Biblical characters are painted warts and all. There's no need to try to airbrush their faults. I recently read J. C. Ryle’s interpretation of John the Baptist sending messengers to Jesus from prison and found it utterly bizarre. When John asks "‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?", it was purely, Ryle says, for his disciples’ sake. John himself had no doubts. Ryle doesn’t seem to entertain the idea that John — rotting away in prison, and hearing about a Messiah who wasn’t bringing the expected judgement on God’s enemies — could be starting to have his doubts.

So I have no interest in airbrushing the faults of Biblical characters, but I also struggle to be convinced by the common claim that Moses was a murderer. In particular, I find it hard to get past the inspired interpretation of Stephen in the New Testament:

And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. (Acts 7:24-25)

The sin in Exodus 2 is not Moses' killing the Egyptian, but the people rejecting their deliverer:

But the man who was wronging his neighbour thrust him aside ... This Moses whom they rejected (Acts 7:27, 35)

In recent times, Moses has been well defended by Stephen McAlpine, and so I don't need to replicate what he says here. (The first preacher I remember hearing urge caution before condemning Moses was Dale Ralph Davis back in 2013).

My aim in this article is to show that, by and large, commentators only began to find fault with Moses here in the mid-nineteenth century. His guilt may be a truth universally acknowledged in the 21st century, but for most of church history, it wasn't. I'm not coming with the assumption that the Reformers and Puritans are always right — as already noted, my big problem with calling Moses a murderer is Acts 7 — but the relative novelty of the claim surely means we are right to question it.

The Qur'an says Moses was a murderer - The Bible doesn't

It might also give pause for thought if we consider that the Qur'an has Moses here acknowledging sin and seeking forgiveness. I'm not suggesting that anyone who calls Moses a murderer has been influenced by the Qur'an! — but the claim is certainly easier to make without the book of Acts.

Yet even without the book of Acts, Jewish commentators are less inclined to pile on Moses than Christian ones. Umberto Cassuto (1883-1951) suggests that Moses looking this way and that may have been along the lines of Isaiah 63:5 — to see if anyone else was going to come to the man's aid. Either way, it's mentioned not as an indication of Moses' guilt, but "in order to explain why Moses was surprised when he discovered that the incident was known". Of the killing itself he says:

By this act Moses showed the qualities of his spirit, the spirit of a man who pursues justice and is quick to save the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor, the spirit of love of freedom and of courage to rise up against tyrants. A man possessed of these attributes was worthy to become God’s messenger to deliver Israel from the bondage of Egypt and to smite their oppressors with ten plagues.

Consulting the Commentators

So how has Moses' killing of the Egyptian been viewed throughout church history? What follows is a non-exhaustive survey. But before we commence, note the comment of Henry Alford, where he acknowledges in 1872 that he is going against the majority of commentators in criticising Moses:

Surely the commentators, ancient and modern, might have spared themselves the task of apologizing for this act of Moses.

The Early Church

Ambrose (339-397) says:

...he would not have slain the Egyptian if he had not first destroyed in himself the Egypt of spiritual wickedness and had not relinquished the luxuries and honors of the king’s palace

Moses' deed is also spoken of favourably by Basil the Great and Chrysostom.

The contrary view — somewhat qualified — is taken by Augustine:

...perhaps the deed itself should be justified. But to do so does not seem right, for up to that point Moses had no legitimate authority—neither authority that he received from God nor authority ordained by human society. But still, as Stephen says in the Acts of the Apostles, Moses thought that his brethren understood that God would bring them salvation through him, so that by this testimony it appeared that Moses could dare to do this because he was already called by God to act. (But Scripture is silent on this point.)

Medieval Church

Thomas Aquinas — as Calvin and others would later — draws a parallel between Moses and Phineas:

it is related to the praise of some that they punished sins without having authority over those whom they punished; such as Moses in slaying the Egyptian (Exod. 2:12), and Phinees the son of Eleazar in slaying Zambri the son of Salu (Num. 25:7–14), and it was reputed to him unto justice (Ps. 105:31).

Reformers

Calvin addresses the question in his Institutes, his commentaries on Exodus and Acts, and in his comments on Psalm 106:

When Moses, being ordained of God to be their revenger and deliverer, was now in a readiness, they stopped the way before him.

When Moses slew the Egyptian, Exod. 2:12, though not yet called by God to be the deliverer of Israel, and while he was not yet invested with the power of the sword, it is certain, that he was moved by the invisible and internal impulse of God to undertake that deed. Phinehas was moved by a similar impulse.

Calvin's only criticism of Moses is that he should have been more bold about it. This matches the interpretation of the Geneva Bible, which says that Moses did what he did: "Being assured that God had appointed him to deliver the Israelites, Act. 7:25...Thogh by his feare he shewed his infirmitie yet faith covered it, Heb. 11:27".

Westminster Divines

The Westminster Annotations are the closest thing we have to a whole Bible commentary authored by the Westminster Divines. (I've discussed this important work in more length elsewhere). The notes on the Pentateuch were contributed by John Ley, a member of the Westminster Assembly [1]. Ley comments on Moses' killing of the Egyptian as follows:

By which act (wherein he was warranted by revelation from God) he meant to intimate (to his Hebrew brethren) that he was to be their deliverer from Egyptian bondage, though at this time they understood it not, Act. 7. 25.

John Lightfoot, another Westminster Divine, gets to the heart of the issue when he comments:

they refused the deliverer, when he offered himself unto them, with, “Who made thee a prince and a ruler over us?” and, therefore, they are but answered according to their own dealing, when their deliverance is deferred. This deferring was for forty years; and so, when, being upon the borders of Canaan, they refused that good land, their entrance into it is deferred forty years also.

According to popular interpretation, Moses' forty years in Midian were because he needed time to mature into the sort of leader God wanted him to be. He was a hothead who needed to calm down a bit. But I think Lightfoot is right. Later on, when Israel don't believe the report of the spies, their punishment is a delay of 40 years before they can enter the land. It's the same here. Moses' forty years in Midian certainly taught him things, but primarily it was God's judgement on his people for rejecting the deliverer he sent. Which is exactly Stephen's point in Acts 7: "This Moses, whom they rejected". God was "giving them salvation by his hand". The problem was not that Moses was mistaken, the problem was that "they did not understand".

Other Puritans

Many of our exegetical conundrums could be solved by reading more Matthew Henry. Henry reminds us that Stephen's point in Acts 7 is how the fathers of those he was speaking to had always resisted the Holy Spirit. This was seen in their response to Moses:

...when he first appeared as their deliverer, wilfully shutting their eyes against this day-break of their enlargement. He found himself, no doubt, under a divine direction and impulse in what he did, and that he was in an extraordinary manner called of God to do it

Matthew Poole, William Gurnall and William Perkins all speak positively of Moses' actions.

The only Puritan exception I found was John Owen, who says in his commentary on Hebrews:

on the first occasion Moses had made an attempt into what he apprehended his duty, without a sufficient call and warranty from God; wherein he could not stir up faith unto an exercise, which will not move without a divine word for its warranty; and natural courage would not carry him out in his undertaking

(Though he does also say in a sermon: "So it is said that Moses, in his danger for killing the Egyptian, bare 'the reproach of Christ,' because he did it in faith of the promised seed; which was Christ").

Next time we'll see how the consensus view remained so in the eighteenth century, but began to change in the nineteenth.

[1] Richard A. Muller, ‘Scripture and the Westminster Confession’ in Rowland A. Muller and Rowland S. Ward, Scripture and Worship (Phillipsburgh, NJ: 2007) pp 20, 24.