Her two sons, of whom one was named Gershom, for Moses said, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land. Gershom's name is the name Moses gave himself in Exodus 2:22 — I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. The name carries the theology of Moses' wilderness years: the man who was between identities, belonging fully neither to Egypt nor to Israel, expressing his displacement through his son's name. Hebrews 11:13 says the patriarchs acknowledged they were strangers and foreigners on the earth. Moses' naming of Gershom was his acknowledgment of the same condition. Now Gershom arrives in the Sinai wilderness to be reunited with the father who named him after his own displacement.

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