Exodus 2 · a question people ask
Was Moses right to kill the Egyptian?
Exodus records what Moses did without saying whether it was right: he saw an Egyptian "striking a Hebrew, one of his brothers", looked around, killed him and "hid him in the sand" (2:11-12). When it became known, "Moses was afraid" and fled (2:14-15). Stephen retells it in Acts 7:24-25, and Hebrews counts Moses' choice of his people as faith (Hebrews 11:24-26). Christians who share the same beliefs read the killing in two main ways. Both agree that God later called and sent Moses (Acts 7:34-35).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A defense of the oppressed
Those who hold this view point to how Stephen tells it: "Seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him who was oppressed, striking the Egyptian" (Acts 7:24), and "He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance" (Acts 7:25). They read the act as Moses taking his people's side, the choice Hebrews calls faith (Hebrews 11:24-25).
Acts 7:24-25 · Hebrews 11:24-25
Moving before God sent him
Those who hold this view point to the details in Exodus: Moses "looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no one" he acted, and he hid the body (2:12). They note that God had not yet sent him, as he does from the bush (3:10), and that Stephen says it was forty years (Acts 7:30) before God said, "Now come, I will send you into Egypt" (Acts 7:34). They read the act as zeal acting ahead of God's call.
Exodus 2:12 · Exodus 3:10 · Acts 7:30 · Acts 7:34
The verses
“Seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him who was oppressed, striking the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn’t understand.”
“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their groaning. I have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you into Egypt.’ “This Moses whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush.”
“By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill treatment with God’s people than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a time, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he looked to the reward.”