Exodus chapter 2

After reading chapter 2:

*At this time, a Levite man married a woman, also from the tribe of Levi. This will be important later. My question is, how did a bunch of illiterate shepherds keep track of who belonged to which of the original 12 tribes, especially over a span of 400 years? Think of the difficulty we have today tracing our ancestors back even 200 years. That is with physical records and technology.

*The Levite woman had a baby boy and hid him for three months. Then she put him in a waterproofed basket and set him in the river among the reeds. His sister stayed nearby to watch what happened. The Pharoah's daughter came to the river to bathe, and saw the baby. She felt sorry for him. The baby's sister volunteered to go get someone to nurse him, then ran off and got her mother. Clever! So the baby's mother was paid to nurse her own child. When he grew old enough, he was taken to the Pharoah's daughter and became her adopted son. She named him Moses.

*When Moses was grown, he apparently knew he was an Israelite. When he saw one of his own people being beaten, he secretly killed the offender, or so he thought. Later, when he tried to break up a fight between two Israelites, they asked why they should listen to him, a murderer. Pharoah heard of it and tried to kill Moses, but he ran away to Midian. There he met seven shepherd girls at a well and defended them from some rude shepherd men. (Wells were obviously a great place to meet women in ancient times.) When the girls got home, they told their father Reu-el a Midianite priest, about Moses. He was invited to eat with the family and ended up staying and marrying Ruel's daughter  Zipporah. They had a son together.

*Meanwhile the Pharoah died and was replaced. The Israelites were still being oppressed and cried out to God, who remembered his promise to Abraham and became concerned. It was about time!

*The el at the end of Reuel's name tells which God he worshipped. Sticking the name of your God at the end of people and place names was common throughout that whole region. We see it in Egypt as well with names that end in ra, aten, and amun.