Exodus 2:16-22 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock.… Zipporah is represented as a querulous, self-willed, and passionate woman, who sets her own will in opposition to that of her husband, who will not trouble herself about his religious convictions, and, even when his life is evidently in danger, does not conceal the reluctance with which she agrees to submit, in order to save him. We might be astonished to find that a man of so much force of character as Moses possessed, could ever suffer this female government. But the circumstances in which he was placed sufficiently explain them. He had arrived there poor and helpless, as a man who was flying from pursuit. A fortunate combination of circumstances led to his receiving the Emir's daughter as his wife. It is true he could not pay the usual dowry. But the remarkable antecedents of his life, his superior mental endowments, his manly beauty, and other things, may have been regarded at first by his chosen bride and her relations as an adequate compensation for its omission. But if the character of Zipporah were such as we may conclude it to have been from Exodus 4:24 sqq., we can very well imagine that she soon began to despise all these, and made her husband feel that he was only eating the bread of charity in her father's house. Nor does he seem to have been admitted to any very intimate terms with his father-in-law; at least we might be led to this conclusion by the reserve with which he communicated to Jethro his intended departure, and the little confidence which he displayed (Exodus 4:18). Thus he was, and continued to be, a foreigner among the Midianites; kept in the background and misunderstood, even by those who were related to him by the closest ties. And if this was his condition, the sorrows arising from his exile, and his homeless and forlorn condition, must have been doubly, yea trebly severe. Under circumstances such as these, his attachment to his people, and his longing to rejoin them, instead of cooling, would grow stronger and stronger. There is something very expressive in this respect in the names which he gave to the sons who were born to him during his exile (ver. 22; 18:3, 4). They enable us to look deeply into the state of his mind at that time, for (as so frequently happened) he incorporated in them the strongest feelings and desires of his heart. (J. H. Kurtz, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. |
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