Exodus 2: 11-13 (NIV): “One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”
In his lecture on Exodus 2 circa 1995, Dennis Prager says: This has always been the great dilemma about Moses — why did he kill the Egyptian?
I saw this in no commentator.
Did Moses intend to kill the Egyptian? It’s not fully answerable because the Hebrew is he beat him.
The verb for what the Egyptian did to the Jew is the same as what Moses did to the Egyptian.
This totally exonerates Moses. Is it right for you to kill a would-be murderer?
It’s not possible for Moses to beat the Egyptian and to then go back to the palace. He must either do nothing or to kill the Egyptian.
