Now Moses grew up as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He went to the best Egyptian schools and became a powerful man. One day when Moses was forty years old, he went out to where his own people, the Israelites, were, and saw them working hard. While there he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite. He looked all around and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. The next day he returned to where the Israelites were. This time he saw two Israelites fighting. He asked the one who was doing wrong, "You are brothers. Why are you hitting your fellow Israelite?" But the man said back, "Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you going to kill me like you killed the Egyptian yesterday?" When Moses heard this he was afraid and thought, "People know about what I did."
When Pharaoh heard about what Moses had done, he became angry and tried to kill Moses. So Moses left the country and went to the land of Midian, east of Egypt. When he came to Midian he sat down by a well. Now in Midian there was a priest of God who was named both Reuel and Jethro. He had seven daughters who herded sheep. They came to the well and began to draw water and pour it in the watering troughs from their father's sheep. Some other shepherds came along and drove them away, so they could water their own sheep. When Moses saw this, he drove those shepherds away and watered Reuel's sheep.
When the girls went home, their father Reuel asked them, "Why have you come back so early today?" They said, "An Egyptian saved us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the sheep." "And where is he?" He asked his daughters. "Why did you leave him there? Go and invite him to eat with us."
Moses decided to live there and Reuel gave him his daughter Zipporah to be his wife. They had two sons. The first Moses named Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew word for "foreigner," because as he said, "I am a foreigner in a foreign land." The second he named Eliezer, which means, "My God is help." For forty years he lived with Reuel and herded sheep.
