The Presumption of the Deliverer

11 In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and observed their hard labor, and he saw an Egyptian man attacking a Hebrew man, one of his own people. 12 He looked this way and that and saw that no one was there, and then he attacked the Egyptian and concealed the body in the sand. 13 When he went out the next day, there were two Hebrew men fighting. So he said to the one who was in the wrong, “Why are you attacking your fellow Hebrew?”

14 The man replied, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you planning to kill me like you killed that Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, thinking, “Surely what I did has become known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard about this event, he sought to kill Moses. So Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he settled by a certain well.

16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and began to draw water and fill the troughs in order to water their father’s flock. 17 When some shepherds came and drove them away, Moses came up and defended them and then watered their flock. 18 So when they came home to their father Reuel, he asked, “Why have you come home so early today?” 19 They said, “An Egyptian man rescued us from the shepherds, and he actually drew water for us and watered the flock!” 20 He said to his daughters, “So where is he? Why in the world did you leave the man? Call him, so that he may eat a meal with us.”

21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 When she bore a son, Moses named him Gershom, for he said, “I have become a resident foreigner in a foreign land.”