After Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Looking around and seeing no one, Moses struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he tried to stop two Hebrews fighting, but one asked who had made him ruler and judge and whether he meant to kill him as he had killed the Egyptian. Moses realized the matter was known. Pharaoh also heard and sought to kill him, so Moses fled to Midian.
Moses sat beside a well. The seven daughters of Midian’s priest came to water their father’s flock, but shepherds drove them away. Moses rose, helped the women, and watered the flock. Their father Reuel heard that an Egyptian had helped them and invited Moses home. Moses stayed with him and married his daughter Zipporah. When she bore a son, Moses named him Gershom because he was a resident alien in a foreign land.
In Egypt the king died, yet the Israelites still groaned under their labor and cried out. Their cry rose to God. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and looked upon the Israelites. Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro when he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There he saw a bush burning without being consumed. As Moses turned aside to look, God called his name from the bush.
God told him not to come nearer and to remove his sandals, for the ground was holy. God said he had seen the misery of his people, heard their cry, and would bring them out of Egypt into a good and broad land. Then he sent Moses to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out. Moses asked who he was to go to Pharaoh. God answered that he would be with him.
Moses asked what name he should give if the Israelites asked who had sent him. God said, “I AM WHO I AM,” and told him to speak of the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When Moses feared that they would not believe him, God turned his staff into a snake and back again, made his hand diseased and whole, and gave him a sign involving water poured onto dry ground.
Moses said he was not eloquent and was slow of speech. God asked who made the human mouth and promised to be with Moses’s mouth and teach him what to say. Moses asked that someone else be sent. God said that Aaron, Moses’s brother, could speak. Aaron would meet Moses and speak to the people, while Moses was to take the staff and perform the signs.