Moses’ brief and violent encounter with the Egyptian taskmaster in Exodus reads like a crime report or movie script:
Moses … went out to his brothers and saw their labors. He saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers. He turned this way and that. He saw that there was no man. He struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
(Exodus 2:11b–12)
We hear the sound of the scuffle, catch a glimpse of an Egyptian beating a Hebrew with a stick. The camera focuses on Moses’ sun-weathered face. You can just picture Clint Eastwood playing him. He squints, spits and saunters over to the altercation.
Scarcely seeming to move, Moses relieves the astonished Egyptian of his rod. But then, recklessly, the taskmaster draws a knife!
“Go ahead, punk, make my day.” Moses effortlessly and nonchalantly gains control of this weapon, too, and stabs the taskmaster. Then he drops the bloody blade on the sand. He stalks away, not awaiting the rescued slave’s professions of gratitude.
He never even said his name.
In the theater, the audience cheers. Their thirst for just vengeance has been slaked by the swift action of a man’s man.
In Hollywood, Moses would simply ride off like the Lone Ranger. But in the Bible, Moses cannot escape the consequences of his actions. Rather, he must stick around, cover up 042the evidence and hope no one ever notices what he’s done.
The conflict between Moses and the Egyptian taskmaster is the first episode of Moses’ adult life that we learn about in Exodus. Things aren’t looking good for the young Hebrew man raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. Why is it that Israel’s future leader gets off to such a bad start?
It’s not just that he has murdered a man; his intervention may not even have been justified. After all, the taskmaster was not killing the slave, only drubbing him, “striking him” (Exodus 2:11). By the Bible’s own law, thrashing a slave is entirely permissible, so long as he sustains no permanent injury (Exodus 21:20–21). For all we or Moses know, the Hebrew may have deserved his punishment.
Moses seems to be aware that he is in trouble. He doesn’t act like an innocent man; nor does he, as Luther said, “sin boldly.” His shifty eyes—turning “this way and that”—betray a clear sense of guilt. That he conceals the corpus delicti in the sand is further evidence that Moses has self-consciously acted outside the law. He faces murder one, and he knows it. And yet he hopes to beat the rap just by covering up the evidence and going about his business.
The next day, Moses realizes that he has failed. He stumbles upon another dust-up, this one between two Hebrew men. Once again Moses feels compelled to interfere:
On the second day he went out: Look, two Hebrew men fighting! He said to the guilty one, “Why do you strike your fellow?” But he [the guilty man] said, “Who appointed you as a ruler-man and judge-man over us? Do you propose to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”
Moses was afraid. He said to himself, “The affair has become known after all.”
Pharaoh heard of this affair and sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian.
(Exodus 2:13–15a)
In this episode, Moses does not shoot first and ask questions later. He has apparently learned something from the previous day’s fiasco. But he has not learned enough. As this is presumably a fight between equals, Moses should ask, “Why are you two men fighting?” He instead picks out one combatant and demands, “Why do you strike your fellow?” But how can Moses tell which is “the guilty one”? His very question betrays prejudice.
Moses’ ill-considered speech does not receive a civil answer. Instead, the apparent aggressor interrogates his interrogator: “Who appointed you as a ruler-man and judge-man over us?” (The terms the Hebrew uses—“ruler” [šar] and “judge” [šōpēt]—are frequently used to describe Israel’s tribal elders, the standing authorities in Israel in this period [Numbers 22:7, 14; Deuteronomy 16:18; Joshua 8:33, 23:2, 24:1; Judges 8:6, 14; Isaiah 3:14].) The implicit answer: “Nobody.”
It is unclear whether the slave recognizes Moses as a fellow Israelite. Moses has apparently been living as an Egyptian since infancy, and we are told a few verses later that Moses resembles an Egyptian, at least to Midianite shepherdesses (Exodus 2:19). So perhaps the Hebrew is simply asking, “By what right do you Egyptians lord it over us?” But even so, we readers know who Moses is, and the slave may have his suspicions, too.
The Hebrew’s question cuts to the heart of the matter. Without the least legal authority, Moses has prejudged what he has seen. The slave rightly fears that Moses may presume to dispense immediate justice, as he did the previous day. Fortunately, his next question stops Moses in his tracks: “Do you propose to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”
Moses immediately realizes that, despite his circumspection, despite his concealing the evidence, despite the apparent lack of eyewitnesses, word has gotten out—probably beginning with the Hebrew he saved on day one. The conversation breaks off. Moses doesn’t respond to the Hebrew’s bold comment, which might imply that he has quit the scene.1 Moses stops worrying about the beaten Hebrew’s skin and begins to worry about his own.
To this point, Moses has only acted, not reflected. But now, Moses turns to us, the audience as it were, for a brief soliloquy: “The affair has become known after all.”
We might assume he’s referring to the murder of the taskmaster. But is there something else? Do the Hebrews fully recognize Moses? Do they know the deep secret of Moses’ birth? Will Moses have to admit that he is a Hebrew raised in Pharaoh’s own home? What will the Hebrew duo do? What will Pharaoh do to a man who has survived his decree to kill all Hebrew baby boys? Whatever the slave intended by his ambiguous question, Moses doesn’t stick around to find out. Better to flee to the desert than to discover what the Hebrews—and, perhaps, Pharaoh—know.
What a failure! Moses has not freed his people. He has killed an Egyptian who may have simply been doing his job. The “guilty” Hebrew’s question, “Who appointed you?”—however impertinent—is well taken. No one has made Moses the judge and ruler of Israel—at least not yet. He cannot kill each taskmaster individually, rescue each Hebrew individually and then peaceably govern his own people. He utterly lacks the competence and credentials for the task.
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Not for long, though. Having fled to Midian and married a Midianite woman, Moses finds himself tending his new father-in-law’s sheep in the wilderness near Horeb, the mountain of God. He spies a burning bush that is “all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed.” From the flames, God’s voice calls out to Moses: “I shall send you to Pharaoh, and you shall free My people, the Israelites from Egypt … Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: ‘The Lord [Yahweh], your fathers’ God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:10, 15).
Who gave Moses the right, the Hebrew asked in the previous chapter. Now Moses has his answer and his authority: “Yahweh, your fathers’ God” (Exodus 3:15).
Thus the seemingly minor conflict between Moses and the taskmaster in Exodus 2 is pivotal for the entire Torah. It demonstrates the futility of Moses’ attempt to rescue Israel without divine aid. Rough justice will get the Israelites nowhere; their society must be regulated by divine law. Only with God’s assistance will Israel repel its external foes and keep the internal peace. Moses the Vigilante, with his instinct for equity, must mature into Moses the Lawgiver. The impetuous brawler must become the archetype of humility, meeker than all men upon the earth (Numbers 11:3) and an esteemed, effective arbiter who can settle any dispute (Exodus 18:13–26).
We all sympathize with Moses’ desire for vengeance. We all admire the solitary hero who single-handedly rights society’s wrongs. (Who wouldn’t want to be Robocop, an invulnerable law unto himself?) But, as this two-act drama amply demonstrates, homicide is sordid, difficult to conceal and rarely solves anything. Vendetta is no substitute for law. And Moses will never be a macho Hollywood hero. He will not take on the armies of Egypt singlehandedly. He won’t lead his people triumphantly into Canaan and then rule in splendor.
Only Yahweh can do that.
Moses’ brief and violent encounter with the Egyptian taskmaster in Exodus reads like a crime report or movie script:
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Furthermore, the name “Zipporah,” which means “bird,” or “sparrow,” is the feminine form of the name “Zippor.” This, too, seems to link the marriage with the more violent public events at the end of Moses’ life. At the end of the Book of Numbers, as the Israelites approach the promised land, they lead a series of attacks on the peoples whose lands they pass through—the Midianites, Edomites, Moabites and so on. The Moabite king Balak “son of Zippor” is one of Israel’s major adversaries. The text refers to Balak as “son of Zippor” five times in Numbers 22–23 and twice in Judges, thus stressing his connection to his father. Balak is the one who invites the seer Balaam to come and put a curse on the Israelites. Balaam refuses, of course, following the famous episode with his donkey, and ends up blessing the Israelites instead. However, Balaam remains with Balak, and he is the one who advises the Midianites to use their women to entice the Israelite men into idolatry (Numbers 31:8, 16). Thus the story of Balak son of Zippor is closely interrelated with the Midianite women crisis. It may be that the author has recorded the name “Zipporah” specifically to make the subtle connection between Moses’ marriage and the violent events that later take place due to the “son of Zippor.”
