The Pulpit Commentaries
Exodus 2:16-22
EXPOSITION.
LIFE OF MOSES IN MIDIAN
Fugitives from Egypt generally took the northern route from Pelusium or Migdol to Gaza, and so to Syria, or the regions beyond. But in this quarter they were liable to be arrested and sent back to the Egyptian monarch. Rameses II: put a special clause to this effect into his treaty with the contemporary Hittite king. It was, perhaps, the fear of extradition which made Moses turn his steps southeastward, and proceed along the route, or at any rate in the direction, which he afterwards took with his nation. Though Egypt had possessions in the Sinaitic peninsula, it was not difficult to avoid them; and before Sinai was reached the fugitive would be in complete safety, for the Egyptians seem never to have penetrated to the southern or eastern parts of the great triangle. "The well," by which Moses took up his abode, is placed with some probability in the neighbourhood of Sherm, about ten miles north-east of Ras Mahommed, the southern cape of the peninsula
Exodus 2:16. —
The priest of Midian. Cohen is certainly "priest" here, and not "prince," since the father-in-law of Moses exercises priestly functions in Exodus 18:12. His seven daughters drew water for his flock, in accordance with Eastern custom. So Rachel "kept the sheep" of her father Laban, and watered them (Genesis 29:9). Such a practice agrees well with the simplicity of primitive times and peoples; nor would it even at the present day be regarded as strange in Arabia.
The shepherds came and drove them away. There is not much "natural politeness" among primitive peoples. The right of the stronger prevails, and women go to the wall. Even the daughters of their priest were not respected by these rude sons of the desert, who would not wait their turn, but used the water which Reners daughters had drawn. The context shows that this was not an accidental or occasional circumstance, but the regular practice of the shepherds, who thus day after day saved themselves the trouble of drawing. (See the next verse.) Moses stood up and helped them. Ever ready to assist the weak against the strong (supra, Exodus 2:12-2), Moses "stood up" — sprang to his feet — and, though only one man against a dozen or a score, by his determined air intimidated the crowd of wrong-doers, and forced them to let the maidens' sheep drink at the troughs. His dress was probably that of an Egyptian of rank; and they might reasonably conclude from his boldness that he had attendants within call.
Reuel their father. Reuel is called "Raguel" in Numbers 10:29, but the Hebrew spelling is the same in both places. The word means "friend of God," and implies monotheisim. Compare Exodus 18:9-2.
An Egyptian. Reuel's daughters judged by the outward appearance. Moses wore the garb and probably spoke the language of Egypt. He had had no occasion to reveal to them his real nationality. Drew water enough for us. The shepherds had consumed some of the water drawn by the maidens, before Moses could drive them off. He supplied the deficiency by drawing more for them — an act of polite attention.
Where is he? Reuel reproaches his daughters with a want of politeness — even of gratitude. Why have they "left the man"? Why have they not invited him in? They must themselves remedy the omission — they must go and "call him" — that he "may eat bread," or take his evening meal with them.
Moses was content to dwell with the man. Moses had fled from Egypt without any definite plan, simply to save his life, and had now to determine how he would obtain a subsistence. Received into Reuel's house, or tent, pleased with the man and with his family, he consented to stay with him, probably entered into his service, as Jacob into Laban's (Genesis 29:15-1), kept his sheep, or otherwise made himself useful (see Exodus 3:1); and in course of time Reuel gave Moses his daughter, accepted him for his son-in-law, so that he became not merely a member of his household, but of his family, was adopted probably into the tribe, so that he could not quit it without permission (Exodus 4:18), and, so far as his own intention went, cast in his lot with the Midianites, with whom he meant henceforth to live and die. Such vague ideas as he may previously have entertained of his "mission" had passed away; he had been "disillusioned" by his ill-success, and now looked forward to nothing but a life of peaceful obscurity.
Exodus 2:22. —
Gershom. An Egyptian etymology has been assigned to this name; but Moses in the text clearly indicates that his own intention was to give his child a name significant in Hebrew. "He called his name Gershom, for he said, a stranger (ger) have I been," etc. The only question is, what the second element of the name, shom, means. This appears to be correctly explained by Kalisch and others as equivalent to sham "there " — so that the entire word would mean "(I was) a stranger there" — i.e. in the country where this son was born to me.
HOMILETICS.
§ 1. Moses a second time the champion of the oppressed.
His championship of an oppressed Hebrew, indiscreetly and wrongfully asserted, had driven Moses from the country of his birth. No sooner does he set foot in the land where he seeks a refuge, than his championship is again called forth. On the first occasion it was a weaker race oppressed by one more powerful that made appeal to his feelings; now it is the weaker sex, oppressed by the stronger, that rouses him. His Egyptian civilisation may have helped to intensify his aversion to this form of oppression, since among the Egyptians of his time women held a high place, and were treated with consideration. He springs forward therefore to maintain the rights of Reuel's daughters; but he has learnt wisdom so far that he restrains himself — kills no one, strikes no one — merely "helps" the victims, and has their wrong redressed. The circumstances of life give continual occasion for such interference as this; and each man is bound, so far as he can, to check oppression, and "see that they who are in need and necessity have right." If Moses is a warning to us in respect of his mode of action on the former occasion, he is an example here. The protection of women, whensoever and wheresoever they are wronged and ill-used, is a high Christian duty.
§ 2. Moses as husband and father.
The Midianites were descendants of Abraham (Genesis 25:24); and marriage with them was permitted, even under the Law (Numbers 31:18). Moses, in wedding Zipporah, obeyed the primeval command, "Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28), while at the same time he gave himself the solace so much needed by an exile, of tender and loving lifelong companionship. That Reuel was willing to give him one of his daughters indicates that he had approved himself as a faithful servant in the good priest's household, and was felt to deserve a reward. That Zipporah accepted him was perhaps mere filial obedience, for which she was rewarded when the fugitive and exile became the first man in a considerable nation. God blessed the marriage with male issue, a blessing fondly desired by each true Israelite, and certainly not least by Moses, who knew so well that in some descendant of Abraham "all the families of the earth should be blessed." A shade of sadness shows itself, however, in the name which he gave his firstborn — Gershom, "a stranger there." He himself had been for years, and, for aught that he could tell. his son might always be "a stranger in a strange land" far from his true home, far from his own people, a refugee among foreigners, who could not be expected to love him as one of themselves, or treat him otherwise than with coldness. Depression like this often assails us at moments of great joy, the good obtained making us feel all the more sensibly that other goods have been lost. Such depression, however, after a time, passes away, and the desponding cry of "Gershom" is followed (Exodus 18:3-2) by that of" Eliezer," or "my God helps."
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
The long exile.Moses took with him into Midian all the best elements of his character; he left some of the faulty ones behind. He may be assumed to have left much of his self-confidence, and to have been cured in part of his natural rashness. His after growth in meekness would almost imply that he had come to see the need of curbing his hot passions, and had, like David, purposed in his heart that he would not transgress (Psalms 17:3; Psalms 32:1). But he carried with him all his nobleness, all his magnanimity and courtesy. This comes beautifully out in his defence of the women at the well (Exodus 2:16-2).
I. AN INSTANCE OF CHIVALRY.
We have in the incident —1. The weak pushed aside by the strong. Rude, ill-mannered fellows thrust aside the daughters of the priest of Midian from the sheep-troughs, and shamelessly appropriate the water with which they had diligently filled them.2. Brave championship of the weak. Moses takes their part, stands up to help them, and compels the shepherds to give way. Not content with this, he gives the maidens what assistance he is able. The two dispositions stand in fine contrast: the one all that is unmanly and contemptible, the other all that is chivalrous and noble. The instance teaches —1. That the chivalrous disposition is also helpful. The one grace sets off the other. But the bully is a churl, helping nobody, and filching from the weak.2. That the bully is to boot a coward. He will insult a woman, but cringes in the presence of her vindicator. No true man need be afraid to beard him.3. That acts of kindness to the defenceless are often repaid in unexpected ways. They are indeed their own reward. It revives one's spirit to maintain the cause of the needy. Moses, like Jesus, sat by the well; but this little act of kindness, like the Saviour's conversation with the woman of Samaria, did more to refresh his spirit than the sweetest draught he could have taken from it. It was good for him, defeated in resisting tyranny in Egypt, and discouraged by the reception he had met with from his brethren, to have this opportunity of reasserting his crushed manhood, and of feeling that he was still useful. It taught him, and it teaches us —(1) Not to despair of doing good. Tyranny has many phases, and when it cannot be resisted in one form, it may in another. And it taught him(2) Not to despair of human nature. Gratitude had not vanished from the earth, because his brethren had proved ungrateful. Hearts were still to be found, sensitive to the magic touch of kindness; capable of responding to it; ready to repay it by love. For the little deed of chivalry led to unexpected and welcome results. It prepared the way for the hospitable reception of Moses by Reuel; found for him a home in Midian; gave him a wife; provided him with suitable occupation.
II. THE RESIDENCE IN MIDIAN.
Notice on this —1. The place of it. In or near the Peninsula of Sinai. Solitude and grandeur. Fit place for education of thought and heart. Much alone with God — with Nature in her more awful aspects — with his own thoughts.2. The society of it. He had probably few companions beyond his immediate circle: his wife; her father, sheikh and priest, — pious, hospitable, kindly-natured; the sisters. His life simple and unartificial, a wholesome corrective to the luxury of Egypt.3. The occupation of it. He kept flocks (Exodus 3:1). The shepherd's life, besides giving him a valuable knowledge of the topography of the desert, was very suitable for developing qualities important in a leader — watchfulness, skill, caution, self-reliance, bravery, tenderness, etc. So David was taken "from the sheepcote, from following the sheep," to be ruler over God's people, over Israel (2 Samuel 7:8). It lets in light on Moses' character that he was willing to stoop to, and did not spurn, this lowly toil. He that could so humble himself was fit to be exalted. By faithfulnesss in that which was least, he served an apprenticeship for being faithful also in much (Luke 16:10).4. The duration of it. Forty years was a long time, but not too long for the training God was giving him. The richest characters are slowest in coming to maturity, and Moses was all this while developing in humility, and in knowledge of God, of man, and, of his own heart.
The whole subject teaches us valuable lessons. Learn —
1. God's dealings with his servants are often mysterious. Moses in Midian seems an instance of the highest gifts thrown uselessly away. Is this, we ask in surprise, the only use God can find for a man so richly gifted, so remarkably preserved, and on whom have been lavished all the treasures of Egypt's wisdom? Any ordinary man might be a shepherd, but how few could do the work of a Moses? Moses himself, in the meditations of these forty years, must often have wondered at the strange irony of his life. Yet how clear it was all made to him at last! Trust God to know better what is good for you than you do yourself.2. How little a man has, after all, to do with the shaping of his own history! In one sense he has much, yea everything, to do with it. Had Moses, e.g., not so rashly slain the Egyptian, his whole future would doubtless have borne a different complexion. Man is responsible for his acts, but once he has done them, they are taken in spite of himself out of his hands, and shaped in their consequences by overruling Providence. He who sent the princess to the river, sent also the priest's daughters to the well.3. It is man's wisdom to study contentment with his lot. It may be humble, and not the lot we like, or had counted on. It may be a lot to which we never expected to be reduced. We may feel as if our gifts and powers were being wasted in it. Yet if it is our lot — the one meanwhile providentialiy marked out for us ¯ our wisdom is cheerfully to accept of it, and make the best of the tasks which belong to it, J.O.
Gershom.1. The good man in this world is often lonely at heart.(1) When violence reigns unchecked. (2) When God's cause is in a depressed condition. (3) When repulsed in efforts to do good. (4) When severed from scenes of former labour. (5) When his outward lot is uncongenial. (6) When deprived of suitable companionships, and when he can find few to sympathise with him.2. God sends to the good man alleviations of his loneliness. We may hope that Zipporah, if not without faults, formed a kind and helpful wife to Moses. Then, sons were born to him — the first, the Gershom of this text.
These were consolations. A wife's affection, the prattle and innocence of children — have sweetened the lot of many all exile. Bunyan and his blind daughter. — J.O.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG
Exodus 2:15-2. —Moses in Midian.Moses had to flee. The hard, unworthy reproach, humiliating as he must have felt it to be, nevertheless gave him a timely warning. His flight seems to have been instantaneous; perhaps not even the opportunity to bid farewell to his friends. An utter rupture, a complete separation was his only safety. Consider —
I. WHAT HE LEFT BEHIND HIM.
1. Possibly Pharaoh's daughter was still alive. If so, we can imagine her sorrow and utter perplexity over the son of her adoption, and the reproaches she might have to bear from her own kindred. How often she may have heard that common expression which adds insult to bitter disappointment, "I told you so." We may be tolerably sure as to one result of the long sojourn of Moses in Midian, viz., that when he returned, she would be vanished from the scene, spared from beholding the son of her adoption the agent of such dreadful visitations to her own people. Yet even with this mitigation, the agony may have been more than she could boar. She had sheltered Moses, watched over him, and "nourished him for her own son," giving him the opportunity to become learned m all the wisdom of the Egyptians; only to find at last that a sword had pierced through her own soul (Luke 2:35; Acts 7:21).2. He left his brethren in servitude. Any expectation they may have had, from his present eminence and possibly greater eminence in the future, was now completely crushed. It is well to effect a timely crushing of false hopes, even if great severity has to be used.3. He left behind all difficulties that came from his connexion with the court. Had he gone on staying in Egypt he would have had to make his election, sooner or later, between the Egyptians and his own people. But now he is spared having to decide for himself. We have to thank God that he sometimes takes painful and difficult decisions out of our hands, so that we have no longer to blame ourselves either for haste or procrastination; for rashness and imprudence, or cowardice and sloth. God in his providence does things for us, which we might find it very hard to do for ourselves.
II. WHAT HE FOUND BEFORE HIM.
He went out, hardly knowing whither he went. The safest place was the best for him, and that safest place might not immediately appear. Yet how plain it is that God was guiding him, as really as he guided Abraham, though Moses was not conscious of the guiding. He fled because he had slain a fellow-man, yet he was not going forth as a Cain. Under the wrath of Pharaoh, he was not under that wrath of God which rests upon murderers. He Was going to a new school, that was all — having learned all that could be learned in the old one. He probably asked himself as he fled, "Where can I go? Who will receive me? What story can I tell?" He would feel, now the homicide was known, that it was impossible to say how far the news had reached. Onward he sped — perhaps, like most fugitives of the sort, hiding by day and travelling by night — until at last he reached the land of Midian. Here he concluded to dwells although it may have been in his mind only a temporary stage to a distant and safer abode. And now observe that with this fresh mention of what happened to him after his flight, there is an immediate and still further revelation of his character, all in the way of showing his natural fitness for the great work of his life. He has made an awful mistake in his manner of showing sympathy with Israel, and in consequence has exposed himself to a humiliating rebuff; but all this does not make him one whit less willing to champion the weak when the occasion comes. He was a man always ready for opportunities of service; and wherever he went there seemed to be something for him to do. He had fled from a land where the strong oppressed the weak, and come into another land where he found the same thing prevailing, and in one of its most offensive forms; for the tyranny was that of man over woman. The people of Midian had a priest who seems to have been himself a hospitable man and a judicious and prudent one (ch. 18.); but there was so little reality of religion among the people, so little respect for the priest's office, that these shepherds drove his daughters away from the well — whom rather they should have gladly helped. It was not an occasional misadventure to the daughters, but a regular experience (Exodus 2:18). None of these shepherds perhaps had ever killed a man, but for all that they were a pack of savage boors. Moses, on the other hand, even though he has slain a man, is not a mere bravo, one who puts little value on human life. One might have said of him as Chaucer says of one of his pilgrims in the 'Canterbury Tales,'"He was a veray parfit gentil knight."Then, when Moses had helped the women, his difficulties and doubts were soon brought to an end. He had helped them, though they were utter strangers, because he felt it his duty so to do. He was not looking to them for a release from his difficulties, for how could a few weak women help him, those who had just been the objects of his own pity? But as women had been the means of protecting him in infancy, so they were the means of providing for him now. He did not seek Reuel; Reuel sought him. He needed no certificate of character, these daughters themselves were an epistle of commendation to their father. He might safely tell all his story now, for even the darkest chapter of it would be viewed in the light of his recent generous action. — Y.
Sitting by the well: a suggestive comparison.The very expression, "He sat down by a well," inevitably suggests that conversation beside the well at Sychar, in which Jesus took so important a part. Note the following points of resemblance, and then say if they can be considered as purely accidental. Are they not rather involved in the profound designs of him who presided over the construction of the Scriptures?1. As we see Moses fleeing from the face of Pharaoh, so we see Jesus making a prudent departure from Judaea into Galilee, on account of the Pharisees.2. Both Moses and Jesus are found sitting by a well.3. As Moses comes in contact with seven women of a different nation, so Jesus with the woman of Samaria. And just as the daughters of Reuel made the difference seem greater still by calling Moses an Egyptian, which though a name partly appropriate, was yet particularly inappropriate at a time when he was the object of Pharaoh's bitterest hatred — so the woman of Samaria laid emphasis on the fact that Jesus was a Jew, being altogether ignorant how small a part was that of the truth concerning him.4. The very difference in number is significant. Moses could help a number in the service that he rendered, because it was a mere external service. But Jesus needed to have the woman of Samaria alone, that he might deal effectually with her peculiar, individual need. There is a great difference in respect of the things to be said and done, according as we are dealing with one person or more than one.5. The meeting of Moses with the daughters of Reuel led on to his becoming acquainted with Reuel himself; gaining his confidence and becoming his helper. So Jesus serving the woman of Samaria was led on to serve, not one only, but many of those connected with her.6. Moses soon entered into a nearer relation still with Reuel, and Jesus in the course of his conversation with the woman asserted principles which were to break down the barriers between Sew and Samaritan, and every wall of partition separating those who should be united. Lastly, he who helped these women became a shepherd; and his dying thought was of a shepherd's work, as he prayed God to give him a successor who should be a true shepherd to Israel. And as to Jesus, we all know how he delighted to set himself before his disciples as the Good Shepherd, deeply concerned for the nourishment and security of his flock, and concerned most of all to seek and to save that which was lost (Matthew 18:11; Luke 15:4; Luke 19:10). — Y.
HOMILIES BY H.T. ROBJOHNS
Life and its moods."He called his name Gershom," etc. (Exodus 2:22), compared with — "And the name of the other was Eliezer," etc. (Exodus 18:4). Note the isolation and misery of the earlier time, and the mercy of the later — each begetting its own tone and mood of mind; and further, the desirability of living above the mood of the passing day. Rev. O. Kingsley says ('Life,' 1:82): "Let us watch against tones. They are unsafe things. The tone of a man or woman's mind ought to be that of thoughtful reverence and love; but neither joy or sorrow, or activity or passiveness, or any other animal tone, ought to be habitual," etc. — R.