Exodus
2:16 ¶ Now the priest of Midian had
seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water
their father’s flock. 17 And the
shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and
watered their flock. 18 And when they
came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day?
19 And they said, An Egyptian delivered
us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and
watered the flock. 20 And he said unto
his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him,
that he may eat bread. 21 And Moses was
content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. 22 And she bare him a son, and he called his
name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.
The
priest of Midian, we will come to know as Reuel and as Jethro. It is not
uncommon for a person to have two names. For instance, my brother’s name is
Douglas and also Brent as at different times of his life, for various reasons,
he has preferred one over the other. In addition, we have seen that some names
in the Bible that appear to be given names are actually titles. It is possible
that either Jethro or Reuel is a title or it is likely that they are both names
for the same person.
I
suspect Reuel is a personal name, used only once here with the variant spelling
of Raguel used in Numbers 10:29, and Jethro, which we will come to later, is a
more formal name.
Moses,
a bold man, probably skilled in the warrior arts of Egypt and wearing the garb
of his former station in life, defended the daughters of the priest of Midian
in their efforts to feed their own flock of sheep against shepherds who
apparently bullied them. He was given
sanctuary by the priest of Midian and eventually a daughter to take as a wife,
named Zipporah. She bare him a son named Gershom, which in the context means a stranger in a strange land to be
understood as a foreigner. Moses suffers the worse kind of alienation. He did
not belong anywhere. As the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter he was always
a Hebrew yet his own people regarded him as a member of the oppressing
Egyptians and now he has fled as a fugitive to seek refuge in a desert place
with people who were not his people. Sometimes, we know that God has to bring
us to a desert place in our lives to prepare us for His use, a state of mind
where we feel as if we have no place where we belong.
The
stage is being set by God for some great events in God’s plan of reconciling
man to Himself, nothing like of which has been seen since the Flood of Noah’s
time or the dispersal at Babel.
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