And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, Why are ye come so soon to-day?
Moses has fled from Egypt to Midian, sat down by a well, and defended seven sisters whom the shepherds drove off. Their father's surprise at how early they come home is the first notice anyone takes of a rejected man's quiet service.
The father named here goes by more than one name in the Bible, and commentators differ on how to fit them together. One reference work sets out the problem and the likely answer.
He seems to be called REUEL in Exodus 2:18, and HOBAB in Numbers 10:29, where RAGUEL is REUEL in the Hebrew. That passage says Raguel the Midianite was the father of HOBAB, the father-in-law of Moses (see also Judges 4:11). So in Exodus 2:18 "father" may mean "grandfather." Hobab may have been the personal name, and Jethro an official name.
One writer fills in who this man was, and what Moses gained by marrying into his house — a wife from outside Israel.
He became an exile in Midian and met Reuel. His name also is Jethro (3:1). Reuel means "friend of God." He also was a priest, no doubt a true worshipper of God. Moses received a daughter of the Midianite, Zipporah, for his wife. Rejected by his own people, he entered into union with a Gentile.
Moses says nothing about himself. The clock gives him away: the daughters are home early, and that starts the conversation.
Moses stepped in, and helped the young women so well that they came home early enough to make their father ask how it had happened. He sent word that the stranger should share his hospitality. The gift of his daughter as a wife followed.
Moses had wanted to deliver a nation, and his people refused him. At the well the job was tiny, and the way he took it shaped his exile.
He acts the part of a deliverer to the women at the well, who had been driven away by the shepherds. He has been denied the chance to declare himself a deliverer in a large circle, but he does not refuse to be one in a very small circle. He does not brood in listless sorrow over his own losses, like the fool who eats his own flesh. He submits to his circumstances, and rises above his own feelings, in his concern to serve others.
What he did for the sisters was not a new role for him.
The hand that struck the Egyptian was the hand of a deliverer. The heart of the shepherd shows in his concern to make peace between his own people when they were quarrelling. But his own people refused him, and Pharaoh hated him, so he flees to the land of Midian. There he shows other people in need the same hand of the deliverer and heart of the shepherd, when he steps in for Reuel's daughters.
One writer treats the well where Moses sat down as the reason he had anything to give.
But notice here too, my soul, that the fountain is not only the place of sweetest delight to yourself, but of the richest blessing to others. When we are truly connected with the source, we become the channel of living water to others. We are told that when Moses fled from Pharaoh to the land of Midian, "he sat down by a well." What a beautiful picture of the Christian's privileged place! He was now in the right position to help the daughters of Reuel water the flock.
One writer traces the whole sequence, and finds in it far more than one man's story.
Moses, seeing his own people oppressed, steps in to save them from their enemies, and it works for a while. But when he goes on to try to save them from themselves, they reject him with scorn. So he withdraws into Midian among the Gentiles. There he finds other people suffering injustice and oppression, and defends them, undaunted by his earlier discouragements. He opens the resources of the well to them, courts and marries Zipporah, and then returns again to redeem Israel. This time they receive him and submit to him. All this is obviously a picture of the rejection of the Messiah by the Jews, and of His work since then among the Gentiles, where He receives the church as His bride, returning afterwards with her to save His Jewish people.
The father's question ends in a home, and the home in a long education.
We are not surprised, then, that Jethro sent for the Egyptian who had helped his daughters so bravely. And in his house Moses found a home. In Midian, as we have said, he learned deep lessons. One was to distrust his own strength, and to learn by God's teaching, at the end of forty years there, who Jehovah was.
- Rejected. His own people refused him and Pharaoh hated him, so Moses came to Midian as an exile.
- Positioned. He sits by a well — near the source, and so able to become a channel of blessing to others.
- Noticed. He serves in a circle so small it seems to count for nothing, and the only witness is a father wondering why his daughters are home early.
- Received. The question leads to a summons, a meal, a home, and a wife — welcome among strangers after refusal among his own.
- Prepared. Forty years in that home teach him to distrust his own strength, so the deliverer his people once refused can come back and be received.
And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew [water] abundantly for us, and watered the flock.
Moses has fled Egypt because his own people refused him. Now he sits by a well in a foreign land, rescues seven strangers from bullying shepherds, and the young women go home and call their rescuer an Egyptian.
Their report answers their father's surprise that they came home early. A small act of help set the whole chain moving:
As he sat by the well, the seven daughters of Reuel came with their father's flock. But the shepherds drove them away from the troughs they were trying to fill to water the sheep. Moses stepped in and helped the young women. So they came back early enough to prompt their father's question about how it happened. Their father sent a message inviting the stranger to accept his hospitality.
The women report two things: he rescued them, and he drew water for them. Both acts mark him as deliverer and shepherd at once.
His brothers refused him, and Pharaoh hated him. So he flees to the land of Midian. There he shows other needy people the hand of the deliverer and the heart of the shepherd, stepping in on behalf of Reuel's daughters.
The watering was not a detour from his calling. It was training for it:
Moses had become a shepherd, just as David later was a shepherd before becoming king of Israel. If Moses was to be a true deliverer, he had to learn a heart of kindness toward the weak and dependent. Then he would treat Israel with a shepherd's care rather than a ruler's authority.
A foreign household takes in the man his own nation refused.
They refused to believe and rejected this deliverer. So the children of Israel are left a while longer at the Egyptian brick-kilns. But the one they pushed away is welcomed somewhere else. He is set at the head not of a nation but of a family, and enjoys closer and sweeter friendships than he had ever known among his own relatives. A stranger receives him. Jethro, the Midianite, opens his house to him and gives him his daughter in marriage, because he had been her deliverer. Israel had just refused him, despite the same grace shown to them.
Commentators read Moses' exile as more than history. They see in it where the Lord stands today.
The flight of Moses into the land of Midian is a marked picture of our Lord's present position toward Israel and the world. Rejected by His own, He has withdrawn. During this present time, when Israel does not know Him, He has, like Moses, found a bride among the Gentiles… But, like Moses, our Lord will return to deliver His earthly people, as Moses returned from the land of Midian and led Israel out.
The rescue at the well is tiny compared to the exodus. That is where its value lies. A man shows what he is by how he serves when almost nobody is watching.
He acts the part of a deliverer to the women at the well, who were driven away by the shepherds. He has been denied the chance to show himself as such in a large circle. Yet he does not refuse it in a very small one. He does not brood in listless sorrow over his own setbacks… Instead, he submits to his circumstances and rises above his own feelings in his interest to serve others… Nothing proves the divine origin of our mission more than the ease and readiness with which we serve in the most hidden and unknown places, as well as in the most attractive ones.
He could draw water for them because of where he had sat down.
Note also, my soul, that the fountain is not only the place of sweetest delight to yourself, but of the richest blessing to others. When we are truly connected with the source, we become the channel of living water to others… He was in the right position to help the daughters of Reuel water the flock.
- Rejected. His own people pushed him away; that refusal, not just Pharaoh's anger, is what drove him to Midian.
- Received. Strangers took in the man Israel would not have, and gave him a home and a wife because he had been their deliverer.
- Renamed. They call him "an Egyptian." Strangers name the rescuer by a foreign label while his own nation still does not know him.
- Rehearsed. Rescuing seven women and watering a flock trained the shepherd's heart that would later lead a nation. Small service proved the man.
- Returning. Commentators see a picture of Christ here: rejected by Israel, gathering a bride among the nations, certain to come back for His earthly people.
And he said to his daughters, And where is he? why then have ye left the man behind? Call him, that he may eat bread.
Moses has fled Egypt as a wanted man. At a well in Midian he defends seven sisters from bullying shepherds. Their father does not send thanks from a distance. He rebukes his daughters and tells them to bring the man home for a meal. That meal shapes the next forty years of Moses' life.
The daughters had accepted the help and walked away. Their father saw a debt still standing, and he moved to settle it.
At first Moses' service to those Midianite women meets no repayment, just as Joseph's service to the chief butler did. But it must not stay that way. Reuel, their father, sends for him because of his service to his daughters, provides a home for him, and gives him his daughter Zipporah as his wife.
Moses had tried to deliver a whole nation, and his own people turned him away. At the well the circle was tiny, but he served there anyway.
Whether Moses' forty years of exile are one unbroken season of sorrow and gloom, or whether comfort and cheer soften them, depends on how the disciplined man receives the discipline. The moment he submits, the discipline becomes effective and may be relaxed. It is not removed, but the scene may be brightened. And so it was with Moses. He acts the part of a deliverer to the women at the well, who were driven away by the shepherds. Although he has been denied the chance to show himself as such in a large circle, he does not refuse it in a very small one. He does not sit in sorrow over his own losses, like the fool who eats his own flesh. Instead he submits to his circumstances and rises above his own feelings in his concern to serve others.
The contrast in the chapter is sharp. His own people pushed him away. A foreign household now sets a place for him at its table.
The one whom they pushed away is accepted in another place. He is seated, not at the head of a nation, but of a family. There he enjoys closeness and affection sweeter and nearer than he had ever known among his own relatives. A stranger receives him. Jethro the Midianite opens his house to him and gives him his daughter in marriage, because he had been her deliverer. Israel had just refused him, despite the same grace shown to them.
The man who gives the order has two names in Scripture. The meaning of the first one points to who he was.
He became an exile in Midian and met Reuel. His name is also Jethro (3:1). Reuel means "friend of God." He was also a priest, no doubt a true worshipper of God. Moses received Zipporah, a daughter of the Midianite, as his wife. Rejected by his own people, he entered into union with a Gentile. All this is typical. Christ came the first time and was rejected by His own. He receives her who shares His rejection, and she will come with Him when He comes the second time. The church is indicated here.
The call to eat bread opened a door into a house. That house schooled Moses for forty years.
We are not surprised, then, that Jethro sent for the Egyptian who had so bravely helped his daughters. And in his house Moses found a home. In Midian, as we have said, he learned deep lessons. One of them was to distrust his own right arm, and to learn from God's own teaching, at the end of forty years living there, who Jehovah was.
Behind the father's hospitality, another hand is at work.
We see God acting in His providence and giving Moses a home and a wife in a strange land.
A place at the table did not settle Moses' heart. The name he later gave his son shows what the welcome could not remove.
This name reveals to us the secret sorrow of Moses. Though provided with a home, he still felt himself a stranger in a strange land. So his son, who tied him to the scene, had to carry a name that kept his exiled condition before him. No present mercies could shut that condition out.
- Serve — Moses had lost his large mission, yet he still helped seven strangers at a well. The invitation to eat bread came out of that small act.
- Sent for — the father would not let the kindness go unpaid. He sent for Moses, gave him a home, and gave him Zipporah as his wife.
- Received — his own people pushed him away. A foreign household took him in, and there he found closeness he had never known among his relatives.
- Schooled — that home became forty years of training. There Moses learned to distrust his own strength and learned from God who Jehovah is.
- Stranger still — the name he gave his son shows that a table and a family never cured his sense of exile. Commentators also read the whole scene as a picture of the rejected Christ receiving a bride from outside Israel.
And Moses consented to remain with the man; and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.
Moses has fled Egypt, rejected by the people he tried to help, and he now sits by a well in Midian. Here that flight turns into a home and a marriage, and commentators find in it both God's care for a broken servant and a picture of something larger.
The plainest reading is that God, unseen and unmentioned in the verse, arranged all of it.
Exodus 2 compresses the next forty years of Moses' life into verses 15-22. Again we see God acting in His providence, giving Moses a home and a wife in a strange land.
Moses had wanted to rescue a nation. Instead he helped a few shepherd girls at a well — and that small act is what opened a home to him.
He acts the part of a deliverer to the women at the well, who were driven away by the shepherds. He could not declare himself a deliverer in a large circle, but he does not refuse to be one in a very small circle. He does not brood in sorrow over his own setbacks. He accepts his circumstances and rises above his own feelings, out of concern to serve others. Nothing proves better that our mission comes from God than the ease and readiness with which we carry it out. We serve in the most hidden and unknown places as readily as in the most attractive ones. Reuel, the father of these women, sends for Moses because of his service to his daughters. He gives him a home, and gives him his daughter Zipporah as his wife.
Commentators treat Moses as a picture of Christ. This is not a private idea: Scripture itself says a prophet like Moses was coming.
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. (Deuteronomy 18:15) So we are not inventing something when we see Moses as a picture of Christ. This is the plain teaching of Scripture. In the closing verses of Exodus 2 we see this type in two ways: first, Israel rejects him; second, he joins himself to a stranger in the land of Midian. In Joseph's case we have open hatred of his person. In Moses it is the rejection of his mission. Of Joseph we read that they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Of Moses the words are, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" In short, people hated Joseph as a person; they refused Moses as a leader.
The picture is real, but commentators are careful about how much weight it will bear.
Zipporah is one of the least known pictures of the church in the Old Testament. Some details of her life fit such a reading, but they are few, and perhaps less obvious than with Eve or Asenath. J. N. Darby said of her: "In her we see a faint type of the church."
Joseph also married a foreign wife, Asenath, but his situation was the opposite of Moses'.
Asenath shows quite a different side of the church from the one we see in Zipporah. Asenath joined Joseph in the time of his exaltation. Zipporah was the companion of Moses in the obscurity of his desert life. True, the brothers of both Joseph and Moses rejected them when they married a stranger. Yet Joseph was "governor over all the land of Egypt," while Moses tended a few sheep at the back of the desert.
Moses was content to stay. He had already had one education; the one that mattered began here.
The forty years spent by Moses in Midian were, as we say, the best years of his life. He had forty years' training in Egypt. Then the Lord took him aside into His own school, to train him for the great work He had chosen him to do. In the obscurity of the desert He prepared him to be "a vessel fit for the Master's use." How blessed his experience must have been — away from man, away from Egypt's pleasures, alone with God. The Lord has dealt this way with all His servants.
- Rejected. Moses' own people refused his mission. His exile in Midian begins with a door closed at home.
- Serving. He would not sulk over a lost calling. He acted as a rescuer at a well for a few strangers, and that hidden service is what won him a home.
- Given. God's providence, not Moses' planning, gave him a home and a wife in a foreign land.
- Faint but real. A rejected deliverer takes a foreign bride. Commentators see here a picture of Christ receiving the church while Israel refuses Him — a faint likeness, they say, not a full one.
- Trained. Zipporah joined Moses in the desert, not on a throne. His willingness to settle there turned forty hidden years into God's school for the man who would lead a nation out.
And she bore a son, and he called his name Gershom; for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.
Moses has escaped Pharaoh, settled in Midian, married Zipporah, and become a father. Yet the first thing Scripture records of those forty years is his son's name — a confession that commentators read as a window into Moses' heart, into Christ's rejection, and into the place of every believer today.
Gershom is not a sentimental family name. It states where Moses stood. Where the ESV has "sojourner in a foreign land", the writers here use the older wording: "a stranger in a strange land".
There, in that quiet place, Jethro gives him his daughter — a stranger — as his wife. She bears him a son, and the son's name tells us where Moses' heart turns. "I have been a stranger in a strange land": that is the comment made on him. The boy was called Gershom, which means "a stranger here."
Scripture tells us little else about those years.
It is strange that the main record of the forty long years Moses spent in Midian is this: he called his son by the Egyptian name Gershom, which means banishment. "For," he said, "I have been a stranger in a strange land." Exodus does not even give the name of his second son, born in Midian, until Moses had led Israel out of Egypt. Forty long years of schooling, and Scripture says almost nothing about this third of Moses' life!
Moses now had a home, a wife and work. None of it changed how he felt.
This name shows us the secret sorrow of Moses. He had a home, yet he still felt himself a stranger in a strange land. So his son, who tied him to the place, had to carry a name that kept his exile in front of him — an exile that present mercies could not shut out. Those mercies could not wipe away the deep and earnest purpose of his soul: to deliver his people. Nor should they. The purpose was right, yes, divine; but the vessel was not allowed to express it until it was prepared further.
Joseph also married outside Israel while parted from his brothers, and also named sons. Commentators call both men types of Christ — living pictures — but their names run opposite ways.
There is a difference between this type and that of Joseph. Joseph, as one put to death, takes the place of Jesus raised to the right hand of the supreme throne over the Gentiles, and in the end he receives back the brothers he had been parted from. To him his children are a witness of God's blessing at that time. He calls them Manasseh ("because God," he says, "has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house"), and Ephraim ("because God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction"). Moses shows us Christ separated from His brothers. Zipporah might be seen as a type of the church... yet his heart and his feelings — shown in the names he gives his children — are ruled by one thought: he is separated from the people of Israel. His love for his brothers is there, his thoughts are there, his rest and his country are there. He is a stranger everywhere else.
Moses' own story runs from stranger to deliverer, and one writer sees the Lord's own way with Israel in it.
We have then the double character of the Lord's relation with Israel — a Stranger with them when they are oppressed, and their Deliverer as the God of their fathers.
Several writers see the marriage itself as picture-language. Moses gains a wife only after his own people refuse him.
Moses got a wife and children when his own brothers, the children of Israel, refused to believe him and turned him away, cutting him off from them. He was then, as he says himself, an "alien in a strange land" (Ex. 2:22; Ex. 18:3). In the same way, the unbelief of Israel and its rejection of the Lord has brought Him in among the Gentiles, and out from among them He is gathering a church, a wife and children.
Commentators differ on how far to press this. The verse dwells on Moses' feelings toward Israel, not on the comfort his wife and son brought him.
The lesson does not stay in Midian.
Here Moses gives a beautiful picture of our character and position in the world, and of Him to whom we belong. The wife no longer belongs to Midian, but to her husband. The "stranger" son never becomes a resident of the land where he is born... May God make us more Gershoms in the land of Midian — strangers in a world where Christ can find a bride, but not a home.
- Name. Gershom means "a stranger here". Moses made his son's name a daily confession: Midian was not home.
- Sorrow. A house, a wife and a child were real mercies. They could not remove the exile he felt, or the purpose in his heart to deliver his people.
- Contrast. Joseph named his sons for forgetting and fruitfulness; Moses named his for exile. Joseph pictures Christ raised over the Gentiles; Moses pictures Christ whose heart stays with Israel.
- Bride. The wife came only after his own people rejected him. Writers see Christ gathering the church while Israel refuses Him — though they differ on how far to press it.
- Ours. The believer is a Gershom: a stranger in a world where Christ can find a bride but no home.