Exodus 18:3
“and her two sons. The name of one son was Gershom, for Moses said, “I have lived as a foreigner in a foreign land”.”
What does Exodus 18:3 mean?
Moses had named his son Gershom as a living reminder of his own displacement. The name itself means "a stranger there," capturing the loneliness of being far from home, cut off from his people, serving as a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian. By giving his son this name, Moses was acknowledging something deeply personal: that he carried the weight of being an outsider, never quite belonging, even in the place where he'd built a family and a life. It's a tender detail that shows us Moses wasn't just a great leader, but a man who felt the sting of exile and remembered it every time he called his son's name.