2. Moses as a peacemaker.
A great sin disqualifies a man for many a long year from setting himself up to be a guide and teacher of others. It may at any time be thrown in his teeth, nothing could be better intended than the efforts of Moses, on the day after his crime, to compose the quarrels of his brethren, and set the disputants at one. nor is he fairly taxable with any want of equity, or even of tact, in the manner in which he set to work. He rebuked "him that did the wrong." His rebuke was mild in character — a mere expostulation; "Wherefore smitest thou," etc. Nay, according to St. Stephen (Acts 7:26), it was not even an expostulation addressed to an individual, but a general address which avoided the assignment of special blame to either disputant. "Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to another?" Yet it had no effect; it failed utterly. The tables were at once turned on the expostulator by the inquiry, "Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to slay me as thou didst the Egyptian?" Conscience makes cowards of us all. Moses, hearing this, had no more to say; he had essayed to pluck out the mote from his brother's eye, and behold! the beam was in his own eye. His brethren were quarrelsome and injurious; but he — he was a murderer.
Exodus 2:15. —
3. Moses as a fugitive.
Men's sins are sure to "find them out." Moses had thought that he would not be detected. He had carefully "looked this way and that way" ere he struck the blow, and had seen "that there was no man." He had at once hidden the body of his victim underground. He had concluded that the Hebrew whom he had delivered from the oppressor would keep silence; if from no other reason, yet at any rate to save himself from being suspected. But the man, it appears, had chattered. Perhaps from no ill motive, but simply from inability to keep a secret. He had told his wife, or his daughter, or his neighbour; and at once "the thing was known." While Moses imagined his deed shrouded in deepest secrecy, it was the general talk. All the Hebrews knew of it; and soon the Egyptians knew also. Presently it came to the ears of the king, whose business it was to punish crime, and who, naturally and rightfully, "sought to slay Moses." But he had fled away; he had put seas and deserts between himself and the royal vengeance; he was a refugee in Midian. So, though he escaped the public execution which Egyptian law awarded to his crime, he had to expiate it by forty years of exile and of hard service, a hireling shepherd tending the flock of another man.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR