What Does Exodus 2:22 Mean?

She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, "I have been a sojourner in a foreign land." Moses names his son after his own condition: Gershom (Hebrew: ger sham, "sojourner there"). The name is an autobiography: Moses is a sojourner in Midian just as Israel is a sojourner in Egypt.

The child carries the father's exile in his name. The word ger (sojourner, resident alien) becomes one of the most theologically loaded terms in the Torah: Israel is repeatedly commanded to treat the sojourner with justice because they were sojourners in Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:19). Moses, naming his son after the condition of exile, is himself the embodiment of the sojourner whose experience generates law.

The Hebrew identity Moses declared in verse 11 by calling the enslaved Hebrews "his people" is not erased by forty years in Midian. He names his son with a Hebrew theological vocabulary: ger, sojourner, the word that marks the temporary and provisional nature of the current dwelling. Moses knows he is not home in Midian any more than Israel was home in Egypt. The name Gershom is Moses' quiet acknowledgment that his dwelling in Midian is a waiting state: he belongs somewhere else, to a people somewhere else, under a covenant that has not yet been fully fulfilled.

The sojourner (ger) in the Mosaic law is the figure who receives explicit legal protection: the sojourner shall be loved (Leviticus 19:34), shall receive the same legal treatment as the native (Exodus 12:49), shall be included in the Sabbath rest (Exodus 20:10), and shall share in the Levitical cities of refuge (Numbers 35:15). This complete legal protection of the sojourner is grounded in memory: "you were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 19:34). The father who names his son Gershom is the man through whom the law protecting sojourners will be given. His exile becomes his people's ethic.