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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Exodus 2:21 - 2:21
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Moses' Life in Midian. - As Reguel gave a hospitable welcome to Moses, in consequence of his daughters' report of the assistance that he had given them in watering their sheep; it pleased Moses (וַיֹּואֵל) to dwell with him. The primary meaning of הֹואִיל is voluit (vid., Ges. thes.). קִרְאֶן for קְרֶאנָה: like שְׁמַעַן in Gen 4:23. - Although Moses received Reguel's daughter Zipporah as his wife, probably after a lengthened stay, his life in Midian was still a banishment and a school of bitter humiliation. He gave expression to this feeling at the birth of his first son in the name which he gave it, viz., Gershom (גֵּרְשֹׁם, i.e., banishment, from גָּרַשׁ to drive or thrust away); “for,” he said, interpreting the name according to the sound, “I have been a stranger (גֵּר) in a strange land.” In a strange land he was obliged to live, far away from his brethren in Egypt, and far from his fathers' land of promise; and in this strange land the longing for home seems to have been still further increased by his wife Zipporah, who, to judge from Exo 4:24., neither understood nor cared for the feelings of his heart. By this he was urged on to perfect and unconditional submission to the will of his God. To this feeling of submission and confidence he gave expression at the birth of his second son, by calling him Eliezer (אֱלִיעֶזֶר God is help); for he said, “The God of my father (Abraham or the three patriarchs, cf. Exo 3:6) is my help, and has delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh” (Exo 18:4). The birth of this son is not mentioned in the Hebrew text, but his name is given in Exo 18:4, with this explanation.
(Note: In the Vulgate the account of his birth and name is interpolated here, and so also in some of the later codices of the lxx. But in the oldest and best of the Greek codices it is wanting here, so that there is no ground for the supposition that it has fallen out of the Hebrew text.)
In the names of his two sons, Moses expressed all that had affected his mind in the land of Midian. The pride and self-will with which he had offered himself in Egypt as the deliverer and judge of his oppressed brethren, had been broken down by the feeling of exile. This feeling, however, had not passed into despair, but had been purified and raised into firm confidence in the God of his fathers, who had shown himself as his helper by delivering him from the sword of Pharaoh. In this state of mind, not only did “his attachment to his people, and his longing to rejoin them, instead of cooling, grow stronger and stronger” (Kurtz), but the hope of the fulfilment of the promise given to the fathers was revived within him, and ripened into the firm confidence of faith.