Cost of Calling: What Moses’s Sons Teach Us About Family

Editor’s note – We are running this reflection on Exodus 18 because of what it refuses to look past: a father so consumed by his calling that his own sons come home as near strangers. The author doesn’t indict Moses – she simply makes that distance impossible to ignore, and that’s worth facing honestly, whatever calling may be quietly costing someone near us.

The Sons Who Waited at the Mountain of God

Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, together with Moses' sons and wife, came to him in the wilderness, where he was camped near the mountain of God. Jethro had sent word to him, "I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons." [Exodus 18:5-6]

At the mountain of God, Moses’s sons return to a father who has become the center of another people’s story.

Gershom and Eliezer arrive with their mother and grandfather. Moses had taken his family with him when he first set out for Egypt, but somewhere along the way, Zipporah and the boys were sent back to Midian. Scripture does not tell us when the separation occurred or what Moses intended by it.

It tells us only that they were gone.

While their father stood before Pharaoh, Egypt trembled beneath plague after plague. While Israel passed through the sea and entered the wilderness, Moses’s sons remained outside the events that would define him.

Editor’s note – Moses wasn’t neglecting his sons out of indifference; he was simply doing what God had called him to do. Even faithful obedience leaves a cost somewhere.

A Father Who Now Belonged to a Nation

By the time they return, Moses is no longer simply their father. He belongs to a nation. Thousands wait for his judgment. Elders gather around him. The people depend upon his nearness, while Gershom and Eliezer have learned to live with his absence.

Jethro’s message makes the distance difficult to overlook: “I am coming to you with your wife and her two sons.”

They are Moses’s sons, yet the words place them beside their mother, arriving from another household. The passage records Moses going out to meet Jethro, bowing before him, and kissing him. It says nothing of Moses embracing Zipporah or gathering his sons into his arms.

Silence is not proof that tenderness was absent. But silence doesn’t erase the years when their father was.

Editor’s note – Scripture never records a reunion between Moses and his sons the way it records his bow to Jethro. That silence is worth noticing, not explaining away.

What a Calling Can Cost a Family

Moses carried a calling large enough to reshape a nation. Gershom and Eliezer carried what that calling cost inside their own family. They would not inherit their father’s authority. Joshua would succeed Moses, and Aaron’s descendants would hold the priesthood. Gershom and Eliezer, already Levites by birth, would receive no comparable leadership role. They would recede once more from the story.

A public calling can be holy and still cast a shadow across a home. The work may matter. The sacrifice may appear necessary. Yet those nearest to the called one can still become the ones who receive what is left.

Prayer

God, make us attentive to those who bear the hidden cost of our commitments. Do not let the importance of what we are doing make us careless with those who need our presence. Show us who may be waiting at the edge of our attention, and teach us how to return to them.

In Jesus’ Name.

Amen.

A Question Remains

What happens to those left at the edges of someone else’s calling, or who may be carrying the cost of yours?

If you recognize part of your own story in the distance between Moses and his sons, I would be honored to hear it

A Word from the Editor
Paul warned that whoever fails to provide for his household “has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). This account doesn’t condemn Moses; it simply asks whether we, too, are leaving someone waiting at the edge of our attention.

Editor Comment: Thank you for giving quiet, often-overlooked figures like Gershom and Eliezer their due – this kind of attentive reading is exactly what BCW's readers need to encounter.

This article appeared on Substack and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.