Today’s passage: Exodus 2

Helpful thoughts:

• There are three major events covered in this chapter:
  • The adoption of Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter (or the story of his survival).
    • Moses’ sister was the one who asked the Egyptian princess if she wanted to find a Hebrew nurse.
    • Moses’ true mother got to nurse her child!
  • Moses’ crisis of identity at the age of 40.
    • After living as Egyptian royalty for forty years, Moses came to understand who his people really were.
    • For a second time in his life, Moses narrowly escaped the Pharaoh’s desire to have him killed.
    • After fleeing, Moses became a shepherd and lived among the Midianites.
  • God hearing, seeing, knowing the cry of His people, and remembering His covenant.
• In all of this, we see the providence of God at work.  The pieces of the narrative which God has orchestrated are being constructed before the reader’s eyes.
• This chapter could account for as many as 80 years (Acts 7:23, 30, 36).

Questions to consider:

1. Moses lived forty years like an Egyptian and forty years like a Midianite, yet what was his true identity?  What must Moses have known and continued to consider to not lose sight of who he was?  How can we keep our identity in Christ fixed in our minds as we journey through this life?
2. What was the meaning of Gershom’s name (Verse 22)?  What is ironic about this meaning?  When had this not been true of Moses and all of the children of Israel?
3. What do we learn about God in verses 23-24?  Why can we trust in Him?  Why should we turn to Him?  How comforting is it to know that God hears, sees, knows and remembers?

Today’s passage: Exodus 1

Helpful thoughts:

• The beginnings of a nation (70) came to Egypt and there they flourished.  Our knowledge of the growth of the people and the land of Egypt being “filled with them” sets up the reader to understand what comes next.
  • Egypt’s response to Israel’s flourishing fulfilled God’s word to Abraham in Genesis 15:13.
• No matter what the Egyptians did to stifle the Israelites, they only grew.  Fear was the motivator to enslave the Israelites.
• The efforts of the Pharaoh to have the males killed and the midwives fear of the Lord over their earthly king provides our understanding of the environment within which Moses was born.

Questions to consider:

1. In what way does the theme of fear run through this chapter?  Who was feared?  For what reasons?  What did these different kinds of fear produce in people’s actions?
2. How does the honest report of the midwives potential dishonesty show the historical authenticity of this narrative?  What did the midwives potentially do that could have been wrong?  What did they do that was right?  For what were they rewarded?
3. How does the fear of God affect how you see your relationships, your work, your time, etc.?