Moses is Born, Kills an Egyptian and gets Married

Today I read Exodus 2 where Moses is born and grows up and basically tells the first half of his life's story. The story of Moses has always been strange to me. As the story goes, when Moses was grown, I have heard he was 40 years old at the time he leaves Egypt but I am not sure where that number comes from, Moses goes out to see the Israelites and sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating an Israelite. Moses kills the Egyptian and hides the body. Now this is my problem with the story. Moses commits murder. And yet he is a prophet later in life and is translated at the end of his life. Why was his murder seemingly condoned while David's murder was not? Was it because Moses was trying to protect someone and David was covering up his sin? I suppose that is in fact the reason, but still murder is the worst sin you can ever commit aside from denying the Holy Ghost.

I've often wondered if Moses killing the Egyptian was an accident or not. I suspect it was not just from the fact that he hid the body. I would imagine that if you had committed murder by accident, you would not try and hide the body. Perhaps you would, I don't know. But clearly Moses was forgiven for his sin by Heavenly Father.

I suspect that Moses was a gently man by the way he is talked about in the scriptures and a man with a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. He tried to make the world around him a better place. I say this because when Moses left Egypt he came to a well and when the women came to water their flocks and the local shepherds tried to chase them away, he defended the women. He didn't know them, but it was obvious to him that they needed help and so he jumped in to help. That is the kind of response that we need to have when we see injustice in the world around us. There was a talk this past General Conference, last weekend, that talked about when help is needed, you don't ask, you just jump in and help. Moses did that. We should also.

I wish we had more information about this period of Moses' life, but since Moses wrote this, for some reason he did not feel it necessary to talk about himself and his upbringing. I suspect this is because he was humble and the thought about focusing on himself too much instead of what he did for the Lord was embarrassing to him. Most prophets are this way I think. It is a good model to follow. Until tomorrow.