Moses is rejected before exile

When the promise draws near, Moses is preserved, educated, and then rejected

When the time of the promise draws near, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grow and multiply in Egypt, until another king arises who does not know Joseph. He deals subtly with their kindred, treats the fathers evilly, and commands that infants be cast out so they might not live. In that time Moses is born, and is exceeding fair. He is nourished in his father's house three months, then cast out, and Pharaoh's daughter takes him up and nourishes him as her own son. Moses is learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and is mighty in words and in deeds.

When he is forty years old it comes into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel. Seeing one suffer wrong, he defends him, avenges the oppressed, and smites the Egyptian. He supposes his brethren will understand that God by his hand will deliver them, but they do not understand. The next day he shows himself to them as they fight and urges them to be reconciled, because they are brethren. The one who does his neighbor wrong thrusts him away: who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Will you kill me as you did the Egyptian yesterday? Moses flees at that saying and is a stranger in the land of Midian, where he begets two sons. Stephen interprets the intervention as attempted deliverance. The narrative still reports lethal violence. Egyptian education and the forty-year spans are summarized rhetorically, not as a modern biography.

A rejected deliverer is not yet finished

Moses identifies with the abused and is refused as ruler and judge. The killing of the Egyptian is not baptized as a method. Flight to Midian is real exile, not a leadership intern year. The speech is still Israel's memory spoken inside Israel's council.