Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him.

When the child grew older she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him from the water.”

The Presumption of the Deliverer

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

When some shepherds came and drove them away, Moses came up and defended them and then watered their flock.

So when they came home to their father Reuel, he asked, “Why have you come home so early today?”

They said, “An Egyptian man rescued us from the shepherds, and he actually drew water for us and watered the flock!”

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.”

When she bore a son, Moses named him Gershom, for he said, “I have become a resident foreigner in a foreign land.”

The Call of the Deliverer

During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God.

God heard their groaning; God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

Now Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb.

The angel of the class="small-caps" >Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush. He looked, and the bush was ablaze with fire, but it was not being consumed!

So Moses thought, “I will turn aside to see this amazing sight. Why does the bush not burn up?”

When the class="small-caps" >Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from within the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”

God said, “Do not approach any closer! Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

He added, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

The class="small-caps" >Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a land that is both good and spacious, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the region of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

And now indeed the cry of the Israelites has come to me, and I have also seen how severely the Egyptians oppress them.

So now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, or that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”