Scripture Daily

Context No. 860 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 2:13-18: in context

13He went out the second day, and behold, two men of the Hebrews were fighting with each other. He said to him who did the wrong, “Why do you strike your fellow?” 14He said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you plan to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” Moses was afraid, and said, “Surely this thing is known.” 15Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and lived in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well. 16Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17The shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. 18When they came to Reuel, their father, he said, “How is it that you have returned so early today?”

Moses's first attempt to help his own people has just gone wrong. He had killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, and now, the next day, he tries to break up a fight between two Hebrews, only to be thrown back on his heels: who made you a prince and a judge over us, the man sneers; do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? His crime is known, Pharaoh wants him dead, and the would-be deliverer runs for his life into the desert of Midian, where he sinks down, a fugitive and a nobody, beside a well in a foreign land. It is about as low and as far from his calling as a man can get.

And then some shepherds come and drive off a group of young women who had come to water their father's flock, and Moses, sitting there in his exile with his whole mission apparently in ruins, cannot help himself. He stands up. He defends them, drives the bullies back, and waters their flock for them. The very instinct that had gotten him into trouble, the refusal to stand by while the strong push around the weak, is still in him, still working, even now that he is a wanted man hiding at the edge of nowhere. He does not know that this well, and this family, and these forty quiet years of shepherding are exactly where God will form him for the deliverance he tried and failed to force too soon. He only knows there is someone being pushed around, and he gets up. The calling was not dead in the wilderness. It was being made ready.

A fugitive with his mission in ruins, Moses still stood up to defend the harassed at a foreign well. In a season of failure or obscurity, does the core of who God made me still act, or have I decided the wilderness means the calling is over?

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