'The name of the one [of Moses' sons] was Gershom ... and
the name of the other was Eliezer....'--EXODUS xviii. 3, 4.
In old times parents often used to give expression to their hopes or
their emotions in the names of their children. Very clearly that was
the case in Moses' naming of his two sons, who seem to have been the
whole of his family. The significance of each name is appended to it in
the text. The explanation of the first is, 'For he said, I have been an
alien in a strange land'; and that of the second, 'For the God of my
fathers, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of
Pharaoh.' These two names give us a pathetic glimpse of the feelings
with which Moses began his exile, and of the better thoughts into which
these gradually cleared. The first child's name expresses his father's
discontent, and suggests the bitter contrast between Sinai and Egypt;
the court and the sheepfold; the gloomy, verdureless, gaunt peaks of
Sinai, blazing in the fierce sunshine, and the cool, luscious
vegetation of Goshen, the land for cattle. The exile felt himself all
out of joint with his surroundings, and so he called the little child
that came to him 'Gershom,' which, according to one explanation, means
'banishment,' and, according to another (a kind of punning etymology),
means 'a stranger here'; in the other case expressing the same sense of
homelessness and want of harmony with his surroundings. But as the
years went on, Moses began to acclimatise himself, and to become more
reconciled to his position and to see things more as they really were.
So, when the second child is born, all his murmuring has been hushed,
and he looks beyond circumstances, and lays his hand upon God. 'And the
name of the second was Eliezer, for, he said, the God of my fathers was
my help.'
Now, there are the two main streams of thought that filled these forty
years; and it was worth while to put Moses into the desert for all that
time, and to break off the purposes and hopes of his life sharp and
short, and to condemn him to comparative idleness, or work that was all
unfitted to bring out his special powers, for that huge scantling out
of his life, one-third of the whole of it, in order that there might be
burnt into him, not either of these two thoughts separately, but the
two of them in their blessed conjunction; 'I am a stranger here'; 'God
is my Help.' And so these are the thoughts which, in like
juxtaposition, ought to be ours; and in higher fashion with regard to
the former of them than was experienced by Moses. Let me say a word or
two about each of these two things. Let us think of the strangers, and
of the divine helper that is with the strangers.