And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren.
One day the man raised in Pharaoh's palace walked out of it, and the story of Israel's deliverance begins with a look. What he saw, and what he did next, raise the question that shapes the rest of his life: how does God prepare a deliverer?
The verse skips decades in a single phrase. Commentators fill the gap from the book of Acts, which gives his age and what God was stirring in him.
The history here passes over many years, but Acts 7:22 tells us, "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, and was mighty in words and deeds." Acts then adds that he was forty years old when Exodus 2:11 took place. At this time the Lord was moving him to take seriously his link with the suffering nation of Israel. No doubt the training of his early years finally did its work and woke a concern of heart that had lain asleep for years. His first action was to go out and watch how the Egyptians treated his people. It seems this shocked him, and when he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, it stirred his anger.
That early training came from his own mother.
No doubt his mother had given him a deep sense of the moral greatness of his own people as "the people of God" and "the sons of Israel." None of the tempting influences of Egyptian wisdom could ever erase it.
Two small words carry the weight of the verse. Older translations read "his brethren" where the ESV has "his people." Put that word next to "their burdens." Moses had every reason to call these slaves something else.
What a revelation in two words! He is a high courtier, yet he identifies himself with the crowd of cowering slaves. He "is not ashamed to call them brethren." He does not look at their sins. We know that, as with every enslaved people, oppression had bred among them the foulest and meanest vices. He looks instead at their burdens, at the grinding misery of their daily lives… Ah, what a different world, and what a different church, it would be, if we looked more at one another's burdens and less at one another's faults!
Moses' place in Egypt looked like an opening God Himself had arranged. One writer shows what faith did with that reasoning.
Now, here we learn that as surely as providence carried him into the house of Pharaoh, faith led him out… The providence of God had placed him in an illustrious position, unsought, unexpected. … Why not use his ability and his wisdom? Why not use the influence his high rank gave him, and his closeness to the royal family of the land? Why not turn such clear gifts of providence, gladly and wisely, to the service of God's people?… But no! Faith at once sets aside all such reasoning built on providences.
His love for them was real. His timing was not.
This was zeal for his brothers, but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come to judge Egypt and deliver Israel. The servant who understands will always wait for God's time… All this was true. Yet he clearly ran ahead of the time, and when a man does that, failure must be the result.
The next verse records his glance over his shoulder. One writer treats that small detail as proof.
Moses "looked this way and that way." A man has no need to do that when he acts with God and for God, and when he fully understands His mind about the details of his work. Suppose God's time had really come. Suppose Moses knew that God had commissioned him to carry out judgement on the Egyptian. Suppose he felt sure of God's presence with him. Then he would not have "looked this way and that way."
A palace left behind, and brothers who did not recognise him — one writer sees this pattern pointing beyond Moses.
He left the palace and, perhaps, the throne, and came to his own to take up their cause. It all points to Him, who left the glory and came to His own and they received Him not. When Moses came the first time to his brethren to deliver them, "they understood not" (Acts 7:25). But they understood when he came the second time, as Israel will understand, when He, who is greater than Moses, comes the second time.
- Nursed — his mother's teaching outlasted forty years of Egyptian schooling. Nothing in Egypt could erase it.
- Chose — providence put Moses in the palace. Faith took him out. Rank and influence looked like gifts to spend on God's people, and faith set that reasoning aside.
- Looked — he saw burdens, not faults. That is the look that makes a deliverer, and the one the church still needs.
- Ran — love that acts too soon still fails. The glance "this way and that way" marks a man without a commission.
- Foreshadowed — a deliverer leaves a throne and comes to his own, and they do not understand him. He points to One whom Israel will understand at His second coming.
And he turned this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he smote the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
Moses had grown up, and he went out to his own people under their burdens. The day ended with a dead Egyptian hidden in the sand — was that faith, or was it impulse?
One writer traces the scene, and finds even Moses' sideways glance revealing:
His brothers under their burdens lay on the heart of Moses; and as he looked, he saw an Egyptian strike one of them. Anger rose in him. "He looked this way and that," and seeing no witness, he took the law into his own hands and killed the offender, hiding the body in the sand. The love for his brothers was a right and holy feeling. But putting the Egyptian to death could not be justified. It led to his long exile, to escape the king's anger. He acted on the impulse of his heart, and in no way as one consulting God or obeying Him. Had he looked to Him, he would not have "looked this way and that." He spoiled his testimony for God by trying to avoid any witness of the deed, or of his hiding of the body, and to avoid the consequences.
Scripture states the fact and adds no verdict. That points to a rule for reading the whole Bible:
We must distinguish between the statement of a fact in the Bible and any approval given to it. This may help our appreciation of the word of God in all such cases. We must always refuse the thought that recording a fact in Scripture means it matches the full mind of God. The truth is that He speaks of good men and bad men. He mentions not only what was excellent in the good, but also the distressing and shameful things that draw out His own discipline — it may be a long while after.
Exodus records the deed. The letter to the Hebrews shows what was behind it:
No doubt Moses acted in the energy of the flesh. He had not yet learned his own nothingness and inability, yet he still desired to act for God. It is from the letter to the Hebrews that we learn the true character of his actions before God. That there was failure is clear. But it was the failure of a man of faith. His actions were precious in the sight of God, because faith enabled him to refuse everything that might have tempted the natural man, and to identify himself with the interests of God's people.
Moses had the right cause and the right training. What he lacked was God's timing:
This was zeal for his brothers; but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come for judging Egypt and delivering Israel. The wise servant will always wait for God's time. "Moses had grown up"; "he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians"; and further, "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." All this was true. Yet he plainly ran ahead of the time, and when a person does this, failure must be the result.
The people Moses tried to help refused him. That refusal was repeated later, on a far greater scale:
His brothers, however, did not understand, for they did not share his faith. So they rejected him as their deliverer. They wanted to go on in their own wrongdoing, and not to stir up revenge from the power of Egypt. In Acts 7, Stephen is led to make these points clear. He shows that in rejecting the Lord Jesus the Jews had repeated what their fathers did before with Moses — on a scale infinitely more serious. In the Lord Jesus there was not the slightest element of imperfection. In Moses there was distinct failure. His desires were right: his action wrong.
The exile that followed was not wasted time. It was training:
Moses was not brought to nothingness in his own eyes. He was playing the hero, not the saint who waits on God — not only for the revealed goal, but for every step of the way… And Moses had, as it were, to unlearn in Midian for as many years as he had spent learning the wisdom of the Egyptians… The solitude of the wilderness and the lowly life of a shepherd gave this discipline the setting it needed. There his impulsive spirit could be broken down, and he himself become "very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth."
- Right love. Moses' heart for his suffering people was holy. The killing was not.
- Wrong strength. He acted on impulse, without asking God. Looking "this way and that" showed whose eye he watched.
- Wrong clock. God's time to judge Egypt had not come; running ahead of it guarantees failure.
- Real faith. The letter to the Hebrews shows the true character of the act: the failure of a man of faith, not of a hot temper.
- Long school. His own people rejected him. In Midian he unlearned Egypt for as many years as he had spent learning it, until the hero became the meekest man on earth.
And he went out on the second day, and behold, two Hebrew men were quarrelling; and he said to him that was in the wrong, Why art thou smiting thy neighbour?
The day before, Moses had struck down an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. Now he goes out again. This time the fighting is inside his own people, and his effort to stop it will end with him running for his life.
The change from day one to day two is the whole difficulty. Yesterday's wrong had a clear villain. Today both men belong to God's people.
Visiting his brothers the following day, a very different situation faces him — an Israelite striking an Israelite. Moses made two mistakes. He thought his brothers knew something they in fact did not know, and he acted before God's time. The falseness of his position comes to light through these two brothers fighting each other. No doubt he faced a very severe test. An Egyptian striking an Israelite was easy to settle, but an Israelite striking an Israelite was beyond him, whatever their reason for fighting. How many of us have the grace and wisdom to handle cases like this?
Moses does not ask who started it. He speaks to the man in the wrong. His question rests on what the two men share — a plea Acts records in fuller words.
But God was not in their thoughts, and Moses was misunderstood. Worse than that: "And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarrelling and tried to reconcile them, saying, 'Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?' But the man who was wronging his neighbour thrust him aside, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?'" The sharpest wound, and the lowest blow, comes from God's own people. When man rules there instead of God, Satan is working underneath it all, and at his worst.
Moses had denied himself for these men. He assumed they would read his actions and see God's hand in him.
Moses thought that his brothers would certainly admire his self-denial and devotion to their cause. As Acts 7:25 says, "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." What a terrible disappointment! "They did not understand." The very Israelite he was correcting for wronging his neighbour "pushed him aside." What was the good of having "refused," "chosen," and "esteemed," if this was the result?
Writers read this scene as a picture of Christ, resting on a promise God later gave through Moses. One writer sets Joseph's story beside it.
That he was a type of Him is clear from this passage: "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers — it is to him you shall listen" (Deut. 18:15). So we are not dealing in human imagination when we view Moses as a type; it is the plain teaching of Scripture. In Joseph's case we see open hostility to his person. In Moses it is the rejection of his mission. Of Joseph we read, "they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him" (Gen. 37:4). In the case of Moses the words are, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" In short, the first was personally hated; the second was officially refused.
The two days together shape the picture.
Moses, seeing his brothers oppressed, steps in to save them from their enemies with temporary effect (Ex. 2:11-12); but when he goes further and tries to save them from themselves (Ex. 2:13-14), they scornfully reject him.
Moses cared for his people. What failed was his method, and Midian became his training.
Moses was not yet brought to nothing in his own eyes. He was playing the hero rather than being the saint who waits on God — not only for the end God has revealed, but for every step of the way. So we walk by faith, not by sight. It is a path of constant dependence on God, guided by His word. Moses had to spend as many years unlearning in Midian as he had spent learning the wisdom of the Egyptians.
The scene has a plain use wherever people who belong to God turn on one another.
This is war in the middle of the people of God. Such a course can never be good. Why not suffer injustice, if necessary? "Why not rather suffer wrong?" (1 Cor. 6:7). Why not wait for the Lord to overrule in matters that arise between brothers?
- Brothers fighting. Day one, an outsider hurt a Hebrew. Day two, Hebrew fights Hebrew — an easy case became one beyond Moses.
- Brothers appealed to. His question rests on kinship, not on blame: you are brothers, so why wrong each other?
- Brother refused. The wrongdoer pushes him aside. Writers see a mission refused here, while Joseph's brothers hated the man himself.
- Brother exiled. Refused by his own people, he goes to Midian, where the years unlearn what Egypt had taught him.
- Brother taught. He was right that God would use him. He was wrong about the timing — and the saint waits on God for every step.
And he said, Who made thee ruler and judge over us? dost thou intend to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? Then Moses feared, and said, Surely the matter is known.
Moses' first effort to rescue his people ends here. The man he tried to correct throws the question of authority back at him, and shows that the killing of the Egyptian is already known. Commentators see a rejected deliverer driven into forty years of hiding, and a shadow of a greater rejection to come.
The sting did not come from Egypt. It came from the people Moses risked everything for — and from the man in the wrong.
But God was not in their thoughts, and Moses was misunderstood. Worse than that: "On the following day he appeared to them as they were quarrelling and tried to reconcile them, saying, 'Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?' But the man who was wronging his neighbour thrust him aside, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?'" The sharpest wound, like the lowest blow, comes from God's people. When man rules among them and not God, Satan works underneath it all and at his worst.
The words attack Moses' office, not his person. Joseph's brothers rejected him in another way.
In Joseph's case we have positive hatred against his person. In Moses it is the rejection of his mission. Of Joseph we read, "they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him." In the case of Moses the word is, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" In short, Joseph was hated as a person; Moses was refused in his office.
The wrongdoer throws yesterday's act back at Moses. Writers trace the failure to the source of his power, not to the sincerity of his love.
Moses was mighty in deeds, and he worked on behalf of the people of God too. But he acted in the energy of the flesh, not as one sent by God, and so what followed came about. Moses was thinking how Moses would deliver the people. "He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." But no, "they did not understand." Moses had another lesson to learn. God had to teach him that He will only be served by the power and strength that come from Himself, not by the strength or wisdom of Egypt.
Exodus points to Pharaoh's anger as the reason Moses ran. Acts ties his flight to the words of the man in this verse.
When he found that the thing was known, and that his people had rejected his action, however well meant it was, he left. Reading Exodus, we get the impression that his main motive was the anger of Pharaoh. Acts 7:29 casts a somewhat different light on it. "Then Moses fled at this saying" — the saying of the wrongdoer — "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" So it is plain: rejection by his own people is what hurt him most. Forty years later they all had to discover that it was GOD who made him a ruler and judge over them, but for the time being he was lost to them.
God Himself answers the question at the burning bush.
As Stephen put it, "This Moses, whom they rejected … this man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush." What he had tried to do in his own wisdom and strength, and failed at, he will now do in the wisdom and power of God.
A man leaves a palace, comes to his own people, and they turn him away. Commentators see the outline of a later story in it.
He acted in self-will, taking up the office of judge and leader without having received the divine call. Still, it was faith that led Moses into this path and to make this remarkable choice. But they did not receive him; they rejected him. He left the palace, and perhaps the throne, and came to his own to take up their cause. It all points to Him who left the glory and came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. When Moses came the first time to his brothers to deliver them, "they did not understand." But they understood when he came the second time. Israel too will understand when He who is greater than Moses comes again.
Later the same nation used Moses' name to refuse Christ.
The people of Israel, for all their boasted reverence for Moses, did not really receive him as God's messenger. They rejected him in Egypt, saying, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" … Later Jesus came, "the faithful and true witness," "the true light." The Jews rejected His claims by putting forward those of Moses. Man's evil heart and twisted will constantly refuse to acknowledge the rights of God. Despising His grace in Christ, they pretend to honour His rights in the law, and use the law to reject Christ.
- Refused — the wrongdoer rejects Moses' office, not the man. Joseph was hated as a person; Moses was turned down as a leader.
- Wounded — the deepest blow comes from inside. Not from Egypt, but from the people he gave up a palace to serve.
- Exposed — the question shows up strength drawn from Egypt, not from God. God accepts only service done in the strength He gives.
- Removed — Acts ties his flight to this taunt. His brothers' contempt drove him out as much as Pharaoh's sword did.
- Answered — God later sends the very man they rejected, as ruler and redeemer. The scene sketches One who came to His own, was refused, and will be understood when He comes again.
And Pharaoh heard of this matter, and sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from before Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian. And he sat by the well.
One sentence carries Moses from the palace of Egypt to a stranger's well in the desert. It raises a hard question: what does it mean when a sincere attempt to help ends in flight?
The verse names Pharaoh as the danger, but the trouble started closer to home.
It does say that Moses fled from Pharaoh (v.15), but the context brings out something more: his own people had rejected him. Moses saw two Hebrew men quarrelling and corrected the one in the wrong. The man answered him: "Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" In fact, it was this opposition from his own people that put him in danger with Pharaoh.
Exodus tells us that Moses was afraid and ran. The New Testament looks at the same man and calls it faith.
Hebrews gives a most gracious view of what Moses did. This is how the Holy Spirit deals with the history of Old Testament saints. When He writes a man's history, He presents him as he is, and faithfully sets out all his failures and imperfections. But when He comments on that history in the New Testament, He gives only the real principle and main result of the man's life. So in Exodus we read that Moses "looked this way and that way," that "he was afraid and said, Surely the thing is known," and last of all that "Moses fled from Pharaoh." Yet Hebrews teaches that what he did, he did "by faith" — that he did not fear "the wrath of the king" — that "he endured as seeing him who is invisible."
Commentators differ over which departure Hebrews describes. Some tie it to this flight. Others tie it to the exodus out of Egypt.
Doubtless this refers to the second time that he left Egypt. On the first occasion, we read, "Moses fled from Pharaoh" (Ex. 2:15). On the second occasion he stood up to Pharaoh face to face. Under the mighty hand of God he brought the children of Israel out of Egypt in triumph.
Sitting by that well, Moses could have counted his whole life wasted. Commentators see the opposite.
What anguish for a faithful heart, blocked like this while sincerely trying to serve his own people! All his sacrifices and his surrender of the glories of Egypt may now have looked useless to others and of no profit to himself. He sat there, a wanderer and exile, like a withered, fruitless tree in the desert. But if these were Moses' thoughts, they were not God's. The mission was not forfeited, only postponed. God's time to deliver His people had not come, and the people themselves were not ready for that deliverance... And already, as he sits by the well in the land of Midian, he is under the discipline that will shape him. It is preparing him for the great service God has planned for him.
The forty years that follow do a specific work — not adding to Moses, but subtracting from him.
Moses needed forty years far out in the desert to fit him to lead God's people out of Egypt and through the wilderness. No doubt God used his education in Egypt to form the vessel for His service. But the forty years were needed to empty that vessel of all that had filled it during its making.
The flight looks like defeat. But God chose where Moses landed.
What could he do but leave Egypt altogether? He took a long journey to Midian, possibly nearly a hundred miles, which cut him off completely from his own people Israel as well as from Egypt. How intense his loneliness must have been! But it was God who had led him there. Sitting down to rest by a well, he saw a scene that again stirred his concern for the oppressed.
Commentators read the whole chapter as a prophecy in outline, with Midian standing for the Gentiles — the nations outside Israel.
Moses sees his own people oppressed and steps in to save them from their enemies, with temporary effect (Ex. 2:11-12). But when he goes further and tries to save them from themselves (Ex. 2:13-14), they reject him with scorn. So he withdraws into Midian among the Gentiles. There he finds others suffering injustice and oppression, and defends them. The earlier setbacks do not stop him. He opens to them the resources of the well, and wins Zipporah as his wife. Then he returns again to redeem Israel — and this time they receive him. All this is clearly a picture of the rejection of the Messiah by the Jews, and of His work since then among the Gentiles. There He receives the church as His bride... and afterwards He returns with her to save His Jewish people.
The same pattern appeared earlier with Joseph, but the two rejections are not identical:
In Joseph's case we have open hatred against his person. In Moses it is the rejection of his mission... Joseph was hated as a person; Moses was refused as a leader.
- Rejected. Pharaoh's sword was the visible threat. But his own people's refusal — "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" — is what drove Moses out.
- Removed. Exodus records his fear; Hebrews records his faith. Scripture records the failure, then names the principle underneath it.
- Refined. The mission was postponed, not forfeited. Midian was not a gap in the story but the discipline that emptied the vessel Egypt had filled.
- Redirected. Alone and a hundred miles from his own people, Moses still defended strangers in Midian. Exile did not change his character.
- Returning. A deliverer refused by his own people takes a bride among outsiders, then comes back to redeem them. That is the shape of Christ's rejection, His church, and His return.