. Moses, though raised as an Egyptian, had killed an Egyptian. What right did he have to judge an Israelite for beating an Israelite?
The man’s words frightened Moses because he realized he had failed to hide his crime. Killing an Egyptian taskmaster overseeing one of the pharaoh’s work projects was a clear act of rebellion against the pharaoh. Even Moses’s royal status wouldn’t protect him from an accusation of treason. Indeed, when the pharaoh found out, he sentenced Moses to death, and Moses had to flee for his life. Suddenly he didn’t belong with either the Egyptians or the Israelites. He found himself alone in the wilderness of Sinai.
Midian
Now Moses settled in the land of Midian. One day he sat down by a well. The priest of Midian had seven daughters, who came, drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. But then shepherds came and drove them away, so Moses stood up, protected them, and watered their flock.
To escape the pharaoh’s sphere of influence, Moses had to cross the Sinai Peninsula. He ended up east of the Gulf of Aqaba in the land of the nomadic Midianites.3 Finally safe, he rested by a communal well.
While Moses sat there, the seven daughters of a local priest came and drew water for their father’s flock. When they had filled the troughs, a group of men came and drove away the animals so their own flocks could drink the water. Based on verses 18–19, it seems these men regularly bullied the girls, who were likely teenagers.
Having to flee Egypt did nothing to change Moses’s sense of justice. When he saw how the shepherds acted, he protected the girls. But he didn’t attack the shepherds as he had the Egyptian taskmaster. In fact, when it says Moses “watered their flock,” “their” is masculine in Hebrew. This suggests he watered the men’s animals as well as the girl’s. Instead of picking a fight, Moses made peace by taking it on himself to draw enough water for all the animals.
Moses’s Family
The girls returned to Reuel, their father. “Why are you home so early today?” he asked.
“An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock!”
“So where is he?” Reuel asked. “Why’d you leave the man behind? Go invite him to come share a meal.”
Then Moses agreed to live with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah in marriage to Moses. She gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom because “I became a foreigner in a foreign land.”
When their animals finished drinking, the girls returned to their father, Reuel, at the family’s camp. Surprised to see them home so early, Reuel asked what happened. They excitedly told him about the “Egyptian” who had rescued them from the bullies. He even drew water, which a man wouldn’t normally do for a woman.
In their excitement about the heroic newcomer, the young ladies had quite forgotten their manners. So their father gently but firmly rebuked them. To not invite a traveler to a meal was a serious faux pas. How much worse to have left behind the man who rescued them! Reuel sent his daughters back to the well to do what they should have already done. He would not allow this stranger’s kindness to go unrecognized.
Scripture skips the formalities of Moses accepting the invitation to eat with Reuel. He ended up living with the family and eventually marrying Reuel’s daughter Zipporah. He named their firstborn son Gershom, which sounds like ger sham (“a foreigner there”). He had become a foreigner in exile. But while Moses felt far from home, God had set him in the perfect place for the next phase of his preparation to lead Israel.
The Midianites were descendants of Abraham through his wife Keturah.4 They may have worshiped the God of Abraham. Reuel was a priest and a man of integrity. As Moses’s father-in-law, he became the model of godly leadership Moses needed.5
Crying Out
A long time passed, and during that time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites moaned because of their labor, and they cried out for relief. Their cry because of their labor ascended to God. God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the Israelites and understood.
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Moses left Egypt at the age of forty and returned to Egypt at the age of eighty.6 During the intervening forty years, the Israelites remained enslaved in Egypt. The pharaoh who sentenced Moses to death died, but that did nothing to relieve the suffering of the Israelites. The new pharaoh continued the same cruel policies of forced labor.
The intensity of the work had become insufferable, and the Israelites cried out for help. But it doesn’t say who they cried out to. They worshiped and feared God, but his promises to their ancestors had passed into legend. Jacob’s descendants no longer expected Yahweh to come lead them back to Canaan.7 They cried out for relief to anyone who would listen.
The Israelites didn’t specifically cry out to God, yet God heard them. He remembered his covenant obligations.8 When God saw the Israelites being mistreated, he understood their misery. The Hebrew literally means “he knew,” but here it refers to experiential knowledge, understanding what they had to endure. God felt sympathy for the Israelites and determined the time had come to act.
- Acts 7:23.
- Acts 7:25.
- Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas, Bible Background Commentary, Exodus 2:15.
- See Keturah.
- Exodus 18:13–24.
- Exodus 7:7; Acts 7:23.
- See Joseph’s Death.
- See Remembered.