What Does Exodus 2:15 Mean?

When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.

The flight from Pharaoh is both political exile and wilderness preparation. Moses leaves Egypt because Pharaoh seeks his life: this is a forced departure, not a voluntary journey. Yet the destination, Midian, is the very place where God will later appear to him at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-2). The flight that Moses experiences as exile is, from the reader's perspective, the route to the place of calling. What Pharaoh's threat forces on Moses is exactly the geographic position Moses needs to occupy for the next chapter of his formation.

The motif of the well is significant in the patriarchal narratives: Isaac's servant meets Rebekah at a well (Genesis 24:11-20); Jacob meets Rachel at a well (Genesis 29:2-10); and now Moses meets the daughters of Jethro at a well (verse 17). The well is the place of provision in the wilderness, the gathering point for those who need water, and in the biblical narrative the site of encounter between the one who will be a covenant agent and the family that will connect him to his calling. Moses sitting by a well in Midian is the text's signal that a significant encounter is about to occur.

Hebrews 11:27 includes Moses' departure from Egypt in the catalog of faith: "By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible." This is the theological interpretation of what looks in Exodus 2:15 like a panicked flight: Hebrews reads Moses' departure as an act of faith oriented toward the invisible God rather than as fear of the visible king. Both are simultaneously true: Moses fled in fear of Pharaoh, and the flight was, in the divine economy, an act of orientation toward the God who would meet him in Midian.