Catholic Commentary
Moses in Midian: The Well, Reuel, and Zipporah
16Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.17The shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock.18When they came to Reuel, their father, he said, “How is it that you have returned so early today?”19They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and moreover he drew water for us, and watered the flock.”20He said to his daughters, “Where is he? Why is it that you have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.”21Moses was content to dwell with the man. He gave Moses Zipporah, his daughter.22She bore a son, and he named him Gershom, for he said, “I have lived as a foreigner in a foreign land.”
Exodus 2:16–22 recounts Moses fleeing Egypt and encountering Reuel's seven daughters at a well in Midian, where he helps them against opposing shepherds. After their father invites him to stay and gives him his daughter Zipporah in marriage, Moses names their firstborn son Gershom, reflecting his identity as a foreigner in exile.
Moses learns to be a deliverer not in a palace but at a well, defending strangers and drawing water in exile — the hidden work that shapes a liberator.
Commentary
Exodus 2:16 — "The priest of Midian had seven daughters" The Midianites were descendants of Abraham through Keturah (Gen 25:2), making them distant kin of Israel. That their father is identified as priest (Hebrew: kohen) is significant: even outside the covenant people, there exists a recognition of the divine that the narrative neither condemns nor simply celebrates. Seven daughters is a detail of fullness and abundance — seven being the number of completeness in Hebrew thought — and their presence at the well sets the scene for a fateful encounter. Their task of drawing water and filling troughs for the flock is laborious and routine, yet it becomes the occasion of providence.
Exodus 2:17 — Moses stands and helps The shepherds who "drove them away" recall the pattern of injustice Moses has already witnessed and acted against (Ex 2:11–12). But here his intervention is measured and constructive: he does not strike anyone down, but "stood up and helped them, and watered their flock." The Hebrew wayyôsha' (he saved/delivered them) uses the same root as the word for salvation (yeshu'ah). The narrator quietly signals what Moses is becoming: a man of rescue. His physical labor — drawing water for another's animals — is humble, unglamorous service, and it is precisely here, not in the Egyptian palace, that God is shaping his character.
Exodus 2:18 — Return to Reuel The father's name here is Reuel ("friend of God"), though he is elsewhere called Jethro (Ex 3:1; 18:1). Ancient Jewish tradition and many modern scholars understand these as two names for the same individual, or possibly a clan name alongside a personal name. His surprised question — "How is it you have returned so early today?" — is the kind of domestic particularity that marks authentic memory. It also invites the daughters to recount what has happened, drawing Moses' deeds into the narrative light.
Exodus 2:19 — "An Egyptian delivered us" The daughters identify Moses as Egyptian — a misidentification based on appearance, language, or dress. The irony is thick: the man who will one day lead Israel out of Egypt is himself mistaken for an Egyptian. He is already a man between worlds, belonging fully to neither. The verb they use for his action (hitstsil, "delivered/rescued") is the same root used for Israel's own deliverance from Egypt (Ex 3:8: "I have come down to deliver them"). Moses is a living rehearsal of the Exodus.
Exodus 2:20 — "Call him, that he may eat bread" Reuel's hospitality is immediate and generous, and his mild rebuke of the daughters — "Why have you left the man?" — reflects the ancient Near Eastern ethic of radical hospitality to the stranger. The invitation to "eat bread" is covenantal language: shared table fellowship signals acceptance into community. This motif of the stranger received at table will resonate throughout Scripture, culminating in the Eucharistic meals of Christ.
Exodus 2:21 — Moses dwells; Zipporah is given Moses' contentment to remain (wayyô'el, "he agreed / was willing") marks a turning inward: after flight and upheaval, he consents to stillness. The gift of Zipporah as wife is an act of belonging — Moses is grafted into a Gentile household. Yet the Church Fathers read Zipporah as a type of the Gentile Church, drawn into covenant with the mediator. This marriage across ethnic lines prefigures the universal scope of salvation.
Exodus 2:22 — Gershom: "a sojourner in a foreign land" The name Gershom is a Hebrew wordplay on ger (sojourner/stranger) and sham (there). Moses' act of naming his son is also a theological confession: he is not yet home. His identity is shaped by exile. This is the spirituality of the anawim — the poor and displaced who are paradoxically the favored of God. It also typologically anticipates the entire Israelite vocation as pilgrim people, and the Christian life as one of holy exile (1 Pet 2:11).
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition finds in these verses a rich matrix of typological and theological meaning. The most enduring patristic reading concerns Zipporah. Origen of Alexandria (Homilies on Numbers 7.2) interprets Moses' marriage to the Midianite woman as a figure of Christ's union with the Church of the Gentiles — the one who was rejected by his own (Egypt/Israel in its hardness) takes to himself a bride from the nations. This reading anticipates Paul's theology in Romans 11 and the mystery of the Church as bride gathered from all peoples (cf. Eph 5:25–32).
The scene at the well carries deep typological weight. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1094) teaches that the Church reads the Old Testament through the lens of the Paschal Mystery, seeing in earlier events both literal meaning and a "fullness" disclosed only in Christ. Well-scenes in Scripture (Gen 24, Gen 29, John 4) are recognized by tradition as betrothal type-scenes where a future bridegroom meets his bride — a pattern the Church Fathers saw culminating in Christ's encounter with the Samaritan woman, who represents the soul and the Church called to living water.
Moses' condition as ger (stranger) is theologically programmatic. The Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes 18) speaks of the Christian as one who "does not have a lasting city" — a pilgrim whose ultimate homeland is God. St. Augustine opens the City of God with precisely this theology of the Church as a pilgrim community, sojourning in a foreign land. Moses' confession embedded in Gershom's name — "I am a stranger here" — is thus the proto-confession of every Christian soul. St. Thomas Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 26) also notes that ordered love of neighbor begins with concrete acts of assistance to those before us — exactly what Moses performs at the well.
For Today
Contemporary Catholics often experience forms of the same exile Moses names in Gershom: the sense that one does not quite belong — to a secular culture that has moved away from Christian values, to a political landscape that offers no true home, even at times within a Church undergoing turbulent self-examination. This passage invites us not to resolve that tension prematurely but to inhabit it faithfully. Moses does not return to Egypt; he does not force events. He draws water, eats bread, and raises a family. The hidden years in Midian are not wasted years — they are the years God uses to form a liberator.
Practically, Moses' action at the well challenges us to stop and intervene when we see injustice — not with violence, but with effective, humble help. He draws water. He does the unglamorous work. Catholics engaged in social justice, parish ministry, or family life are invited to see such small acts of concrete service as participation in God's saving work, even when — especially when — no one knows our name or our story.
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