Nothing good happens when you get ahead of God and take matters into your own hands.
God Works in the Shadows
In between the miraculous discovery of baby Moses on the banks of the Nile and the next time we hear from him, a whole forty years go by (Exod. 2:11; cf. Acts 7:23). Moses’s account of these events isn’t always long on historical minutia, which is a good indication that what compelled him to put pen to paper was something far more resonant, one might even say divine. Skipping over four decades of early Israelite history shouldn’t go unnoticed, though, especially when you consider that Israel’s situation hadn’t improved. Life was as burdensome as ever, and their hope was dim. And yet, despite how dark things were in Egypt, God was at work to raise up his chosen deliverer for his people. The average Israelite likely didn’t notice it, but, even then, God’s hand of gracious providence was still at work, instilling in Moses a faithful fervor for his own people.
After being adopted by a member of the royal family, Moses excelled, becoming a renowned student and reaping the benefits of Egypt’s advancements in literature, mathematics, astronomy, and engineering (Acts 7:21–22). However, by “going out to his people” and visiting his brothers, Moses was making a stunning decision about the trajectory of the rest of his life. “By faith Moses,” writes the author of Hebrews, “when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter” (Heb. 11:23). In so doing, he consciously chose to disown all of the success, prosperity, opportunity, and potential that life in Egypt afforded, and instead embrace the afflictions of his people.
Moses’s Trial Run at Deliverer
Moses was a man of great passion, as the rest of Exodus reveals, which is what propels him to leave the opulence of life in the palace and not only observe what his fellow Hebrews were suffering, but to get involved in it himself. He was moved, as Stephen tells us, to “defend the oppressed” and campaign for justice (Acts 7:24), a motivation that only intensified when he saw an Egyptian assaulting one of his Hebrew brothers. “One day, when Moses had grown up,” we’re told, “he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exod. 2:11–12).
We mustn’t glaze over this moment without recognizing how shocking it is. After all, no one in Israel’s storied history is more revered than Moses. Even Abraham and David take a back seat to him, who was Israel’s quintessential luminary and liberator. To speak ill of Moses’s “Israelite-ness” is like speaking ill of the “American-ness” of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. According to Scripture’s own epitaph, there was no prophet “in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 34:10–11). And yet, we are forced to reckon with this scene in which Moses is very obviously in the wrong. What are we supposed to do with this?
For one thing, it’s crucial to acknowledge Moses’s guilt, especially since not everyone is willing to admit that. I’ve read various scholars and commentators and even listened to a few preachers attempt to explain away this moment as if it’s nothing more than a blip on the radar. Apparently, taking someone’s life is no big deal. Some even go so far as to commend Moses for “taking a stand,” as it were. But if we’re honest about this story, we have to admit that looking over your shoulder to see if anyone’s watching what you’re doing is a pretty good indication that you’re doing something wrong. Moses didn’t want anyone observing him, going so far as to bury the evidence. Even if his intentions were honorable, this wasn’t a God-honoring way to go about them.
What’s more, liberating your countrymen by killing a lone Egyptian is a terribly impractical plan. If one’s goal is emancipation for one’s compatriots, taking the life of a single henchman isn’t likely to move the needle that much. In every way, Moses took matters into his own hands, repeating a perilous pattern that’s common to many biblical figures, from Abraham sleeping with Hagar to Jacob and his mom conspiring to steal the family blessing to Peter cutting off Malchus’s ear: Nothing good happens when you get ahead of God and take matters into your own hands.
Somehow, Moses understood that God was using him for the betterment of God’s people. “He supposed [or presumed],” Stephen tells us, “that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand” (Acts 7:25). And can you really blame them? It’s rather difficult to rally around someone with blood on their hands. Apparently, vengeance is a pitiful substitute for deliverance, let alone justice.
From Prince of Egypt to Exile
Moses, however, thought he was in the clear. He might’ve even been proud of himself for taking a stand. The following day, he notices another altercation, this time between two Hebrews. After promptly involving himself in their kerfuffle, Moses’s activism backfires (Exod. 2:13). He’d been found out. His secret wasn’t so secret. His murderous crusade had been spied out, with the two combatants left to wonder who this Moses guy was. “Who made you a prince and a judge over us?” one of them inquired. “Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exod. 2:14; cf. Acts 7:27–28). Moses was paralyzed with fear at the sound of those words, a feeling that was exacerbated when Pharaoh himself gave him a death sentence (Exod. 2:15).
This news breaks Moses, so much so that he runs as far as he can away from Egypt, to the territory of Midian near the Gulf of Aqaba, which was just a stone’s throw away from the desert region of Sinai, where he’d spend the next forty years of his life. “The Moses who burst with such triumphalism onto the scene of oppression as would-be deliverer,” J. Alec Motyer notes, “is now a self-exiled resident alien” (pg. 27). It’s there, on the far side of the wilderness, that Moses is eventually shaped into a true follower of God and leader of God’s people. Be that as it may, a murder and a self-imposed exile really throw a monkey wrench into Moses’s “origin story,” right? This is the lionized leader of God’s people? This is their beacon of hope, their deliverer?
Flawed Heroes, Faithful God
We are, once again, forced to acknowledge the depths of humanity’s flaws. The Bible, of course, is never shy about recording and publicizing the faults and failures of even its brightest “heroes,” which, for what it’s worth, is another hallmark pointing to the fact that it’s a “God-breathed” book (2 Tim. 3:16). If the Bible were a purely human invention, Moses’s murder would’ve been massaged into a propaganda-fueled story supporting Israel’s cause or it’d be skipped over entirely. If the Bible were man-made, David would be a victim of seduction, Gideon would be fearless, Samson would be celibate, and Peter wouldn’t be a “denier.” All of which to say, the story of Mosaic homicide is preserved for a reason — serving as a vivid reminder that God often calls deeply flawed people to follow and serve him.
From Moses to David to Peter to Paul to you and me, those who follow the Lord have never been those who have it all figured out. Rather, they are the ones who know just how much they need him. Although God had a remarkable plan for Moses’s life, one that involved standing up to Pharaoh, freeing millions of people, and leading them on a journey through the wilderness, it’s pivotal to note that it begins with Moses in the wilderness. This is precisely because that’s where deliverance always begins: in the ruins, in the ashes. “Nothingness, death, and sin,” writes Jonathan A. Linebaugh, “are the site at which God utters a creative counterstatement: creation, life, salvation” (pg. 187).
God’s message of deliverance will always mean more to those who’ve cratered, to those who are at rock bottom. And part of God’s prerogative is to whittle us down until there’s nothing left to boast in but him. Perhaps that’s why God brought Moses into the wilderness, so that he might learn firsthand what Paul says to the congregation at Corinth, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:31; cf. 2 Cor. 10:17; Jer. 9:23–24). Both Moses and Israel had to face the sobering truth that no human possesses the capacity to provide anything solid on which to stake one’s confidence or hope. “Only God could liberate from the bondage and shackles of misery,” Matthew P. V. Barrett affirms. “He is the great Emancipator” (pg. 43). In other words, we can never deliver ourselves; that’s something only God can do.
The Greater Moses
Fast-forward another forty years, and while Moses is being schooled by God in Midian, nothing is different for the rest of Israel. Even with a new Pharaoh ascending to the throne, they’re still afflicted and all but wasting away in Egypt, bringing them to their wits’ end. And although they’d surely cried for help before, their present desperation reaches the ears of God: “During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew” (Exod. 2:23–25).
Here, we are given an intimate glimpse of the heart of God. What the Israelites were suffering wasn’t unnoticed. The world-creating, promise-keeping God was aware of it all. Every tear. Every ache. Every sorrow. And he wasn’t just aware of it; he felt it right along with them. To say that “God knew” is to say that he was so intimately acquainted with his people’s affliction that he was afflicted right along with them. “In all their affliction,” echoes the prophet Isaiah, “he was afflicted” (Isa. 63:9; cf. Acts 9:5–6). “God looked with compassion on His people,” Allan M. Harman comments, “identified with them in their tribulation, and set in process the divine plan for their rescue” (pg. 64). The time was ripe for deliverance to come for God’s people, and that’s precisely what he was going to do.
What Moses tried and failed to do, Jesus does perfectly.
What the rest of Exodus puts on full display is that God is the only one who can deliver those in need. And here’s the heart of the matter: Moses went out, saw the suffering of his people, acted upon his own understanding, and ended up bringing disaster. Set against this is God going out, seeing the suffering of his people, acting on his word of promise, and bringing about deliverance. “This is the message of Exodus,” maintains Matthew P. V. Barrett, that “God did for Israel what they could not do for themselves,” which gestures to “the message and beauty of the gospel: God does for sinners what they cannot do for themselves” (pg. 44). In other words, Exodus anticipates the climactic event of God’s redemption in Christ.
What Moses tried and failed to do, Jesus does perfectly. While Moses’s hands were stained with the blood of a life he took, Jesus’s hands are stained with the blood of a life he gave — his own. He is God’s consummate Deliverer, who goes out to not only hear the groaning and affliction of sinners, but also to take it all as his own, acquainting himself with our misery and agony (Isa. 53:3–4). In him, we see God’s intimate awareness of our grief, sorrow, and sin. But where Moses crumbled and scurried into exile, Jesus gave himself up to death and resurrection, walking out of the grave with the gift of true deliverance in his hands. In Christ, the greater Moses, we see a Deliverer who doesn’t flee but comes right into our wilderness, taking up our sin and sorrow to give us the freedom we could never find on our own.
