The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 68

Ver, 22,-Gershom, 1. The good man in this world is 0/ten lonely at heart. (1) When violence reigas uncheckecl. (2) When God's cause is in a depressed condi- tion. (3) When repulsed in efforts to do good. (4) When severed from scenes of former labour. (6) When his outwarcl lot is uncongenial. (6) When cleprived of suitable companionships, and when he can find few to sympathise with him. 2. God sends to the good man alleviations of his loneliness. We may hope that Zipporah, if not without faults, formed a kincl an<l helpful wife to Moses. '!.'hen, sons were born to him-the first, the Gershom of this text. 'l'hese were consolations. A wife's affection, the prattle and innocence of children-have sweetened the lot of many an exile. Bunyan and his blind daughter.-J. 0. Vers. 15-22.-MosesinMidian. Moses had to flee. The hard, unworthy reproach, humiliating as he must have felt it to be, nevertheless gave him a timely warning. His flight seems to have been instantaneous; perhaps not even the opportunity to bid farewell to his friends. An utter rupture, a complete separation was his only safety. Consider- !. WHAT HE LEFT BEHIND HIM, 1. Poss{bly Pharaoh's daughter was sti1l alive. If so, we can imagine her sorrow and utter perplexity over the son of her adoption, and the reproaches she might have to bear from her own kindred. How often she may have heard that common expression which adds insult to bitter disappoint- ment, "I told you so." We may be tolerably sure as to one result of the long sojourn of Moses in Midian, viz., that when he returned, she would be vanished from the scene, spared from beholding the son of her adoption the agent of such dreadful visitations to her own people. Yet even with this miti- gation, the agony may have been more than she could bear. She bad sheltered Moses, watched over him, and " nourished him for her own son," giving him the opportunity to become "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians;" only to find e.t last that a sword had pierced through her own soul (Luke ii. 35 ; Acts vii. 21, 22). 2. He left his brethren in servitude. Any expectation they may have bad, from his present eminence and possibly greater eminence in the future, was now completely crushed. It is well to effect a timely crushing of false hopes, even if great severity has to be used. 3. He left behind all difficulties that came from hi~ connexion with the court. Had he gone on staying in Egypt he would have had to make bis election, sooner or later, between the Egyptians and his own people. But now he is spared having to decide for himself. We have to thank God that be sometimes takes painful and difficult decisions out of our hands, so that we have no longer to blame ourselves either for haste or procrastination ; for rashness and imprudence, or cowardice and sloth. God in his providence does things for us, which we might find it very hard t.o do for ourselves. II. WHAT HE FOUND BEFORE HIM. He went out, hardly knowing whither he went. 'l'be safest place was the best for him, and that safest place might not immediately appear. Yet how plain it is that God was guiding him, as really as he guided Abraham, though Moses was not conscious of the guiding. He fled because he had slain a fellow-man, yet he was not going forth as a Cain. Under the wrath of Pharaoh, he was not under that wrath of God which rest& upon murderers. He was going to a new school, that was all-having learned all that could be learned in the old one. He probably asked himself as he fled, " Where can I go? Who will receive me? What story can I tell? " He would feel, now the homicide was known, that it was impossible to say how far the news had reached. Onward he sped-perhaps, like most fugitives of the sort, biding by day and travelling by night-until at last he reached the land of Midian. Here he concluded to dwell, although it may have been in his mind only a temporary stage to a distant and safer abode. And now observe that with this fresh mention of what happened to him after his flight, there is an immediate and still further revelat-ion of his charact6r, all in the way of showing his natural fitness for the great work of his life. He has made an awful mistake in his manner of showing sympathy with Israel, and in consequence has exposed himself to a humiliating rebuff; but all this does not make him one whit Iese willing to champion the weak when the occasion comes. He was a man always_ ready for opportunities of service; and wherever he went there seemed to be sometlung for E~ODUB, i.  150 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. [ OH, ll, 15--29,