Exodus 2--God Sees And Hears The Plight of His People

The Birth of Moses
2 Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. 4 And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. 5 Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews' children.” 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child's mother. 9 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Moses Flees to Midian
11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a 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 and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.

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 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock. 18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” 19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. 22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”

God Hears Israel's Groaning
​23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

---

Big thought for the day--God prepared to send His people a Savior before they ever cried out in their time of need--just like He did with Jesus.

We see our passage start off with the birth of Moses.  As you may remember from chapter 1, the new Pharaoh has ordered that all the male babies be thrown into the Nile river as an attempt to control and prevent a possible takeover by coup or assimilation by simply becoming the majority through obeying God's commands to "be fruitful and multiply."

We see that a baby, whom we would later learn was named Moses, is born and kept hidden for a few months, but there came a time when his mother couldn't hide him any longer and made a basket of reeds and made it waterproof with bitumen and pitch.  Incidentally, this verse is how a Bible-believing man knew to look for oil deposits in the Middle East because both of these items would indicate the presence of crude oil in the area.

We see the sister of Moses, we later learn her name to be Miriam, would watch over the basked while it was in the Nile river and saw it float all the way to the place where the daughter of Pharaoh found it.  Because the people of Egypt believed that the River had divine properties it would make sense that Pharaoh's daughter would imagine this baby was sent to her by the gods of Egypt, though it seems that she recognized that the child was a Hebrew.  Miriam quickly spoke up and asked the princess if she should get one of the Hebrew women to be a "wet nurse" for the child (someone who had just had a baby and was still lactating that could care for the baby that hand't been weaned and could not eat solid food yet).  This pleased the princess and she told Miriam to go and Miriam knew just the person to pick--Moses' mother.

In this way God saved the life of Moses and continued to provide his mother access to him until he was ready to be weaned, and she was even paid to do so and keep Moses in her custody this whole time while under the protection of Pharaoh's own daughter.  It would be Pharaoh's daughter that would give him the name of "Moses" which means "to be drawn out" because Pharaoh's daughter drew him out of the water of the Nile river.

We then jump ahead many years to when Moses is an adult of nearly 40 years old.  He is out looking at the plight of his people who are slaves and being mistreated by their taskmasters and he is overcome with rage and kills the Egyptian taskmaster that was beating a Hebrew slave.  Moses thought he had gotten away with murder because he saw no one around and he was careful to hide the body and he assumed that the man who had been saved would not speak of the incident, yet only a few days later he sees two Hebrews fighting and when he tries to intervene and mediate they ask him if he is going to kill them like he killed the Egyptian.  Moses knows that if these two slaves know what he did, it will not be long before word reaches Pharaoh (if it hasn't reached him already) and that he would be killed.  He sees no choice but to run for his life and hope that no one will want to chase after him, so he flees to Midian, the land of the people formerly known as Ishmaelites--the same people that were the slave traders that bought Joseph from his brothers and sold him into slavery in Egypt.

Moses found a source of water at a well--you may have noticed that wells have been very important so far in the history recorded in Genesis as they not only provided water for people and herds, but reminded the people of what God's blessing and promises and even acted as a boundary marker between neighboring clans sometimes, so it's not surprising that Moses encounters a group of shepherds by the well, but what does seem to be interesting is that a priest and his daughters were shepherds--possibly and indication that this man had no sons.  It seems the male shepherds of this area did not like this priest or his family and drove away the flock, possibly to be mean, or possibly to make room for their own flock to be watered--who knows other than the other shepherds were acting in a way that wasn't right and Moses knew it, so Moses once again stood up for what was right and saved the daughters of Reuel (meaning "Friend of God," an appropriate name for a priest...this man would also later be known as Jethro which means "Abundance" so don't get confused by the fact that the same man goes by more than one name).  Reuel seems surprised that his daughters got home so early from watering their flocks as apparently it was a normal occurrence for their flocks to be driven away by the other shepherds and for them to have to wait until the other shepherds were finished to water their flocks.

They presumed Moses to be an Egyptian, probably because he was speaking Egyptian since he was raised in the palace, or maybe because of his clothing, but either way they told their father that this man had saved them and made sure their flocks were watered.  In typical Near East fashion, their father asks why they haven't invited the man over for a meal as you usually thank a person with hospitality, especially in a desert culture such as this one where you can get out of the heat and enjoy shade, food, and conversation.  It seems their father also had something else on his mind as this man already seemed to be willing to take care of his daughters and Reuel is not a young man here--we'll learn that later--so he is looking for someone of good character who would be able to marry his daughters and provide for them since he may not be able to do so for much longer.

We again seem to skip some time in the story because we go straight from Moses being invited over for dinner to his being given in marriage to Zipporah (a derivative of the word for "bird").  We then jump ahead to the birth of their first child, Gershom, which means "a sojourner there."  This seems to indicate that Moses did not intend to stay in Midian for ever and just saw himself as a long-time, temporary resident.

We then return back to the story in Egypt where we are reminded that things are getting worse and worse for God's people and God sees and hears the groans of His people and sees the mistreatment of them by the Egyptians.  They cry out to God for rescue and deliverance and we see an interesting statement--"God remembers His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"  He had never forgotten it of course, but for the sake of His name and His covenant He had made where He swore by His name, He would deliver His covenant people.  "God saw--and God knew," again, what amazing theology is tied up in those few small words.  We have a God that sees all and knows all.

Let's return to the key thought for a moment though--God did not wait until the people cried out for deliverance to raise up a deliverer.  God was not caught unaware by the cruelty of the Egyptians.  He was not coming up with a "Plan B."  God had already raised up Moses for this task more than 40 years before His people ever cried out to Him for salvation, and we already know this had been God's plan from the beginning, because God told Abraham early on in Genesis that his descendants would be slaves in Egypt for 400 years but that He would raise up someone to deliver them and lead them back to the Promised Land of Canaan.  God has not ever turned His eye away from His people and knows how to provide their deliverance before they even know they need it.  In the same way he prepares many of us to go to places with the Good News of the gospel before many of those people cry out to know God or His salvation through His son.  He does not wait for them to be ready to prepare salvation for them, and thank God that He did not wait for us to be ready and cry out for a Savior before He planned to send one to us--that was all part of His plan from before the foundations of the world.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.  (Romans 5:6-11)