Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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and inform himself more fully thereof (see Ps 111:2), and to rejoice with them as one that had a true respect both for them and for their God. Though he, as a Midianite, was not to share with them in the promised land, yet he shared with them in the joy of their deliverance. We may thus make the comforts of others our own, by taking pleasure, as God does, in the prosperity of the righteous.
2 then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after
he had sent her back,
It seems, he had sent them back, probably from the inn where his wife's aversion to the circumcision of her son had like to have cost him his life (Ex 4:25); fearing lest they should prove a further hindrance, he sent them home to his father-in-law. He foresaw what discouragements he was likely to meet with in the court of Pharaoh, and therefore would not take any with him in his own family. He was of that tribe that said to his father, I have not known him, when service was to be done for God, De 33:9. Thus Christ's disciples, when they were to go upon an expedition not much unlike that of Moses, were to forsake wife and children, Mt 19:29. But though there might be reason for the separation that was between Moses and his wife for a time, yet they must come together again, as soon as ever they could with any convenience. It is the law of the relation. You husbands, dwell with your wives, 1Pe 3:7.
Jethro, we may suppose, was glad of his daughter's company, and fond of her children, yet he would not keep her from her husband, nor them from their father, Ex 18:5,6. Moses must have his family with him, that while he ruled the church of God he might set a good example of prudence in family-government, 1Ti 3:5. Moses had now a great deal both of honour and care put upon him, and it was fit that his wife should be with him to share with him in both. Notice is taken of the significant names of his two sons.
1 The eldest was called Gershom (Ex 18:3), a stranger, Moses designing thereby, not only a memorial of his own condition,