NOTES for Исх 2:1-25
The life of Moses could have served as the basis for an adventure novel. The policy the Egyptian authorities pursued toward the Semites of the delta condemned him to death before he was even born, and only by a miracle and through his mother's efforts did he remain alive (vv. 2-3). The only chance to save the boy was to place him in an Egyptian family, which is what was done (vv. 3-10).
Of course, a child who grew up in an Egyptian family and received an Egyptian education was supposed to become an Egyptian regardless of what blood ran in his veins. But he spent the first several years of his life with his own mother (vv. 9-10). In those days in Egypt it was customary for a boy to remain with his mother or nurse until the age of five, when it was time to go to school. And in those five years Moses could not help absorbing the language and traditions of his native tribe, and he hardly forgot them later.
And when, many years later, he found himself in his native area and saw an Egyptian overseer punishing one of those working on a state construction project, he stood up for the man being punished, perhaps even unexpectedly to himself (vv. 11-12). But if that killing was partly unexpected even for Moses himself, then his attempt to intervene in a fight and separate his fighting tribesmen was a fully deliberate act (vv. 13-14). The tragedy of the situation was that Moses wanted to be one of his own among his tribesmen, wanted to help them in every way he could, while his tribesmen considered him an outsider: Moses had grown up in an Egyptian household, received an Egyptian education, and therefore in their eyes he was an "Egyptian" who had come from far away to look at the life of his tribesmen, a life to which he had long had no relation and in which he therefore understood nothing. Of course, the time would come when God would use this "Egyptian" for the good of those very tribesmen, and would use him in a way that neither they nor he himself could have imagined.
But for the moment he had to flee: Egyptian laws punished murder severely, and Moses could expect, at best, hard labor in the quarries, and at worst, execution. So he decided to flee into the wilderness, as many before him had fled from Pharaoh's wrath (v. 15). For such a fugitive, if he did not die of thirst in the wilderness, there remained the possibility of settling somewhere in an oasis as a guest of some nomadic tribe and waiting for Pharaoh's death; when his successor came to the throne, one could count on amnesty or on the case being closed because the crime was too old. And Moses found shelter in the tribe of Midian, becoming a welcome guest there and then a relative by marriage (vv. 16-22).
So Moses, born a Hebrew and raised as an Egyptian, became a dweller of the wilderness. And God began to act, carrying out His plan (vv. 23-25).