Murderer

Exodus 2:11-15

¹¹One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. ¹²He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. ¹³When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” ¹⁴He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” ¹⁵When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.

You have to admit that the Bible doesn’t withhold the grim facts about the heroes of the faith. Samson was a womanizer and a bit of a fool, David was an adulterer and a murder, Abraham lied about the fact that Sarah was his wife, and Moses murdered a man in cold blood. God’s “heroes” have feet of clay.

As the story unfolds, Moses’ dramatic rescue from the extermination plan of the Pharaoh as an infant is just the beginning of a big life. When we open the pages of Exodus today we find Moses at about the age of 40. He has been raised as a prince but still identifies with his own people. He knows that he is a Hebrew and sees their plight. Upon witnessing the beating of a Hebrew he decides to become the deliverer. Note that God has not yet called him into that role. He’s making this up as he goes along. That is indeed the future that God has for him but he is moving ahead of God’s timing here. In his righteous anger over this beating, he goes too far and commits a murder. The text would indicate that it is probably premeditated. “He looked this way and that” implies some forethought. What he probably had not expected was that his own people would not appreciate his actions. Should the murder be discovered, they would all suffer. Moses is forced to flee both from the Pharaoh and from his own people. God uses this incident to move Moses into the next phase of his training as a national leader. He heads into the desert to live the quiet life of a shepherd.

God clearly has a plan for Moses and it will not be thwarted. I doubt if it was God’s plan that he kill a man. But God uses that to move him into the next phase of his training. Up to this point, Moses' interaction with God is also fairly small. We don’t have any indication that he knows God very well at all. But that doesn’t stop God. God’s plans are not dependent on our knowledge of what He’s doing or our need to “help” him. What we see in this story is God’s ability to move His plans forward without our help while involving us at the deepest level. That’s remarkable.