A Stranger in a Strange Land

A man runs across the desert, alone, with the cities of Egypt shrinking behind him. Yesterday he lived in a palace. Today the king of Egypt wants him dead. And he has no idea where he is going.

The baby who was drawn out of the Nile has grown up. Moses was raised as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, in the royal household of Egypt. But he has not forgotten who his people are. His people are the Hebrews, the Israelites, and they are slaves, making bricks under the hot sun and the slave masters’ whips. One day, now a grown man, Moses goes out to where his people are working, and he watches their heavy labour.

Then he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Moses looks this way and that way. No one is watching. And he strikes the Egyptian down, and kills him, and hides the body in the sand. The next day Moses goes out again, and this time he sees two Hebrews fighting each other. “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” he asks the one in the wrong. And the man sneers back at him. “Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Are you going to kill me like you killed the Egyptian?” Moses goes cold. People know. And soon Pharaoh knows too, and Pharaoh tries to have Moses killed.

So Moses runs. He flees far from Egypt, to the land of Midian, and he sits down by a well. Moses wanted to set things right. He cared about injustice, and that was good. But he tried to fix it in secret, by his own strength, and it fell apart. The prince of Egypt is now a fugitive, sitting alone in the dust, with nothing.

Along come seven sisters, daughters of the priest of Midian, to draw water for their father’s flock. They fill the troughs. But then some shepherds turn up and drive them away. And Moses, the man who cannot stand to see the weak pushed around, stands up. He rescues the women and waters their flock himself. The sisters hurry home, much earlier than usual. Their father, Reuel, is surprised. “How did you get back so soon today?” “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds,” they say. “He even drew the water for us and watered the flock.” “Then where is he? Why did you leave him there? Go and invite him to eat with us!”

So Moses comes to stay. He makes his home with Reuel’s family, and Reuel gives him his daughter Zipporah to be his wife. They have a son, and Moses names him Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew for a stranger there. “I have been a stranger in a strange land,” Moses says. He belonged in Egypt’s palace, and didn’t. He belonged among the Hebrews, and they rejected him. Now he is a shepherd far from both. The years pass, many years. And Moses keeps sheep in the wilderness.

But listen. The story doesn’t end with Moses. In time, the king of Egypt dies, and the Israelites are still slaves. They groan. They cry out. And their cry goes up to God. And then come four short sentences, like four steps. God heard their groaning. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God looked on the Israelites. And God knew. Moses has forgotten nothing, but he can do nothing. God has forgotten nothing, and he is about to act.

Moses’ escape has an echo in Egypt’s own literature. The Story of Sinuhe, one of the most famous tales of ancient Egypt, written long before Moses was born, tells of a royal official who flees Egypt in fear after a crisis at court. He escapes beyond Egypt’s eastern border, is welcomed by a local chieftain, and marries the chieftain’s eldest daughter. Egyptians knew well that a man in trouble at court might run for the desert and find a new life among herders beyond the border.

Moses runs away. You’ll find it in Exodus chapter 2, verses 11 to 25. Moses tried to rescue his people by himself and failed. But God heard, God remembered, and God was not finished. So here’s a question to carry with you. When you have tried to fix something your own way and failed, will you trust that God still hears and still has a plan?