The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 57

thought. The deed done, conscience reasserted herself: it was a deed of darkneRs; a thing which must be concealed: so Moses dug a hole in the eand, and hid the dreadrul evidence of his crime. It does not appear that the man whom he had delivered helped him; he was perhaps too much exhausted with what he had guffered, und glad to creep to his home. Moses, too, returned to his own abode, well satisfied, as it would seem, on the whole, with what he had done. Having struck the blow, and buried the body unseen, he did not fear detection ; and be probably persuaded himself tho.t the man deserved his fate. He may have even had self-complacent thoughts, have admired bis own courage and strength, and thought how he had at last come to be a deliverer indeed, In reality, however, be had disqualified himself for the office; he had committed a crime which forced him to quit his brethren and fly to a distance, and be thus unable to do anything towards mitigating their sufferings for the space of forty years I Had he been patient, had he been content with remonstrances, had he used his superior strength to reecue the oppressed without injuring the oppressor, he would have shown himself fit to be a deliverer, and God might not improbably have assigned him his missi<m at once. But his self-willed and wrongful mode of proceeding showed that he needed a long course of discipline before he could properly be entrusted with the difficult task which God designed him to accomplish. Forty years of almost solitary life in the Sinaitic wilderness chastened the hot spirit which Wa.i now too wild and untamed for a leader and governor of men. Vers. 13-14.--§ 2. Moses as a peacemaker. A great sin disqualifies a man for many a long year from setting him.self up to be a guide and teacher of others. It may at any time be thrown in his teeth. Nothing could be better intended than the efforts of Moses, on the day after his crime, to compose the quarrels of his brethren, and set the disputants at one. Nor is he fairly taxable with any want of equity, or even of tact, in the manner in which he set to work. He rebuked "him that did the wrong." His rebuke was mild in character-a. mere expostulation; "Wherefore smitest thou," etc. Nay, according to St. Stephen (Acts vii. 26), it was not even an expostulation addressed to an individual, but a general address which avoided the assignment of special blame to either disputant. "Sirs, ye are brethren ; why do ye wrong one to another?" Yet it had no effect; it failed utterly. The tables were at once turned on the expostulator by the inquiry, "Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to slay me as thou didst the Egyptian ? " Conscience makes cowards of us all. Moses, hearing this, had no more to say ; he had essayed to pluc~ out the mote from his brother's eye, and behold! the beam was in his own eye. His brethren were quarrelsome and injurious; but he-he was a murderer. Ver. 15.--§ 3. Moses as a fugitive. Men's sins are eure to" find t!tem out." Moses had thought that he would not be detected. He had carefully "looked this way and that way" ere he struck the blow, and had seen " that there was no man." He had 11.t once hidden the body of his victim underground. He had concluded that the Hebrew whom he had delivered from the oppressor would keep silence ; if from no other reason, yet at any rate to save himself from being suspected. But the man, it 3ppears, had chattered. Perhaps from no ill motive, but simply from inability to keep a secret. He had told his wife, or his daughter, or his neighbour ; and at once " the thing was known." While Moses imagined his deed shrouded in deepes_t secrecy, it was the general talk. All the Hebrews knew of it; and soon the Egyptians knew also. Presently it came to the ears of the king, whose business it was to punish crime, and who, naturally and rightfully, "sought to slay Moses." But he had fled away; he had put seas and deserts between himself and the royal vengeance ; he was a refugee in Midian. So, though he escaped the public execution which Egyptian law awarded to his crime, be had to expiate it by forty years of exile and of hard service, a hireling shepherd tending the flock of another ma:a. 88 'l'HE BOOK OF EXODUS. [ CH, II, 11, 12,