Who can understand the mind of God? We know He is good. We also know He allows bad things to happen to good people. Scripture reminds us to trust that He is working in everything, good and bad, to accomplish His plan. The Lord, speaking through Isaiah 55:8-9, reminds us of the vast expanse between the way we think and act and the way God thinks and acts.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
God’s ways are unsearchable. Our feeble minds cannot grasp the depths of His love and how He will work through all the mess and confusion we humans create to keep His promises. The story we consider today is a good example of this reality.
Here’s the situation as we continue our study in the second chapter of Exodus: the last of the patriarchs of the promise has passed away; Jacob died at the age of 147 in Egypt. Joseph, the great savior of Egypt and his family, has also died. A power-thirsty king, with no respect for Joseph and the Hebrews, sees the burgeoning population of the Hebrews as a threat to his power and puts slave masters over them. God told Abraham long ago that his people would be enslaved in Egypt and promised him that He would free them and give them the land of Canaan.
How would you keep this promise if you were God? Probably not the way God chose to do it, right?
Today’s post is about Exodus 2:10-12. The text I’m referencing follows directly after the matter-of-fact statement about a nameless Levite couple getting married and having a baby boy. The mother, fearing for the child’s life, prepares a reed basket and puts him in the river, hoping someone will find him and save his life. Sure enough, the daughter of the evil king rescues the crying baby, has pity on him, and decides to let his mother nurse him for her until she can take care of him.
The baby grows, and the princess takes him and raises him as her own. The king’s daughter names the boy Moses, meaning “drawn from the water.” Exodus 2:10. God must have had a great laugh about what he was doing to this evil king! Think about it; the king’s daughter raises the Hebrew child whom God is going to use to free the people he has enslaved.
So, Moses grew up in the house of the Pharaoh, and we have no more information about him until he was grown. Exodus 2:11-12 is the next glimpse into his life, and this is a doozy. He is a grown-up, goes out among his people, and sees an Egyptian beating a fellow Hebrew and kills the Egyptian. He thinks no one has seen this and buries the Egyptian in the sand.
This event raises some questions for me. How old was Moses when this happened? What was going on with him when he killed the Egyptian? Are these questions answered in the book of Exodus?
The answer to the last question is “no,” you cannot find how old he was or why he killed the Egyptian in the book of Exodus. It’s not there, nor anywhere else in the Old Testament. The only answer to these questions is found in the book of Acts, where Stephen was falsely accused of speaking against the temple and the law of Moses and dragged before the Council. Acts, chapter 7, details Stephen’s stirring defense of the gospel before the Council, which led to his stoning. Stephen was the first believer to die for the faith, and it is inspiring to read the entire message. However, I will reference only the verses that relate to our questions, Acts 7:22-25.
“And Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power and deeds. But when he was approaching the age of forty, it entered his mind to visit his brethren, the sons of Israel. And when he saw one of them treated unjustly, he defended him and took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian. And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him; but they did not understand.”
How do Stephen’s words answer the questions of Moses’ age and shed light on what was going on in his mind when he killed the Egyptian?
According to Stephen’s testimony, Moses was approaching forty when he killed the Egyptian. And if you “read between the lines,” you will get an idea of what may have motivated him to do this. The following article has insights into what Moses was thinking and how God used this experience to mold him into the humble leader he became. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/40-vs-80-moses/. Moses was well-educated, physically powerful, and known for his accomplishments; the perfect formula for pride and a big ego. Stephen’s words imply that he assumed he would be the champion who would free the Hebrews from their terrible plight. He presumed his Hebrew brethren would interpret his intervention as a sign that God had chosen him as their deliverer. But his pride had misled him, and when he realized his mistake, the pharaoh would try to kill him. So, he runs for his life.
Moses’ pride led him to a great mistake, but God was not finished with him. God’s ways are unsearchable! We can all take heart, God isn’t finished with us either.