Exodus 2:15

15. And he sat down by a well The (well-known) well (of that place) . Midian was the country of the wandering descendants of Abraham’s son Midian, in the peninsula of Sinai, and reaching around the Arabian Gulf into the desert beyond . Knobel locates “the well” at Sherm, on the Arabian Gulf, northeast of Ras Mohammed . Here was once a sanctuary, and an hereditary priest and priestess, possibly successors of Jethro, and here are now deep, copious, and very ancient wells .

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says (Hebrews 11:27) that Moses left Egypt “by faith,” and “not fearing the wrath of the king,” yet our narrative says that he feared and fled . How is this? Simply that he feared and evaded by flight the immediate and transitory consequences of his rash act, but feared not the grand result of the conflict on which he had staked all . He was ready to measure strength with Pharaoh when the time should come, “for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible . ” The general who falls back in order to advance does not fear . (It is surprising that Alford should find difficulty here.)