"Moses Named Him Gershom"
- Trish Gelbaugh
- Mar 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 14
This is Part 2 of a 9-Part Series on Immigration
We have already established in the first post in this series that all of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were immigrants, but the immigration story doesn't end with them; it continues through at least the next 4-5 more generations.
Just as the patriarchs did, people sometimes leave their native country simply for the promise of a better life somewhere else. But frequently, they leave out of necessity - they are running from something every bit as much as they are running toward something. And, sadly, sometimes they are forced against their will.
In both the Old and New Testament, the area which later became known as Israel shared a border with Egypt, so people in the Bible frequently migrated across the border from one to the other for various reasons. For example, although God called Abraham to immigrate to the area later known as Israel, he and his wife, Sarah, had to flee to Egypt at one point in order to escape a famine (Genesis 12:10). Geographically, the two countries/territories shared a border in the same way in which the United States shares borders with Mexico and Canada. Similar to the border relationship between the U.S. and Canada, Egypt and what later became Israel appeared to have a very "open border policy". However, like the border between the United States and Mexico, there were difficult areas to cross in order to get from one to the other, and the relationship between the two entities and their people was complicated and, at times, contentious.
In the last post, we left off in our genealogy with Jacob. Jacob's son, Joseph, was sold into slavery and taken to Egypt, where he worked for many years as a foreign slave for Potiphar, an Egyptian official. After a period of time, the area faced a great famine, and roughly 70 of the Israelites who were members of Joseph's family immigrated to Egypt to find food during the famine. After the famine, the Israelites prospered and grew in number (Genesis 47:27). As mentioned in the last post, that can cause tension, and over time the Egyptians felt threatened by them and began oppressing them, culminating in several generations of forced labor/slavery at the hands of the Egyptians.
Moses was born to an Israelite slave and adopted by an Egyptian princess, living the first part of his life as Egyptian royalty. After becoming aware of the cruelty his people were enduring at the hands of the Egyptians, he retaliated by killing an Egyptian slave driver (Click Here to Read "Moses Might Have Rioted"). Facing a murder rap and fearing for his life, Moses flees from Egypt to Midian, meets a Midianite woman named Zipporah, and settles down there.
Today, the Israelites who immigrated to Egypt during the famine might be referred to as "refugees" because they were fleeing a famine. Moses might be referred to today as someone seeking "asylum" or as a "fugitive" because he was fleeing unfair treatment under the law and an oppressive government.
All of them up until this point (with the exception of Joseph) - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Israelites, Moses - might be referred to today as "undocumented immigrants" since there really weren't any laws in place to prevent anyone from crossing a border and none of them had "permission" or "documentation" to do so. The Bible, however, would just refer to all of them as "foreigners".
As with many immigrants today, being an immigrant was a huge part of their identity and an integral part of their story - as well as being a critical part of God's Story. Words in the Bible that we typically translate as the word "foreigner" frequently begin with the prefix "ger", which meant "alien, foreigner, immigrant, sojourner, stranger."
"Later she [Zipporah] gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom*, for he explained, 'I have been a foreigner in a foreign land." - Exodus 2:22
© I Lift My Voice, 2025
* Gershom sounds like a Hebrew term that means "a foreigner there".
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