MVTClass.com

You knew Charleton Heston was going to show up this quarter

Our quarterly series calls today’s lesson, “Moses Flees”.  I chose another title. Here Moses  encounters, or rather he chooses, “his people”.  Notice that the first use of the phrase “his people” in verse eleven is ambivalent, it isn’t until the second use that the choice is made: the Egyptian is beating one of Moses’ people: “[A] Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk.” Moses had to make a choice: to stay with his Eygptian identity, with all of its privileges, or to identify with the dispossessed. There was no sustainable middle ground.  But there was escape from the consequences – or was there?  Today’s scripture:

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk.
12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
13 When he went out the next day, he saw two Hebrews fighting; and he said to the one who was in the wrong, “Why do you strike your fellow Hebrew?”
14 He answered, “Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “Surely the thing is known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh. He settled in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well.
16 The priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.
17 But some shepherds came and drove them away. Moses got up and came to their defense and watered their flock.
18 When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come back so soon today?”
19 They said, “An Egyptian helped us against the shepherds; he even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 He said to his daughters, “Where is he? Why did you leave the man? Invite him to break bread.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage.
22 She bore a son, and he named him Gershom; for he said, “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land.”  Ex 2:11-22 (NRSV)

 But even in Midian, there were choices that had to be made.  Moses again chose to side with the weaker side in conflict: the seven daughters rather than the shepherds.  The NRSV translates the Hebrew as Moses coming “to their defense” and the daughters as saying he “helped us against the shepherds”.  The Hebrew words in verses 17 and 19 - yasha and natsal respectively – are usually transalted as “delivered”.  This is much stronger language, don’t you think?

Now Moses withdraws from conflict and takes up residence as a “stranger in a strange land” (KJV), marries Zipporah and has a son.  Can he stay in this comfortable no-man’s land?