Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Exodus 2:21-22
Moses Makes His Home With The Midianites (Exodus 2:21).
The situation suited both parties. The tribe acquired a valuable man of ability and courage. Moses found a home.
a Moses is content to dwell with the man (Exodus 2:21 a).
b Reuel gives him his daughter to wife (Exodus 2:21 b).
b His wife bears a son who is called Gershom (Exodus 2:22 a).
a This is because he is dwelling as a resident alien in a foreign land (Exodus 2:22 b).
Note how in ‘a' Moses takes up residence in Midian and in the parallel has named his son accordingly. In ‘b' he marries Reuel's daughter and in the parallel the daughter bears him a son.
‘And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter, and she bore a son and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a strange land.”
Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Reuel was probably the leader of a family tribe. But in the area in which they were they may not only have been involved in keeping sheep and tilling the ground, but also in mining copper (the Kenites - ‘smiths' - were Midianites and Hobab was later seen as connected with the Kenites), in trading, and sometimes in robbing caravans in alliance with other Midianites. Moses joined the group under the protection of the chief. As a man well able to look after himself and knowledgeable about administrative and military affairs, both of which he would have learned in Egypt, he would be welcome. There he married the chief's daughter and had a son.
But the fact that no men had been available to accompany the seven daughters with their sheep may serve to demonstrate that the group was not very large, although probably part of a larger loose confederacy. For although well born daughters did look after sheep in those days, these were having particular frustrations. However it may be that the group's main activity was trading (compare the Midianites who bought Joseph) or raiding so that the men of the group were not seen as available for the task of looking after the sheep which could thus easily be left to the womenfolk, and their frustrations were probably dismissed as long as no harm came to the sheep. Jethro certainly later demonstrated some knowledge of controlling tribal affairs (chapter 18) and he was also ‘the priest of Midian'. It suggests that he was used to overseeing a tribe, although how far that reached we cannot know.
“He gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.” Zipporah means ‘Little Bird', and we can significantly compare Judges 6-8 where the Midianite chiefs were ‘Raven' and ‘Wolf'. This is evidence of historicity. Moses was now well established as the chief's son. In this marriage both parties gave recognition of each other's social status.
“Called his name Gershom.” ‘Ger' means a foreigner, a sojourner, a stranger. Moses construes the name here as meaning ‘a stranger there', the regular play on words common with both tribal and Egyptian names. Moses' comment suggests how hardly he understandably felt his exile. For a time he longed to be back in Egypt.