18:1–12 · At some point after the incident en route to Egypt from Midian (Exod. 4:24–26), Moses sent Zipporah back to her father, possibly because the rigors of confronting Pharaoh would be overwhelming. She also would have been a foreigner in the Israelite context. Moses knows what it feels like to be an outsider, as the name of his first son, Gershom, testifies (18:3). Although it is not clear when his second son was born, the boy’s name, Eliezer, affirms that God is Moses’s helper (18:4), delivering him from death at the hand of Pharaoh. The…