When Moses Tried to Fix It Himself

Observe what the passage actually says. Moses, now grown, goes out to where his own people are and watches them at their hard labor. He sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He looks this way and that, sees no one, kills the Egyptian and hides the body. The next day he finds two Hebrews fighting and tries to mediate, only to be asked who made him ruler and judge, and whether he means to kill them too. He realizes the killing is known, Pharaoh hears of it, and Moses flees to Midian. The whole sequence takes five verses.

Interpreting it, notice two things. Moses' instinct was right: he identified with the oppressed rather than with the palace that raised him, and Hebrews 11:24-26 honors that choice. But his method was his own. He looked around for witnesses, not up for guidance. Stephen, in Acts 7:25, adds that Moses assumed his people would understand that God was using him to rescue them. They did not, because God had not yet sent him. Forty years of tending sheep followed.

Applying it, we see that a right cause does not make every action right, and that God is not in a hurry even when we are. The deliverer who finally returns to Egypt in chapter 3 is slower, humbler and far less sure of himself, which is precisely what makes him usable.

Where in your life are you looking around rather than looking up before you act? Is there a good desire you are pursuing by a method God has not blessed? And what might God be doing in a season that feels, like Midian, wasted?