2:1. “And
there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.”
Levi means joined,
and whatever else may be signified in that meaning, and in the fact that all
the tribes were joined to God as His people, Levi enjoyed the unique
distinction of being the priestly tribe whose privilege it was to be the
link between God and His people in making known to them His will, and in
presenting their offerings to Him.
As has been noted in
previous studies, the believing wife represents the expression of the
believer’s new spiritual life, while the unbelieving wife represents what
the unbeliever mistakes for spiritual life, e.g., morality, church
membership, generosity, prayer, Bible study, etc., so that Levi’s taking
this wife of his own tribe, presents him typologically as a believer, which
he was also in reality.
2:2. “And the
woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly
child, she hid him three months.”
In scripture literal
fruitfulness is symbolic of its spiritual counterpart: there should be
produced in the believer’s life not only the fruits of the Spirit as
catalogued in Galatians 5:22, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance ....” but there should be also
spiritual children, i.e., others led to the Savior.
“... goodly” as used here
is associated with the idea of being beautiful, fair, pleasant, precious.
Moses of course is an
easily recognized type of the Lord Jesus Christ, his physical attributes
being but the type of the Lord’s spiritual perfection; nor is it difficult
to see in the three months during which Moses was hidden, a foreshadowing of
the obscurity in which the Lord dwelt during the first three decades of His
life.
2:3. “And when
she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and
daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid
it in the flags by the river’s brink.”
This appears to be the
continued symbolic portrait of the first thirty years of the Lord’s life
when even His own brethren failed to recognize Him as the long-foretold
Messiah. It is also interesting to note that it was in an ark that God
preserved Noah and his family through the flood, that preservation being
also a foreshadowing of the Lord’s being in the midst of the waters of
death, but emerging from them as the victorious Lord of both life and death,
see Psalm 69:1,14-15, and 88:6-7, 16-17.
2:4. “And his
sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.”
His sister Miriam, meaning
their rebellion, watched from a distance to see what might happen to
him. The meaning of her name conveys no readily apparent spiritual message.
2:5. “And the
daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens
walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags,
she sent her maid to fetch it.”
2:6. “And when
she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she
had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”
In this present context
Pharaoh’s daughter may represent those Gentiles who believed on the Lord
Jesus Christ and received Him as Savior, His presentation to them being
symbolically portrayed by the opened ark which revealed the baby Moses. The
child’s weeping may be a typological foreshadowing of the Lord’s sorrow and
suffering as He hung on the cross, Moses in the ark in the midst of the
waters of the Nile being a figure of the Lord in the midst of the waters of
death, see, for example the description of His death as recorded in Psalm
69:1, “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in
deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the
floods overflow me;” Psalm 88:6, “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in
darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast
afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.” And again, Psalm 88:16-17, “Thy
fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off. The came round
about me daily like water; they compassed me about together.”
2:7. “Then
said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse
of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?”
2:8. “And
Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the
child’s mother.”
2:9. “And
Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me,
and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed
it.”
This points to the Lord as
belonging to both Jew and Gentile as their Savior, but with the first thirty
years of His life spent exclusively amongst the Jews.
His mother’s being paid
while having the pleasure of nurturing her own son, is an oblique assurance
that everyone who receives Christ as Savior is abundantly recompensed, not
only by the peace enjoyed here on earth, but by the eternal reward awaiting
him in heaven.
2:10. “And the
child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her
son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of
the water.”
Moses means drawing out;
and here may refer symbolically to the Lord’s literal resurrection out of
the waters of death.
His transfer from his
mother’s home to that of Pharaoh’s daughter, seems to point very clearly to
the Lord’s having turned from Israel to the Gentiles during this present
dispensation, because Israel has given Him up, and it is mainly Gentiles who
accept Him as Savior.
2:11. “And it
came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his
brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an
Hebrew one of his brethren.”
This brings us
typologically to the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry when Israel was
again under Gentile dominion, the only difference being that the Roman had
replaced the Egyptian.
2:12. “And he
looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew
the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.”
Clearly the Egyptian
didn’t just stand unresisting while Moses slew him. There was a struggle
between the two, which is a typological miniature of the conflict at
Calvary, the slain Egyptian representing Satan the persecutor of all men,
who there received his death blow, the hymnist having described Christ’s
victory in the words, “In weakness and defeat, He won the meed and crown;
Trod all His foes beneath His feet, by being trodden down.”
2:13. “And
when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove
together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy
fellow?”
The “second day” seems to
point to this present day of grace, so that the striving of the two Hebrews
represents the bitter squabbling that has divided the professing church into
warring factions, in spite of the injunction given in Ephesians 4:3 that we
endeavour “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” it being
also written, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell
together in unity,” Psalm 133:1.
2:14. “And he
said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me,
as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this
thing is known.”
The wrongdoer represents
those who first brought dissension into the Church, and who have continued
their evil work until the present; Moses’ fear being figurative of the grief
caused the Lord by the resultant division of His people into the opposing
sects of Christendom.
2:15. “Now
when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from
the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a
well.”
Pharaoh continues to
represent Satan, and as he sought to slay Moses so did Satan seek to destroy
the Lord; but as the king of Egypt was frustrated in his attempt to kill
God’s servant, so was Satan foiled in his evil endeavor to slay Christ, for
though it seemed that he had succeeded, his joy was changed to wrathful
chagrin by the Lord’s glorious resurrection.
Moses’ flight from Egypt
portrays the Lord’s physical departure from this world back to heaven; but
his dwelling in Midian, which means contention: strife, is the
symbolic announcement of the fact that He, through the Holy Spirit, is still
present here on earth, the place of contention and strife, as represented by
Midian.
In the typological
language of the Bible a well is the universal symbol of the Scriptures, as
sitting is of rest, so that Moses’ sitting by the well is symbolic of the
Lord’s present rest even as He, the Living Word, dwells in the midst of His
redeemed people in the form of the written Word.
The land of Midian lay
east of the Gulf of Aquabah, in what is today Saudi Arabia.
2:16. “Now the
priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and
filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.”
Since seven is the number
of perfection or completeness; and daughters speak of obedient submission,
these seven young women are the symbolic declaration of the truth that the
priest of Midian walked in perfect obedience before God, so that he is a
type of the Lord Jesus Christ whose obedience was “even unto death, the
death of the cross,” Philippians 2:8; and inasmuch as water is a symbol of
the written Word, their coming to the well to draw water points to them as
being representative of all those who, by daily study, draw the water of
life from the well of the written Word.
Their filling the troughs
“to water their father’s flock” marks them also as being types of those
believers who not only themselves drink from the well of the Word, but who
also share with others the results of their reading, study, and meditation.
2:17. “And the
shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and
watered their flock.”
It isn’t difficult to see
in those evil shepherds the counterpart of those unconverted clerics who
today lord it over Christendom. They are those who will neither enter into
the kingdom themselves nor suffer others to enter, as the Lord himself
declared of their Jewish prototypes, “But woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for
ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go
in,” Matthew 23:13. And as Moses helped those women to water their flock,
so does the Lord help obedient believers to do what is symbolically
portrayed in that watering, i.e., to minister to others.
2:18. “And
when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so
soon today?”
Reuel means associate
ye with God: tend ye God, a name particularly apt for the father of such
daughters as these seven appear to have been.
2:19. “And
they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and
also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.”
His dress had caused them
to mistake Moses for an Egyptian; and likewise the Lord’s coming amongst the
Jews in human form caused them to mistake Him for just another man; but as
Moses delivered those women, so has Christ delivered believers out of the
hand of Satan, their ultimate experience of that deliverance coming when
they enter heaven.
2:20. “And he
said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the
man? call him, that he may eat bread.”
Few will have difficulty
seeing in this the foreshadowing of the Lord’s Supper. As Moses was the
guest of honor at that meal in Reuel’s house, so is Christ the Guest of
honor at the Lord’s Supper, where believers, on the first day of each week,
remember His death, and present their worship to the Father, in the name of
the Son, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
2:21. “And
Moses was content to dwell with the man: And he gave Moses Zipporah his
daughter.”
As Moses was content to
dwell in that home, so is the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit,
pleased to dwell today in the midst of His redeemed.
Zipporah means a
sparrow, and she is a fitting type of the Church, the corporate body
comprised of all those who have been redeemed by the Lord’s precious blood.
But in Scripture the sparrow is synonymous with what is of little value in
the eyes of men, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?” Matthew 10:29.
What man despises however, God values, as it is written, “And one of them “a
sparrow” shall not fall on the ground without your Father ... Fear not
therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows,” Matthew 29:30. As
Zipporah became the bride of Moses, so are we declared to be the bride of
Christ, see Ephesians 5:23-32
2:22. “And she
bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a
stranger in a strange land.”
Gershom means a
stranger there: a stranger desolate. The typological picture continues
to be of Christ, for Gerhsom is also a type of the Lord, who was as a
desolate stranger here in the world, “He was despised and rejected of men; a
man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces
from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not,” Isaiah 53:3.
But Gershom is also a type
of the believer here in the world, for as the Master was despised and
rejected, so also will the obedient believer suffer the same treatment; and
if we don’t, we can be sure that something essential is lacking from our
testimony.
2:23. “And it
came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the
children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and
their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.
2:24. “And God
heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with
Isaac, and with Jacob.”
2:25. “And God
looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.”
The Egyptian king
mentioned here is generally understood to have been Thutmose III (1504-1450
B.C.), who was succeeded by Amenhotep II (1450-1425 B.C.), under whom the
oppression of the Israelites continued unabated.
God may use a heathen
nation as His rod to discipline His people, but that doesn’t mean that He
has cast them off for ever. When the chastisement has done its work, and
caused them to cry out repentantly to Him, He hears and delivers them, but
failure to repent simply prolongs the chastening.
His having respect unto
them means that He took notice of them; He looked on them with
compassion.